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Unaccompanied children in the Commonwealth of Independent States
Children travelling unaccompanied between the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)* are subject to gross human rights violations, according to new research by CRIN and local partners. A new report entitled 'In whose interests? How the law treats unaccompanied children in CIS countries', finds that unaccompanied children in the region are subject to detention, criminalisation, deportation and are denied access to legal assistance, education, and health services. To make matters worse, laws designed to protect these children have only added to their suffering. For instance, the Chisinau Agreement - the main instrument relating to the situation of unaccompanied children in the region, as well as domestic legislation of the CIS, are not guided by the best interests of a child and treat unaccompanied children as criminals, rather than offering them protection. The report was launched this week at a roundtable conference in Kiev, Ukraine, organised by the Women's Consortium of Ukraine in partnership with CRIN.
*Member States: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Participating States: Turkmenistan, Ukraine.
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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Inhuman sentencing in Egypt and Iran
Iran has threatened to speed up the execution of ten men currently on death row, including one person who was under the age of 18 at the time of his alleged offence, in response to their hunger strike. The ten men are among 24 prisoners from Iran’s Kurdish minority who have been on hunger strike since 20 November 2014, protesting against the conditions of Ward 12 of Oroumieh Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province where political prisoners are held. Among them is Saman Naseem, who was sentenced to death in 2013 for engaging in armed activities against the State after he allegedly took part in a gun battle when he was 17 years old, which resulted in the death of a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Naseem says he was severely tortured in detention and forced to sign a “confession” while blindfolded. “Resorting to death threats and other punitive measures to quell prisoners’ hunger strikes only serves to underscore how rotten Iran’s criminal justice system is,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. The organisation is calling for the death sentences of the ten men to be commuted immediately, and for Naseem’s case to be “re-examined fairly without recourse to the death penalty or relying on torture-tainted evidence”.
The head of an Egyptian organisation with a mandate to protect children’s rights has called for the reintroduction of the death penalty for offences committed while under the age of 18, according to reports from Albawaba News and Al Masry Al Youm. The statement made by Mahmoud al-Badawi, Chairman of the Egyptian Association for the Assistance of Juveniles and Human Rights, flies in the face of efforts to put an end to the death penalty for children, the near global abolition of which has been one of the great achievements of children’s advocates working on juvenile justice. CRIN believes it is unacceptable for an organisation with a mandate to protect children’s rights to campaign in favour of reintroducing the death penalty for children, which is one of the most grotesque violations of children's rights.
Violence against children
At least 141 people, including 132 children, have been killed in an armed attack on a military-run school in Pakistan. Grenade explosions and gunfire rang out as seven armed men, reportedly in military uniforms, attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar in the northwest of the country. The school's actual affiliation with the security forces is largely by name only, as many pupils are from civilian families. Pakistani Taliban fighters (TTP) have claimed responsibility for the attack, with its spokesperson saying it was in retaliation for the Pakistan Army’s campaign against the TTP and its allies in the North Waziristan tribal area. The TTP said many of their family members had been killed as a result. There have been more attacks on schools in Pakistan than on any other country in the world, with 838 recorded between 2009 and 2012, according to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack.
Indonesian security forces have shot dead five teenage Papuans, including three 17-year-olds, during a protest in the central highland Paniai region of West Papua. Twenty other people, including primary school children, were also injured. The teenagers were protesting against Indonesian soldiers’ brutality against a 12-year-old the day before who had to be hospitalised after soldiers beat him with their rifle butts. After protesters refused to disperse, eyewitnesses say the police beat them with sticks and batons. It is not clear if the subsequent gunshots were fired by soldiers or the police. Reverend Neles Tebay of the Papua Peace Network told journalists: "Civilians have been shot and killed without reason… These actions show that security personnel have treated residents not as citizens but as enemies who must be eliminated." Noting that Indonesian soldiers in West Papua enjoy a culture of impunity, the organisation Survival International is calling for an independent investigation into the incident.
At least 113 children were tortured in Turkey while held in detention in 2014, according to figures up to mid-November collected by the country’s Human Rights Association. The cases include 49 incidents of torture in prisons and 64 while in police custody. The organisation points out that “the Ministry of Justice, the Directorate General of Prisons and officials at children’s prisons are ignoring all applications regarding harassment, violence and rape in prisons”. The report also documents that 360 children were arrested this year for taking part in demonstrations, 42 of whom allege to have suffered injuries at the hands of security forces. Meanwhile a report on young people’s experiences of custody during 2013/14 in the United Kingdom also documents alleged cases of sexual abuse against young offenders by members of prison staff.
Finally, the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children and Save the Children have released a global report on current progress towards prohibiting corporal punishment of children around the world. In the year that marks the 25th anniversary of the CRC, considerable progress has been made, with seven States enacting prohibition - the highest number to do so since 2007 - increasing the total number to 44.
