CRINmail 1353
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UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ELECTIONS
- A closer look at newly elected States -
Fourteen new States were elected to serve on the United Nation’s main human rights monitoring body this week. The elections to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC) - whose role it is to monitor and protect fundamental human rights and freedoms around the world - saw Algeria, China, Cuba, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France, the Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Vietnam all win a seat.
Elections to UN bodies often provide an opportunity to call on newly elected States to improve their respective human rights records. This recently occurred with Chad‘s election to the UN Security Council, as the State features on the UN's list of the worst States regarding children's rights violations in armed conflict.
Advocates also argue that States which are known to commit gross human rights violations and fail to respect the UN system must not be allowed to serve on the HRC. Prior to the elections, over 40 organisations sent a joint letter to the General Assembly expressing this concern. The letter, put forward by the International Service for Human Rights, made specific reference to Russia, China and Saudi Arabia and said "the ability of the Council in protecting human rights is undermined if its members do not take the effective measures to address violations of human rights for which they are responsible."
Based on a similar premise of accountability and suitability is CRIN’s Transparency Campaign, which among other things asks if the people appointed to the top children's rights positions are indeed the best people for the job. As part of the campaign, this week’s CRINmail uses the Human Rights Council elections as an opportunity to look at the human rights records of a number of the big regional and international players. Now that China, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom occupy seats at the HRC (and four of these are also on the UN Security Council), we hope that they view their election as a steppingstone to improving their own human rights records.
The imperative to cooperate and protect
Following the election or reelection of the 14 new members, the International Service for Human Rights issued a statement reminding all new HRC Member States that they must fully cooperate with the HRC and protect human rights defenders in their countries and support the work of NGOs. “Both at home and on the international stage, Members of the Council should ensure that human rights defenders can undertake their important work in a safe and enabling environment, free from attacks, harassment and reprisals,” said ISHR Director Phil Lynch.
Unfortunately, however, the past year has proven that some States continue to disregard the imperatives to cooperate and protect, instead creating restrictions, fostering impunity for attacks, and even being behind smear campaigns and the closure of NGOs. China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have received the most criticism in this respect.
Some States are even preventing their own citizens from accessing or collaborating with UN human rights mechanisms. A recent case in point was the interception by police in China of a group of human rights defenders as they were scheduled to board a flight to Geneva ahead of the State’s review of its human rights record at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Among them was Ms Cao Shunli who until recently had remained missing since 14 September. As part of her work, Ms Cao had called on authorities to allow civil society participation in compiling the State’s national UPR report. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which also recently reviewed China’s children’s rights record, questioned the Chinese delegation on the whereabouts of Ms Shunli. It was later revealed that Ms Shunli had been formally detained by police in Beijing and charged with “picking quarrels and provoking troubles”, despite her family never receiving legal notification of her detention.
Elected HRC Member States are also required to cooperate fully with UN independent experts, such as thematic Special Procedures (SPs). This involves accepting requests to carry out country visits and implementing recommendations made by those experts. China, however, is among the countries that does not have a standing invitation for Special Procedures. In practice this means that the State may not not always accept requests by SPs to visit the country to conduct human rights reviews, or may delay or even cancel them. Russia and Saudi Arabia have also failed to issue standing invitations for SPs.
But Russia’s poor behaviour at the UN extends beyond this. In January this year, during the State’s evaluation at the Universal Periodic Review, the Russian delegation tried to remove two recommendations from Georgia by adding them as footnotes in the UPR report rather than as official recommendations. In response, UPR Info issued a statement signed by 77 NGOs calling on the Human Rights Council to take action to prevent such moves.
Meanwhile in Russia itself, authorities are systematically reining in the work of human rights NGOs, having conducted well over 2,000 “checks” on organisations suspected of receiving foreign funding and labelling these as “foreign agents”. Among the sites raided are the Moscow offices of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Transparency International, as well as the offices of environmental advocates, women’s rights groups, and even a French-language school. “This is the planned destruction of the NGO sector in Russia,” said Lev Ponomarey, head of the organisation For Human Rights. Even Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Vladimir Lukin, lodged an appeal against some of the law’s provisions, despite it later being rejected by the Prosecutor General.
The state of children’s rights in HRC Member States
As part of CRIN’s work monitoring the state of children’s rights around the world, we have compiled a list of persistent violations for each country on the Children’s Rights Wiki, which comprise a list of issues raised by more than one international human rights monitoring body. The following is a mere snapshot of some of the pressing children’s rights violations occurring in States newly elected to the Human Rights Council -- States that now have the responsibility to protect fundamental human rights and freedoms around the world, including those of their own citizens.
