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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Inhuman sentencing in Pakistan & Nigeria

In Pakistan, a man who was allegedly tortured into 'confessing' to manslaughter as a child is among hundreds of prisoners scheduled to be executed any day. On 21 December the government announced its intention to execute about 500 prisoners on death row, seeking to justify the decision by saying it is necessary to “avenge the victims of the Peshawar [school] attack”, in which at least 148 people, almost all children, were killed by Pakistani Taliban fighters. While the majority of the prisoners awaiting imminent execution have been convicted of terrorism-related offences, Shafqat Hussain was sentenced in 2004 when he was 14 years old for involuntary manslaughter over his alleged involvement in the killing of a 7-year-old boy, despite reporting that he 'confessed' to the crime after nine days of severe torture. 

Authorities have admitted that Hussain’s case is not related to terrorism, but have nonetheless refused to quash his execution, which was scheduled for 23 December, but did not take place. The Justice Project Pakistan (JJP) has filed Hussain’s mercy petition with the office of the President of Pakistan, and a stay application has also been filed by JPP in the Sindh High Court. A recent report by Reprieve and JJP, who are representing Hussain, documents the “overuse” of anti-terrorism laws in the country, even for offences that have “no link to anything that could reasonably be defined as terrorism,” partly due to the vague definitions of “terrorism” in the legislation. Reprieve believes more juveniles may be among those facing imminent death at the hands of the State.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, the court case of a 14-year-old child bride who allegedly killed her 35-year-old husband began this week, with the prosecution seeking the death penalty. Wasila Tasi’u is accused of lacing food prepared for a post-wedding celebration in April this year with rat poison, which resulted in the death of her partner and three other guests. Advocates say the case highlights the need to treat victims of early and forced marriage as victims, not criminals, with one activist claiming Tasi’u was a victim of systematic abuse, including rape. But the presiding judge at the Gezawa High Court in northern Nigeria rejected the girl's lawyer's request for her to be tried in a juvenile court. In September last year, Nigerian senators failed to scrap a constitutional provision allowing child brides to be considered adults in criminal trials. Another child bride was sentenced to death in 2012 for allegedly killing her husband at the age of 13. But a court later overturned the judgement, ruling that the death sentence handed down for a crime committed while she was a minor was a violation of her fundamental rights.

Read about the campaign to end the inhuman sentencing of children.

Deprivation of liberty

Egypt is holding an estimated 600 children in a clandestine detention centre in the north-eastern town of Banha, according to local advocates. The children are being held on political charges such as joining terrorist organisations, protesting, assaulting security forces and roadblocking, says the Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence. The children have been held at the centre for eight months without a trial and with minimal contact with lawyers, while being denied required medical treatment, according to their families. A 13-year-old detainee has reportedly gone on hunger strike to protest against his unlawful detention, torture and ill-treatment inside the centre, whose existence the Ministry of the Interior has denied. The news follows the sentencing of 78 other children last month to between two and five years’ imprisonment for taking part in demonstrations calling for ousted president Mohamed Morsi to be reinstated.

The UN General Assembly has formally adopted a resolution to carry out a Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. Its adoption follows an NGO campaign requesting the UN Secretary-General to undertake the study. However, despite calls by the NGO panel behind the campaign to have an Independent Expert lead the study, this provision was removed from the final text of the resolution. The NGO panel had previously stressed the importance of an independent expert for such a study to be independent and authoritative, noting that two previous studies relating to children’s rights (on violence against children and children in armed conflict) were led in this way.

‘Regulating’ NGOs in China & Kenya

Kenya recently closed down more than 500 NGOs, including over claims that some were linked to financing terrorism. Kenya's NGOs Coordination Board, a state agency, also said it had frozen the bank accounts of some of the NGOs and requested they be investigated further. The agency also voided work permits for foreign staff at some NGOs, while many others were de-registered for non-compliance with the law, such as for not filing their annual returns. Commentators say the government is trying to silence critics under the guise of state security.

