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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Nicaragua bans corporal punishment
Nicaragua has become the latest Latin American State to ban all forms of corporal punishment of children in all settings, including the home. In Article 280 of the newly approved Family Code 2014, which identifies parents and guardians as having the responsibility “to provide, consistent with the child’s evolving capacities, appropriate direction and guidance to the child, without putting at risk his or her health, physical integrity, psychological and personal dignity and under no circumstances using physical punishment or any type of humiliating treatment as a form of correction or discipline.” Nicaragua’s prohibition follows quickly on from reform in other Latin American countries in 2014, namely Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. In total, seven States have enacted prohibition this year - the highest number to do so in a single year since 2007.
Further information:
Issues in education
More than 60 civil society organisations have condemned a report by the African Development Bank and the UN Development Programme, among others, for supporting private sector involvement in education in Africa to make profits. The joint statement points out that privatisation does not ensure quality education, creates barriers to access to education for families unable to pay school fees, and undermines the notion of education as a public good. There is also evidence that privatisation increases gender inequality, with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) recently warning about how priority tends to be given to schooling boys over girls. The signing organisations call for the report “Assessing Progress in Africa Toward the Millennium Development Goals” to be withdrawn in order to review the recommendations in support of privatising education and make them consistent with the human right to education.
In Turkey, proposals to make religious classes compulsory in schools from age six has angered critics in the secular country. While religious education is already compulsory in Turkey from age nine, the National Education Council has proposed starting lessons at age six. Almost three years ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "We will raise a religious generation," with the government now saying that reforms will "enlighten" the future. The Council has also recommended that current religious education for older children should be increased from one hour to two hours a week, while proposed reforms also include allowing children from the fourth grade onwards to take two years off school to memorise the Quran. The Council's recommendations still have to be approved by the Ministry of Education. However, a proposal to make religious classes compulsory for nursery school children was rejected.
Freedom of expression & belief concerns
In Canada, the parents of children who took part in an environmental protest have defended their children’s actions, despite criticism that children should not take part in political demonstrations. British Columbia’s premier Christy Clark denounced the parents for allowing their 11-year-old daughters to join them in committing an act of civil disobedience by violating a court order that prevented people from crossing a police line. Protesters were rallying against an energy company’s plans to expand its oil pipeline. In response to Ms Clark's criticism, the mother of one of the girls relayed her daughter’s words: “Mum, I’m not old enough to vote and people don’t listen to kids. The strongest statement I can make is crossing that line.” The mother added that she “had many long talks with [her daughter] about what non-violent civil disobedience is, the difference between breaking the law and breaking a civil injunction. She’s a very intelligent young woman and, in the end, it was her decision.” The father of another girl said his support for his daughter is about the right to protest.
A family in the United States has sued its local school district on the basis that daily recitals of the Pledge of Allegiance at their child’s school discriminates against children with atheist beliefs. The suit against the Aberdeen-Matawan School District in the state of New Jersey argues that the expression “under God” in the pledge is discriminatory. The school district, however, claims that all students are treated equally, as reciting the pledge is not compulsory. Earlier in May, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in a similar case that the words “under God” reflect a patriotic practice, not a religious one, and therefore ruled the expression was not discriminatory. However, the plaintiff in that case, who was representing her three children, said they felt "stigmatised," "marginalised," and "excluded" when others recited the pledge and they did not, alleging that there is poor public perception of atheists. Nevertheless the court found no evidence of the children being criticised, ostracised or bullied. In 1943, the US Supreme Court upheld children’s freedom of speech by recognising that the US Constitution protected students from being made to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school.
Meanwhile a school board in the state of Florida has proposed banning the distribution of all religious materials, following a complaint by a Satanist group over students being handed Bibles. Under the district’s current “passive distribution policy”, Bibles can be placed on an unmanned table in a location where students normally congregate during non-class hours. In response, the Satanic Temple said it would distribute its own materials “to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions." While the US Constitution allows school districts to prevent outside groups from distributing literature to its students, there are strict limits on their ability to exclude other groups whose viewpoints they may disagree with once they allow a single group to do so.
Violence against children
Women and girls in Senegal are resorting to clandestine abortions or killing their own babies as a result of the country’s strict abortion laws, which allow abortion only under life threatening circumstances. In order for a legal abortion to be performed, confirmation that a mother's life is at risk must first be obtained from three doctors. Many women, including rape victims or unmarried women who are not able or willing to go through this lengthy process therefore undergo backstreet abortions or kill their own infant. Activists say Senegal is breaking the Maputo Protocol on the rights of women in Africa, which requires States to guarantee the right to abortion in cases where pregnancy is the result of sexual assault, rape, incest, or endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or foetus.
In October, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found El Salvador responsible for the disappearance of five children during the country’s civil war. The children were disappeared between 1980 and 1982 in the context of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992), being seen last in the company of state security forces during so-called counter-insurgency operations. Plaintiffs in the case said authorities failed to conduct a serious and diligent investigation into the disappearance of the children. Moreover, the court said the cases “are not isolated given that they formed part of a pattern of systematic forced disappearances of children”. A UN-sponsored truth commission said at least 75,000 people were killed during the country’s war, including thousands of children.