The treatment of children in the justice system
Saudi Arabia is among five States known to have executed child offenders in the past five years. This is despite the State’s affirmation that no under-18s are sentenced to death. When the Committee on the Rights of the Child reviewed the State in 2006, it expressed its deep concern over how the discretionary powers conferred to judges allows for capital and corporal punishment to be imposed on alleged child offenders.
China also fares badly with regard to its dire juvenile justice standards. UN treaty bodies and special procedure mandate holders have repeatedly expressed their concern over the State’s use of administrative detention of children and the use of forced labour in “re-education camps”, which sees children aged 16 and over detained for up to 18 months without access to legal safeguards or representation. There are even reports of the use of “black jails” and torture and ill-treatment, including food and sleep deprivation, yet no steps to investigate the claims have been taken by authorities.
UN reviews of the United Kingdom’s children’s rights record also show serious deficiencies in the area of juvenile justice. The State continues to refuse to raise its minimum age of criminal responsibility (currently set at 10), despite being repeatedly urged to do so by UN human rights committees and fellow Member States. The use of physical restraint methods on juvenile detainees has also been in the UN spotlight, including “distraction techniques” such as blows to the nose. The use of these methods and others is on the rise, according to a 2012 study.
The use of deprivation of liberty of children in several States has also been deemed inappropriate in cases concerning asylum-seeking, refugee and unaccompanied children. This is the case in France and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile in Russia juvenile justice concerns generally relate to the lack of a specialised youth justice system, including the inappropriate use of and poor conditions within detention for children in conflict with the law.
Legalised violence against children
As mentioned in the paragraphs above, child offenders in Saudi Arabia can be sentenced to receive corporal punishment. According to a 2010 CRIN report, children can be legally sentenced to flogging, stoning and amputation.
France is among seven States currently under scrutiny by the European Committee of Social Rights for not prohibiting corporal punishment of children, which is still legal in the home, alternative care settings, day care, schools and penal institutions. But reform may be in the horizon, as in May 2013 France accepted the recommendations to prohibit corporal punishment of children in all settings made during the UN Universal Periodic Review. And in October, the current Minister for Family Affairs, Dominique Bertinotti, became the first French minister to publicly declare her opposition to corporal punishment of children.
However, the same cannot be said of the United Kingdom, which refuses to remove the defence of “reasonable chastisement” to justify the corporal punishment (CP) of children. Several UN monitoring bodies in their reviews of the State have issued repeated recommendations to explicitly prohibit CP. In 2008, the Committee on the Rights of the Child pointed out that CP is also still lawful in the home, schools and alternative care settings in the majority of overseas territories and crown dependencies.
Discrimination under the spotlight
Access to education is an often denied right to groups that routinely face discrimination. In China, children with disabilities are confronted with challenges in accessing education, illustrated by the estimate that out of the 83 million people with disabilities in the country, a shocking 40 per cent of them are illiterate, according to a 2013 report.
In Europe discrimination against minorities is not uncommon, especially against Roma and Travellers. In the United Kingdom, barriers to education particularly affect Roma children and Irish Travellers, among others. UN treaty bodies coincide in that the State presents a general climate of negative public attitudes towards children of these groups, which is also present in and fostered by the media. Discrimination is also a concern in France, where recently the deportation of a Roma schoolgirl sparked nationwide protests.
In Saudi Arabia children of migrant workers, namely those without legal residence status, face discrimination particularly with regards to accessing education and health services. Literacy and school retention also differs between boys and girls, with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women spotlighting that the high rate of illiteracy among women is a result of de jure and de facto discrimination against girls.
Tight reins on freedom of expression & association
China is notorious for its tight restrictions on citizen’s freedom of expression, including severe reprisals against dissidents or anyone voicing opposition to the Government. In a 2012 case, a 17-year-old Tibetan girl was sentenced to three-years imprisonment for staging a solitary protest demanding freedom for Tibet and the release of political prisoners. Falun Gong practitioners are also heavily persecuted, with a 2012 report exposing how hospitals systematically use psychiatric torture against mentally and physically healthy detainees in a State-sponsored effort to break their will.