Migration, displacement & abduction
In Australia, 107 children born to parents seeking asylum are facing possible deportation despite having been born in the country. In one such case, a federal court ruled in October that a one-year-old boy could not remain in Australia, as he was considered an “unauthorised maritime arrival”. This decision is currently being appealed by lawyers who argue it is “absurd” to say that an unborn child can enter a country illegally. Meanwhile 726 child migrants are currently being held in detention centres across the country. The former chief justice of the Family Court of Australia, Alistair Nicholson, said the government should be “ashamed of itself” for failing to uphold the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The United States Court of Appeals has dismissed a claim brought against the Catholic Church by three brothers who allege that they were tricked into moving to Australia as children in the 1940s to populate the country with “pure white stock”. The plaintiffs say they were aged 8, 10 and 14 when they were sent to Australia from Malta, having been told by members of the clergy that their parents had died or abandoned them. Upon their arrival in the country, the boys were set to work in slave-like conditions on a farm run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers. This practice was part of a four-century-long child migration effort that saw impoverished white children transported to British colonies in America, Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia until the 1960s. In the immediate post-war era, Australia sought 30,000 new child migrants, who were often received by Catholic organisations. The plaintiffs sued the US affiliates of various Catholic orders in Australia in 2009, but the US Court of Appeals cited an expired statute of limitations among its reasons for dismissing the case.
Meanwhile in eastern Ukraine, the ongoing conflict has seen more than one million people flee their homes, in what UNICEF is describing as an “invisible emergency” in which children are most at risk. The organisation reports that that in a single day in November close to 6,000 people registered as internally displaced. The UN estimates that around 500,000 people have been internally displaced by the conflict, and hundreds of thousands more have fled to neighbouring countries.
Transgender and intersex rights
Kenya could be on course to recognising the gender of intersex people after a court ordered the government to issue a five-year-old intersex child with a birth certificate. Following the baby’s birth in 2009, hospital staff had put a question mark next to the box designating gender on a form that recorded the birth. This meant that a birth certificate was never issued, which is necessary for enrolling in school and applying for a national identity document. The ruling also requires the Attorney General to assign a government body the responsibility of conducting a census of intersex people in Kenya, as well as to develop guidelines and policies for their recognition and support. The child’s lawyer, John Chigiti, hopes this will lead Kenya to follow in the footsteps of countries like South Africa, where intersex children cannot undergo surgery without a court order.
A court in Maine, United States has awarded a lawsuit settlement to the family of a transgender girl who was made to use the staff toilets at school, rather than letting her use the same girls’ toilet as other students. While initially being allowed to use the girls’ toilet, the superintendent of the Orono School District decided the girl should use the staff toilet after the grandfather of another pupil complained to the school. The parents of the girl sued, arguing that the move singled her out among her peers and amounted to discrimination. The settlement marks the end of a court case that began in 2009 when the Maine Human Rights Commission sued the school district, and specifies that the district cannot "refus[e] access by transgender students to school restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity."
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ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN IN SLOVAKIA
The Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by Slovakia and can be directly enforced in the courts, its provisions taking precedence over national laws. Under Slovak law, children lack legal capacity and their ability to bring a court case by themselves must be judged on a case-by-case basis. Typically, minor children are represented by their parents, unless there is a clash of interests, in which case the court will appoint a guardian to represent the interests of the child. Slovak children can submit complaints to the Public Defender, who can assist in bringing a case in the regular courts. In addition, complaints of violations of children’s right may be submitted to the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Read the full report on access to justice for children in Slovakia.
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
Children of the Andes: Consultancy on Monitoring and Evaluation
Location: London, UK
Application Deadline: 22 December 2014
The Malala Fund: Chief Executive Officer
Location: London, United Kingdom
Application Deadline: 31 December 2014
International Rescue Committee: Reading Advisor
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan
Application Deadline: N/A
International Social Service Australia: Child Rights Advocacy Officer
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Application deadline: 2 January 2015
Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children: Advocacy & Communications Coordinator
Location: London, UK
Deadline: 9 January 2015
LEAK OF THE WEEK
Yet another children's cartoon character is facing accusations of moral indecency and corruption of children for not having clearly visible genitalia. According to the pelvic police in the town of Tuszyn in Poland, Winnie the Pooh should be flashing his bits — to children.
Town officials recently blocked plans to have Pooh as the public face of a local playground because of the character’s “dubious sexuality”. One town councillor even criticised the cartoon’s author for “cut[ting] his testicles off with a razor blade” — a delicate way to introduce children to the subject of castration.
Meanwhile other councillors were more concerned with the character’s dress sense for being "inappropriately dressed," "half naked" and for having an “[in]complete wardrobe” — indeed, Polish winters can be nippy.
Another councillor ventured an explanation for the above doubts: "It doesn’t wear underpants because it doesn’t have a sex. It’s a hermaphrodite." (Note to self: buy that councillor a dictionary.)
Yet Winnie the Pooh is among the many cartoon characters to have faced criticism in the 100-year span since their inception. Indeed, as one journalist recently wrote: “If history is any indication, cartoons will continue to draw controversy — literally."
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