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Children's rights round-up 2014

CRIN began the year by launching the campaign to end sexual violence in religious institutions in January. Alongside it, we released a report mapping the global scale of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church to coincide later in the month with the UN’s first review of the Holy See’s children’s rights record in 15 years. The Committee on the Rights of the Child issued scathing observations, saying that church authorities had failed to acknowledge the extent of sexual abuse against children by clergy members, and that the protection of perpetrators was systematically put before children’s best interests. 

The start of the new year also brought with it the introduction of new laws, both good and bad. Lawmakers in Morocco unanimously repealed an article in the penal code that allowed a rapist to escape prosecution if he married his underage victim. Meanwhile Egypt’s new military-backed constitution was the country’s first to include provisions that clearly recognise education and health rights, as well as equality between men and women in economic, social, and political contexts -- albeit despite concerns about Parliament’s ability to regulate and limit the exercise of these rights through law.

February got off to a positive start, with a man in Poland becoming the first person to challenge the country’s Catholic Church as an institution for its refusal to provide compensation to people who were abused as children by members of the clergy.

In the same month, Belgium became the world’s first country to lift all age restrictions on the right to die for terminally ill patients. Supporters of the law say it responds to the reality and demands of children who are suffering incurable diseases and unbearable pain.

However the arrival of the Sochi Winter Olympics saw human rights regress in Russia, with crackdowns intensifying in the weeks leading up to the Games, including against journalists reporting on social and rights issues. The prevalence of homophobic violence, and more particularly how authorities regularly turn a blind eye to such violence, also grew.

As the civil war in Syria entered its fourth year, the UN issued its first report on children and armed conflict in the country, documenting how children have been subjected to “unspeakable” suffering since the start of the conflict, including killings, sexual violence, recruitment, and arbitrary detention and severe torture perpetrated by both sides of the conflict. A month later the UN-appointed human rights commission monitoring the situation in Syria said that the UN Security Council “bears responsibility” for allowing war crimes to continue to take place there with “total impunity”, after it repeatedly failed to refer grave violations of the rules of war to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution.

March welcomed the biggest day of the year on children’s rights at the UN Human Rights Council, as it celebrated its 2014 annual day on the rights of the child under the theme of access to justice for children.

Malta became the 37th State in the world to ban all corporal punishment of children, including in the home. It would be the first of three European States to enact a ban in 2014, with San Marino and Estonia to follow later in the year.

However respect for children’s rights regressed elsewhere, as Iran executed a former child bride after she was convicted of killing her husband, despite her claims that she was coached into confessing to the crime.

In April the third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force, allowing children to complain to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child when their rights are violated and domestic remedies exhausted. By the end of the year, 14 States had ratified the complaints procedure, while 37 others had signed it, but have yet to ratify.

April also marked the start of a worrying trend in inhuman sentencing, as the Maldives overturned a 60-year moratorium on the use of capital punishment, adopting a new law that allows for the death penalty in cases of murder, including when committed by children. Brunei Darussalam introduced its revised penal code based on Sharia law, which includes violent sentences such as corporal punishment, amputation, and death by stoning, even for children from the age of 15. In Bahrain, two juveniles are among 14 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment under its anti-terrorism law for their alleged involvement in the death of a policeman. And finally Iran executed four people who had committed offences while under the age of 18.

Armed conflicts featured heavily in April. Islamic extremists in Nigeria abducted more than 240 schoolgirls from a secondary school, with strong criticism ensuing in the following months over how authorities failed to prevent the attack despite warnings. The incident led to the worldwide use of the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child concluded its visit to South Sudan, saying the conflict there is “nothing less than a war on the children”, with rights violations including killings, attacks on schools, recruitment into armed groups and the national army. By the end of the month, the ongoing conflict in Syria had claimed the lives of more than 191,300 people since it began, including more than 8,800 children. 

In May the Holy See once again came under UN scrutiny, this time with the Committee against Torture slamming the State’s failure to prevent torture or ill-treatment of children who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic clergy around the world.

Ongoing armed conflicts moved to a new level in the same month, as sectarian violence in Central African Republic and South Sudan gave rise to the first cases of death from starvation of children who had fled the violence with their families. By the end of the month, reports emerged that children in alternative care in Ukraine were “being used as pawns in the larger geo-political dispute”, as pro-Russian groups were attempting to the children to Russia or preventing their evacuation to safer places inside Ukraine.

The UN Human Rights Council appointed 19 independent human rights experts to Special Procedure roles, including Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, from the Netherlands, as Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

The month of May also saw a number of children’s rights defenders suffer retaliation in connection with their work. Rashid Rehman Khan from Pakistan, a board member of the organisation Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), was shot dead reportedly in relation to his work defending a person accused of blasphemy. The director of the children’s rights organisation Casa Alianza in Honduras, José Guadalupe Ruelas, was beaten and arbitrarily detained following a statement he made in the media criticising the government’s policies and their impact on children. Finally Cindy Blackstock, an indigenous children’s advocate in Canada, claimed that the government had cut funding to her organisation and spied on her after she filed a human rights complaint alleging state discrimination against First Nations children living on their native lands.