The past year has seen Russia at the centre of heavy international criticism for its restrictions on the freedom of expression of LGBT people, as well as LGBT rights advocates or anyone voicing public support for them. Based on spurious claims of protecting children from “gay propaganda” and "non-traditional relationships", recent laws also prevent LGBT children from freely expressing themselves without fear of reprisals.
Meanwhile ban on wearing religious symbols or clothing in schools in France prompted several UN treaty bodies to issue recommendations concerning children’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including “the right to manifest one’s religion in public as well as private” spaces.
Conclusion
The elections to the UN Human Rights Council signalled an advocacy opportunity to highlight the children’s rights situation in a number of newly elected or reelected States. Now that they occupy seats at the UN's top monitoring body, these States hold the responsibility to protect human rights around the world -- including within their own borders. This means that they too should continue to be held accountable for new and persisting rights violations against their own citizens. Not only this, CRIN also hopes that the newly elected States, especially those with poorer human rights records, will recognise their election as a stepping stone to improving their own compliance with international human and children’s rights law.
Further Information:
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NEWS IN BRIEF
Juvenile justice & discrimination
Bodily integrity & forced sterilisation
LGBT rights
Violence against children
Right to education
In other news
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Ratification: "UP - Universally Promoting child rights" campaign
Organisation: Child Rights Connect (formerly the NGO Group for the CRC)
Date: 21 October - 21 November 2013
Location: N/A
More details here.
Violence: 19 Days of Activism - Prevention abuse and violence against children and youth
Organisation: Women's World Summit Foundation
Date: 1-19 November 2013
Location: N/A
More details here.
Participation: Building an inclusive Europe - the contribution of children's participation
Organisation: Eurochild
Date: 13-15 November 2013
Location: Milan, Italy
More details here.
Child rights: Honouring the child, honouring equity
Organisation: University of Melbourne's Youth Research Centre
Date: 15-16 November 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia
More details here.
Child protection & welfare: Developing Child-Centered Practice in Law, Social Work and Policy for Cross-Border Families
Organisation: International Social Service - USA Branch
Date: 22 November 2013
Location: Baltimore, United States
More details here.
Advocacy: Results in advocacy - an advocate's guide to impact assessment
Organisation: Pamoja Consulting
Date: 3-4 December 2013
Location: London, United Kingdom
More details here.
Child labour & Education: M.A.S. in Childrens Rights Module 4 on Child Labour and Education
Organisations: Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch & University of Fribourg
Date: 2-6 December 2013
Location: University of Fribourg, Switzerland
More details here.
Child abuse: Preventing sexual abuse of children
Organisation: Council of Europe
Date: 10-11 December 2013
Location: Madrid, Spain
More details here.
Statelessness: Global Forum on Statelessness - New directions in statelessnes research & policy
Organisation: Tilburg University
Deadline for presentations: 1 December 2013
Event date: 15-17 September 2014
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
More details here.
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EMPLOYMENT
Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict: Advocacy Officer
Location: New York, United States
Application deadline: Until position is filled
More details here.
Save the Children Sweden: Thematic Advisor for Child Rights Governance and Organizational Capacity Development – Middle East and Europe
Location: preferably Amman, Jordan
Application deadline: 17 November 2013
More details here.
Children in Crisis: Mid-term review consultant (for community education project)
Location: Kabul, Afghanistan
Application deadline: 2 December 2013
More details here.
Children's Rights Alliance for England: Policy & Programmes Manager (maternity cover)
Location: London, United Kingdom
Application deadline: 2 December 2013
More details here.
Leak of the Week
For social media users it’s second nature to be savvy with words to attract the attention of Internet users. Last week the cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s certainly drew in an audience, but for all the wrong reasons.
On its Twitter account, the company tweeted “1RT=1 breakfast for a vulnerable child”. The tweet was in fact part of the company’s Give a Child a Breakfast campaign, which aims to ensure that schoolchildren are getting enough food in the morning to help them through the day, and also provides parents with affordable child care before school. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this initiative, it was the wording of the tweet - which made it seem like this apparent philanthropy was conditional on the number of retweets - which sparked a social media backlash at Kellogg’s.
One Twitter user commented: “For @KelloggsUK, breakfast is the most important blackmail of the day.” Another one posted: “Snap, Crackle and Pop. That's the sound of the @KelloggsUK social media manager's bones being rearranged by their boss this morning”.
The company removed the tweet soon after and issued an apology, explaining that it was “[a] wrong use of words ... We give funding to school breakfast clubs in vulnerable areas.” Ah - much clearer!
Full story.
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