01 September 2005 - CRINMAIL 709
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- PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children [publication]
- INDIA: Child Malnutrition Causes 1,600 Recent Deaths [news]
- CHAD: Gender-Based Violence Faced by Darfur Girl Refugees [publication]
- CHILDREN WITHOUT PARENTAL CARE: Need for International Standards [event]
- COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: 40th Session [UN event]
- EMPLOYMENT: Quality Programmes Manager [job posting]___________________________________________________________
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Your submissions are welcome if you are working in the area of child rights. To contribute, email us at [email protected]. Adobe Acrobat is required for viewing some of the documents, and if required can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html If you do not receive this email in html format, you will not be able to see some hyperlinks in the text. At the end of each item we have therefore provided a full URL linking to a web page where further information is available.
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- PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children [publication]
[PORT MORESBY, 1 September 2005] - The Papua New Guinea government must act to stop the police from engaging in brutal beatings, rape and torture of arrestees, many of whom are children, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
The 124-page report, "'Making Their Own Rules': Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children in Papua New Guinea," documents boys and girls being shot, knifed, kicked and beaten by gun butts, iron bars, wooden batons, fists, rubber hoses and chairs. Some are forced to chew and swallow condoms. Eyewitnesses describe gang rapes in police stations, vehicles, barracks and other locations. Children are also routinely detained with adults in sordid police lockups and denied medical care.
Children make up nearly half of Papua New Guinea's some 5.6 million people. Fewer than half of all school-age children are enrolled in school, and those who leave school are unlikely to find paid employment. Although all children may be subjected to police violence, children perceived as gang members ("raskols"), street vendors, child sex workers and boys engaged in homosexual conduct are especially targeted.
Human Rights Watch said that police abuses, such as police rape, targeting of sex workers and men and boys engaged in homosexual conduct, and harassment of people carrying condoms, may also fuel Papua New Guinea's burgeoning AIDS epidemic. These acts may spread the disease, deter people from carrying condoms and drive marginalised populations underground and away from potentially lifesaving information on HIV prevention and health services. Experts believe that at least 80,000 people are living with HIV in Papua New Guinea-including 3 to 4 per cent of adults in the capital - the highest rates in the region.
"Human rights abuses by the police are undermining desperately-needed HIV/AIDS prevention measures by the government, civil society and international donors," said Coursen-Neff. In addition to being abusive, Human Rights Watch said that police violence is ineffective in the face of the country's serious crime problem. Violent police tactics make people fearful of approaching police even to report crime and reluctant to cooperate with investigations. Even government studies have found police increasingly unable to fight crime.
The police have been unwilling or unable to discipline their own members. With little or no penalty for violators and few incentives for good practices, police training has had little effect on abusive police tactics. "There is no more important government responsibility than protecting children and other vulnerable people from violence," said Coursen-Neff. "If the government is serious about the protection of children, it must start holding accountable police who beat, rape and torture children."
Human Rights Watch called on the Papua New Guinea government to: publicly repudiate police violence; to dismiss and prosecute perpetrators, and to designate an independent body to monitor police violence against children.
For more information, contact:
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor, New York, NY 10118-3299, US
Tel: + 1 212 216 1837; Fax: + 1 212 736 1300
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.hrw.org
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6123
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- INDIA: Child Malnutrition Causes 1,600 Recent Deaths [news]
[MUMBAI, 26 August 2005] - Nearly 1,600 children under the age of six have died in India's Maharashtra state, many from malnutrition, in the past four months, officials say. Most of the deaths have occurred in tribal areas of the western Indian state, the government says.
The High Court in Mumbai (Bombay) has ordered the state government to submit a plan to address the problem. Health officials say illiteracy, poverty and isolation of the tribal areas contribute to the death rate.
The government said most of the deaths have taken place in tribal areas across the districts of Thane, Nandurbhar, Nasik, Amravati and Gadchiroli. "It is an enormous number, we agree with that, we are trying all we can to ensure that this number comes down," Additional Director of Health Services for Maharashtra PP Doke, told the BBC News website. He said that most of the deaths have taken place in tribal areas because the tribesmen are illiterate, live in extreme poverty and do not communicate with state officials.