Chinese authorities are seeking to "regulate" foreign NGOs under a new draft law which aims to increase supervision of the sector. The bill stipulates that non-domestic NGOs will have to "register with, and be approved by Chinese authorities if they want to set up representative offices" within China. The text also says that governments at all levels must provide advice to assist NGO in opening offices in the country, as well as set punishments for NGOs should they violate the law.

Family abuse, trafficking & ‘abuse parties’

In Vietnam, 85 percent of child victims of sexual violence in 2014 suffered the abuse in their home and at the hands of people they knew, including relatives, according to a national survey on violence against children. Other statistics gathered include: nearly three out of every four children between the ages of two and 14 have suffered violence at the hands of their relatives or caretakers, 65 percent of victims were sexually abused, and 28 percent were victims of repeated abuse. Shame and fear of social stigma push families to conceal the abuse, according to local advocates. In some cases that have reached the courts, child victims were revictimised by being made to repeatedly testify. What’s more, “[j]udicial officials have not been trained to work with children during legal proceedings,” according to child rights expert Le Thi Xuan Lang. “Many cases of child rape have been delayed because it would force officials to use ‘adult language' with the children,” she said. Advocates also say that poor coordination of child protection agencies, their restricted mandates, and “outdated” child protection legislation have contributed to the scale of the abuse.

A tolerance towards sex crimes against children in Latin America is resulting in staggeringly low conviction rates, despite an estimated two million children being sold for sex every year in the region, according to anti-trafficking advocates. With just nine convictions each year for child sexual exploitation in any country in the region, “[It] is not seen as a problem… It is socially tolerated, especially in rural areas,” said Fabio Gonzalez, Latin America coordinator for ECPAT International, which campaigns against the sexual exploitation of children. “People judge the child and not the man who is buying sex," he added. While many countries in the region have laws protecting children's rights, there is a lack of trained police or effective systems to monitor and stem the child sex trade, said Gonzalez. Moreover, "[t]here's not a single country in Latin America with a centralised data system to measure the extent of child sex exploitation," he said.

In the United Kingdom, the political establishment has been rocked by a series of child sex abuse allegations, with London’s Metropolitan Police investigating alleged “abuse parties” involving high-profile political figures from the 1970s and 80s. The reports relate to an alleged paedophile ring suspected of using a luxury estate in central London as a venue for child abuse, with 22 politicians so far having been deemed “worthy of investigation”. Police also confirmed last week that they are looking into the possible role of the alleged Westminster ring in the murder of three boys, with the inquiry focusing on military premises. 

Meanwhile an independent inquiry set up last year to investigate allegations of child sex abuse in public and non-state institutions in England and Wales has been beset by problems. These include include high-profile resignations and allegations of chairpersons having close links to the people they were investigating. The Home Secretary Theresa May is now reported to be considering scrapping the inquiring and replacing it with a more powerful body, a move which has been welcomed by abuse survivors.

Right to health & autonomy

This month, Slovakia’s Constitutional Court affirmed the legality of laws requiring the compulsory vaccination of children in a case concerning the imposition of a fine for a parent who refused to allow her child to be immunised. Previously in June, the Constitutional Court of Croatia reached the same conclusion, rejecting a proposal that the decision to vaccinate a child should only be taken by a child’s parent/s. In doing so, the court ruled that private concerns do not take precedence over public safety, and supported the Croatian Ministry of Health’s decision that “the child’s right to health [is more important] over the rights of parents to the (wrong) choice.”

New cases of children contracting polio have recently surfaced in Pakistan, with the total number of cases now rising to at least 287, the highest in the world. An anti-polio vaccination campaign in the country has been under constant attack by the Pakistani Taliban which claims that vaccinations are a “western plot”. Dozens of nurses have been gunned down in the streets as a result. Ninety-six percent of polio cases in the country has been found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Meanwhile the Supreme Court of Pakistan is set to review a case concerning the availability of polio vaccines for children living in prisons. The case relates to a child who contracted the polio virus while living with her mother in prison. The court has requested reports from all states on the administration of polio drops to children living in prisons.