The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot dead by a police officer after playing with a toy gun in a park in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, are suing the the city's police force. Rice's family filed a federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit against the department and the officers involved in the incident on 5 December this year. The suit alleges that the boy lay on the ground for minutes after the shooting without receiving medical help. The news comes amid mounting anger at police brutality and tension between law enforcement and the African American community following a series of killings of unarmed black men by police officers. New research has found that more than 1,500 people were killed by police in the US last year. These figures directly challenge official statistics provided by the FBI, which state that there were only 461 “justifiable homicides” involving police in 2013. Some commentators in the state of Utah, where police shootings are the second leading cause of homicide, say the situation has become a public safety issue.
UN slams Israel’s ‘punitive demolitions’
Israel should stop demolishing the homes of Palestinians suspected of carrying out attacks against Israelis, as it constitutes a violation of the most basic human rights. Punitive demolitions have resulted in the displacement of 34 Palestinians, including 16 children between 1 June and 30 November 2014. Meanwhile at least six Palestinian families are at imminent risk of displacement. The policy of “[p]unitive demolitions are a form of collective penalty that punishes people for acts they did not commit,” said James W Rawley, UN Humanitarian Coordinator, adding that “[t]hey render innocent people homeless. The impact on children, women and the elderly is particularly devastating.” Israeli authorities have also been criticised for sealing homes – the practice of completely or partially closing off the rooms of a home with concrete or metal sheeting. Amid growing tensions and deadly violence across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, UN human rights experts warn that an upsurge in punitive demolition will only add to a sense of collective frustration and despair and fuel more hatred and violence for the future.
Open internet under threat
Some companies around the world are attempting to restrict free and equal access to the internet, which poses a threat to the work of children’s rights advocates. An open internet has transformed our ability to find out about and expose abuses across the world, and instigate action to challenge them. However, companies in some pockets of the world are lobbying to abolish the principle of “net neutrality” on which the internet was built, and according to which all data should be treated equally whether it comes from a big company or a small NGO. Without net neutrality, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be free to create so-called “fast lanes”, which would allow fee-paying websites to offer their users a faster connection, while leaving websites that cannot afford to pay the fee languishing in the “slow lane”. Not only would this create a system of preferential treatment based purely on fee payments; it would also affect internet users’ access to all websites, including those of small or local NGOs.
Take action:
The European Council of the European Union is debating whether to support the Parliament's call to protect net neutrality. Sign a petition here: https://savetheinternet.eu
In the next few months in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on rules allowing ISPs to discriminate and create pay-to-play fast lanes. Sign a petition to stop this: http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
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ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN IN PANAMA
Panama has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and incorporated it into national law, making it directly enforceable in the courts. However, its scope is limited by the fact that children cannot generally initiate court proceedings on their own behalf. Proceedings are usually initiated by a parent, lawyer or guardian ad litem, who must act in the best interests of the child. Nevertheless, the courts have access to a broad range of remedies, with free legal assistance for children provided as of right, to all those who lack the financial means. Additionally, judicial review proceedings may be brought by non-governmental organisations on behalf of children, and special provisions exist to respect the privacy of minors in criminal law proceedings.
Read the full report on access to justice for children in Panama.
This report is part of CRIN’s access to justice for children project, looking at the status of the CRC in national law, the status of children involved in legal proceedings, the legal means to challenge violations of children’s rights and the practical considerations involved in challenging violations.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Institutionalisation: Call for papers on institutionalised children in South Asia
Organisation: Udayan Care
Submission deadline: 31 December 2014
Location: N/A
Course: Education in Emergencies e-learning course
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 14 January-24 February 2015
Location: Online
Course: Child Safeguarding e-learning course
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 14 January-24 February 2015
Location: Online
Juvenile Justice: Interrogations of Young Suspects in the EU
Organisation: Maastricht University
Date: 16 January 2015
Location: Maastricht, the Netherlands
Child rights: 25th anniversary of the UK's ratification of the CRC
Organisation: Oxford Brookes University
Dates: 21 January 2015
Location: Oxford, United Kindom
Juvenile justice: World Congress on Juvenile Justice - Towards restorative justice?
Organisation: Terre des hommes et al.
Date: 26-30 January 2015
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Online safety: Protecting children on the internet
Organisation: Policy Knowledge
Date: 4 March 2014
Location: London, United Kingdom
Health & well-being: Eradicating Child Poverty in the UK
Organisation: Public Policy Exchange
Date: 18 March 2015
Location: London, United Kingdom
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EMPLOYMENT
Save the Children Sweden: Country Director for Sudan
Location: Khartoum, Sudan
Application deadline: 12 December 2014
Partners of the Americas: Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist
Application Deadline: 12 December 2015
Location: Washington DC, United States
War Child Holland: Manager of Programmes
Location: Juba, South Sudan
Application Deadline: 15 December 2014
The Williams Institute: Communications Officer
Location: Los Angeles, United States
Application deadline: 16 December 2014
Children of the Andes: Consultancy on Monitoring and Evaluation
Location: London, UK
Application Deadline: 22 December 2014
International Rescue Committee: Reading Advisor
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan
Application Deadline: N/A
International Social Service Australia: Child Rights Advocacy Officer
Application deadline: 2 January 2015
Location: Melbourne, Australia
THE LAST WORD
“Despite the recent progress made in some countries of the region regarding the express prohibition of corporal punishment of children and adolescents, flawed legislation on the subject remains on the books in most Member States, a problem compounded by the fact that the practice is legitimised by society’s tolerance and acceptance of it. It is vital that the States, in furtherance of their international obligations, explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in their laws…”
-- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Report on Corporal Punishment and Human Rights of Children and Adolescents, 2009
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