In June, CRIN launched a new campaign on children’s right to information, and an accompanying report, in response to an increasing number of States’ moves to block children's access to information on spurious grounds of protection, with sex education, sexuality and drug use the main targets of censorship.

In the same month nine people were elected to serve on the 18-strong UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In the CRIN tradition - and as part of our Transparency Campaign - we interviewed the candidates to give both States parties and civil society a better picture of their credentials.

June also saw lawmakers in Brazil approve a law banning all forms of corporal punishment against children in all settings, including the home. Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua followed in the same footsteps later in the year. But with a child population of nearly 60 million, Brazil is the world’s largest country yet to enact prohibition. The good news came on the eve of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which CRIN used as an opportunity to examine both Brazil’s and FIFA’s human and children’s rights record. The tournament’s end also saw the return of the CRIN World Cup, in which we judged the teams not on their ability to score goals, but based on how they uphold - or not - a number of children's rights. 

But the fun stopped there, as regressions in juvenile justice abounded in June. Reports emerged that Iran was set to execute a former child bride accused of killing her husband when she was 17 years old. In India, the Ministry of Women and Child Development drafted a bill seeking to allow suspected or convicted child offenders to be transferred to adult courts. UNICEF criticised a proposal in El Salvador to try child offenders as adults as a way of curbing the high crime rate. The Jordanian parliament voted in favour of amending the country’s penal code to allow children as young as seven to be tried and imprisoned for “serious offences”. And finally, the UN Committee against Torture expressed its concern about Uruguay’s call for a referendum to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 years. The proposal would later be rejected due to a lack of votes in favour. 

In July, CRIN, along with other partners, launched a campaign calling for greater transparency in getting ECOSOC status at the UN, without which NGOs are unable to submit questions, attend UN sessions or hold side events in their own name. The launch was in response to tactics employed by some States to block access to NGOs critical of governments and select their own jury at the UN. Later in the year, the UN expert on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association urged the UN to reform the ECOSOC Committee to prevent the “arbitrary defer[al]” of NGO applications. 

In the same month, the UN Secretary-General released his 2014 report on the question of the death penalty, which includes a section on the use of the death penalty against child offenders, noting that in 14 States children can still be lawfully executed. In addition to calling on States to immediately stop sentencing child offenders to death, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also urges them to stop sentencing children to life imprisonment as an alternative punishment. 

Accountability over historical child abuse in religious institutions also continued, as the Holy See defrocked its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic after being convicted by a church tribunal of sexually abusing boys in the country. Australia’s most senior Catholic church official stepped down after being charged with sexual assault against a 13-year-old student in 1969. Later in the year a court in the United States ordered the organisation that oversees Jehovah's Witnesses churches in the country to pay $13.5 million to a man who was abused as a child by his bible study teacher, as the abuse was covered up for years.

August saw the end of a seven-week Israeli-Palestinian conflict that left more than 2,200 people dead, the vast majority Palestinian civilians, including more than 470 children. On the Israeli side, 69 people died, among them five civilians, including one child. The UN said there is a “strong possibility” that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, alluding to the bombing of schools, hospitals and residential areas without sufficient warning. Netherlands also opened a war crimes investigation over the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane in Ukraine, which killed 298 passengers, including 80 children.

In the same month it emerged that Australia had covered up the scale of mental health concerns among child asylum seekers, particularly those held in offshore detention centres. A six-year-old migrant girl is the lead plaintiff in a class action against the Australian Federal Government and Immigration Minister over the treatment of injured and traumatised detainees held in immigration detention centres. Meanwhile a group of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers who were held on an Australian customs boat at sea for three weeks are seeking compensation for false imprisonment.

Uganda’s Constitutional Court annulled the country’s much-criticised Anti-Homosexuality Act on a legal technicality, but as activists feared, a new anti-gay bill was proposed in December. Gambia, too, approved a bill criminalising “aggravated homosexuality”.  

Soon after the onset of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, faith-healers began claiming to be able to cure the disease, claims which authorities quickly followed up with warnings of jail time. By the end of the year the outbreak had killed more than 8,000 people. 

September marked a particularly gruesome month, as reports emerged that Islamic State fighters were killing religious minorities in Iraq for refusing to convert to their brand of Islam, including by burying children alive and beheading them. According to media reports, children were also being made to witness beheadings, crucifixions and stonings, as well as being trained to use firearms, and used as suicide bombers and blood donors on the front line for wounded fighters. Women and girls in particular are allegedly being used as slaves for cooking, sex, and forced into marriage. 