A draft bill in Hungary seeks to conduct annual mandatory drug tests on children aged 12 years and older, journalists and elected politicians. The move comes from the country’s right wing Fidesz party, which says it would “protect” children and fight drug trafficking and organised crime. Test results would only be revealed to parents, according to Antal Rogán, head of the Fidesz parliamentary group, while a child who tests positive would not face legal consequences. The bill is expected to be presented in Parliament in February, where Fidesz has a two-thirds majority of seats. In protest against the proposal, the members of the youth section of the left wing opposition party, the Democratic Coalition, submitted urine samples to the 8th district local council. 

Meanwhile last month in Canada, an Ontario judge ruled that an 11-year-old First Nations girl with leukaemia cannot be forced by a hospital to undergo chemotherapy. The McMaster Children's Hospital had initiated legal action against the Children’s Aid Society, the public child welfare authority, when it refused to intervene in the girl’s case after she stopped chemotherapy with her family’s support following ten days of treatment, deciding instead to pursue traditional indigenous healing methods. Also at issue was whether the girl has the ability to make her own medical decisions, given that she herself had rejected the treatment. The presiding judge, Justice Gethin Edward, had previously suggested that there was a lack of cultural sensitivity in the case, saying that imposing cancer treatment and justifying its use based on survival statistics is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways. He said physicians are essentially “impos[ing] our world view on First Nations culture

Bodily integrity in the courts

Several cases of violations of children’s right to bodily integrity have reached the courts in recent months. For instance in November, five people in Uganda were sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for aiding or procuring female genital mutilation (FGM). The rare convictions are based on the 2010 law which makes participating in any event leading to FGM a criminal offence and prohibits discrimination against women who have not undergone the procedure.

In what was Egypt’s first criminal trial over FGM, a court handed down not guilty verdicts in November for a doctor and the father of a 13-year-old girl who died while undergoing the procedure. The decision was met with disappointment by anti-FGM activists who had hoped it would be a landmark case in trying to achieve full implementation of the country’s ban on FGM.

Earlier this month, an appeals court in the United States declined an appeal against a decision to allow a four-year-old boy to be circumcised based on a previous agreement between the boy’s parents, which the mother later objected to. During the trial at first instance, it was argued that the best interests of the child should be determinative, yet the appeals court disagreed and ruled to uphold the terms of the agreement and also imposed a gag order on the mother, preventing her from telling the child that she opposed the procedure and from discussing the matter with the press. The case calls to mind an Israeli High Court ruling earlier this year, which voided a rabbinical court decision ordering a mother to allow the father to circumcise their son, as had been previously agreed during divorce proceedings. The High Court judge said the rabbinical court had not sufficiently examined what was in the child’s best interests, and that there was no justification for tying circumcision to a divorce proceeding.

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ACCESS TO CHILDREN FOR CHILDREN IN GHANA

Ghana has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and incorporated it into national law through the Children’s Act. Generally, children can only bring cases to court through their “next friend” or guardian ad litem. However, they may apply to the Family Tribunal themselves for a care or supervision order or submit a complaint about rights violations to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. Legal aid is guaranteed by law for fundamental rights cases brought under the Constitution, for children in conflict with the law and for children appearing at the Family Tribunal, but this is not always enforced in practice. Children have a right to participate in proceedings concerning them and the right to privacy in Family Tribunal proceedings.

Read the full report on access to justice for children in Ghana. 

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: Child Safeguarding e-learning course
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 28 January-10 March 2015
Location: Online

Course: Education in Emergencies e-learning course
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 11 February-24 March 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

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

ILGA World: UN Programme Officer
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Application deadline: 5 January 2015

Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children: Advocacy & Communications Coordinator
Location: London, UK
Deadline: 9 January 2015

International Rescue Committee: Project Director (violence against women & girls)
Application Deadline: until filled
Location: New York, USA

JARGON OF THE WEEK

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