September also saw one of the most deadly migrant shipwrecks in years, as up to 100 children were among 500 migrants who drowned off the coast of Malta after traffickers capsized their boat. The incident prompted calls to European Union States to create more legal ways to Europe so that migrants do not resort to more dangerous routes to reach Europe’s coasts.

Finally the Committee on the Rights of the Child held its 2014 Day of General Discussion under the theme of “Digital media and children’s rights”,  looking at how children’s rights can be applied in the digital context. Meanwhile the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child released its first-ever General Comment under the theme of “Children of Incarcerated and Imprisoned Parents and Primary Caregivers”. 

In October two child rights activists were jointly awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize: Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, and Kailash Satyarthi from India. While the latter is a veteran in the child rights community, Ms Yousafzai, aged 17, is the youngest-ever recipient of the prize. Some commentators were critical of the Nobel Committee’s decision, saying that lesser known activists continue to lack recognition.

October also continued to see students in Hong Kong, China, as a strong force in protests demanding the removal of restrictions on who can run in Hong Kong’s next leadership election in 2017. Notably, student leader 17-year-old Joshua Wong has spearheaded the use of a mobile phone app among the student movement to keep the protests alive in the face of state-imposed communications restrictions.

November this year marked the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. To mark the day, CRIN decided to look at 25 new or neglected issues in children’s rights advocacy, which show the long way children’s rights have to go before children are recognised as full and independent human rights holders.

The month also saw schools continue to be the target of terrorist attacks. In Nigeria, a suicide bomber dressed as a school student killed at least 47 people, most of them students, during assembly at an all-boys school. At least 24 children died in Syria after their schools were shelled in the second week of November. Reports show that there had been 33 similar incidents previously in 2014 in the country, which have killed around 105 children and injured nearly 300. The following month, at least 141 people, including 132 children, were killed in a Taliban attack on a military-run school in Pakistan. Statistics show that there have been more attacks on schools in Pakistan than in any other country in the world. 

For the first time, two UN human rights committees - on children’s rights and gender discrimination - joined forces to issue a General Comment on States’ obligations in preventing and eliminating harmful practices inflicted on women and girls. Meanwhile the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child appointed a Special Rapporteur on Child Marriage, who will work closely on the African Union’s Campaign to End Child Marriage in Africa.

December began with positive news, as the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court upheld the conviction and 14-year prison sentence of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo for the recruitment of children and their use in hostilities.

Mid-month, CRIN launched new research, alongside local partners, showing how children travelling unaccompanied between former Soviet Republics are routinely subject to gross human rights violations, including detention, criminalisation, deportation and are denied access to legal assistance, education, and health services.

Meanwhile cases of inhuman sentencing of children continued through to the end of the year. December saw the start of a court case of a 14-year-old child bride in Nigeria for allegedly killing her 35-year-old husband, with the prosecution seeking the death penalty. Iran 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 month also saw intense lobbying in Pakistan by NGOs calling for the imminent death sentence of a young man who ‘confessed’ to manslaughter following days of severe torture to be suspended, which was eventually achieved at the start of January 2015. Now activists are working to annul the sentence altogether. 

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Children’s rights in 2015 - a look at the year ahead

With 2014 already under way, the New Year brings with it new changes, challenges and opportunities.  

This year we may see the first use of the CRC’s complaints procedure, as well as an increasing number of ratifications, especially by the 37 States that have signed the treaty, but have yet to ratify it. 

The UN is also set to take the first steps towards conducting a Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty this year, following its approval by the UN General Assembly in December. Although the provision to have an Independent Expert lead the study was removed from the final resolution - despite NGO calls to keep it - it remains to be seen if the UN Secretary-General will indeed appoint an Independent Expert to the study, as was done in two previous studies relating to children’s rights (on violence against children and children in armed conflict). 

After 2014 saw an impressive seven States ban corporal punishment of children in all settings, including in the home - the highest number to do so in a single year since 2007 - will 2015 continue this trend and bring the world closer to global prohibition? 

Uncertainty, however, continues to shroud the future of a number of countries in Africa and the Middle East, as armed conflicts continue to rage in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Religious extremism, particularly in Iraq and Nigeria, is also bound to continue making headlines in 2015.  

The selection process for the new UN Secretary-General for 2016 will also begin this year. As part of CRIN’s transparency campaign, which looks at the appointment process of the top jobs in children’s rights, we will be monitoring the election. 

This year's theme of the Human Rights Council’s annual day on the rights of the child – the only day dedicated to children’s rights at the world’s main human rights monitoring body – will be “towards better investment in the rights of the child”.  It is set to take place in March during the Council's 28th session. 

As for CRIN, we will continue to bring you the latest news and opportunities for action in 2015, as well as a few surprises that we have up our sleeve.  

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