New strategies launched by the government "include providing additional nutrition to children and mothers as well as setting up rural hospitals and encouraging people to go to them in case of any problem," he said.
The government announced the figures during a High Court hearing. The High Court has asked the government to submit a concrete plan to tackle the problem.
[Source: BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4188750.stm]
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- CHAD: Gender-Based Violence Faced by Darfur Girl Refugees [publication]
[NEW YORK, 30 August 2005] - Hundreds of thousands of people from the Darfur region of Sudan have fled the ongoing conflict there, crossing the border into the desert of eastern Chad seeking safety. With no resolution to the conflict in sight, the number of refugees in Chad is likely to grow.
A new report by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, "Don't Forget Us: The Education and Gender-based Violence Protection Needs of Adolescent Girls from Darfur in Chad", documents some of the immediate concerns of this vulnerable population. Based on a visit to 10 of the 11 refugee camps in Chad in January of 2005, the report highlights the barriers to education that girls face, as well as the conditions that put them at grave risk of gender-based violence, including rape.
In most of the camps they visited, the Women's Commission delegation heard reports of rape at the hands of members of the janjaweed militia. Women and girls reported being raped when venturing out of the camps to collect firewood necessary for fuel. Those who bore children as a result of rape were sometimes stigmatised by their community. Very little psychosocial assistance was available to survivors of this violence.
Education was a priority for nearly all the refugees the Women's Commission interviewed. While education programmes exist in all of the refugee camps, shelters and supplies for schools are inadequate. Often classes are conducted in the open air because there are not enough tents. In addition, schools were losing qualified teachers because the "incentives" provided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees were so low; teachers could make more money in other ways, such as selling firewood.
Despite these challenges, all the refugee women and girls the Women's Commission interviewed said that education was their hope for the future for themselves and their families and that when they return to Darfur, they want to "fight with the pen, not with the sword."
For more information, contact:
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children
122 East 42nd Street, 12th Floor, New York NY 10168-1289, US
Tel: + 1 212 551 3088; Fax: + 1 212 551 3107
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.womenscommission.org
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6124
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- CHILDREN WITHOUT PARENTAL CARE: Need for International Standards [event]
Date: 15 September 2005
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
The working group on children without parental care (part of the NGO Group on the CRC) is organising prior to the day of general discussion a meeting on the "Need for International Standards for Children without Parental Care".
The aims of this meeting are: to highlight the need for international standards for the protection of children without parental care; to facilitate the exchange of information and good practice between NGOs working with, and for, children without parental care and; to identify issues of common interest and possible next steps to address them.
The meeting will start with the launch of the first paper of the 'First Resort' series from Save the Children UK and the presentation of the Quality4Children project, a project from the Fédération Internationale de Communautés Educatives (FICE), the International Foster Care Organisation (IFCO) and SOS Children's Villages, aiming at improving out-of-home child care in Europe.
Then, a panel discussion will gather speakers from Save the Children UK, Quality4Children, SOS Children's Villages Lebanon and the International Social Services. At the end of the afternoon, a market place will be open to NGOs and networks interested in presenting their work. Organisations interested in presenting one of their projects at this market place, should use the contact details provided below.
For more information, contact:
Véronique Lerch, SOS-Kinderdorf International
Billrothstr. 22, A-1190 Vienna, Austria
Tel: + 43 1 368 2457 2534; Fax: + 43 1 368 2457 2790
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6122&flag=event
To know more about the Quality4Children project, visit: http://www.quality4children.info
To know more about the Day of General Discussion and read documents submitted by NGOs, visit: http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.40/Discussion.asp
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- COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: 40th Session [event]
Date: 12-30 September 2005
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
The 40th Session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 12 to 30 September 2005. Scheduled for consideration are reports from China (with Hong-Kong and Macau), Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Russia, Denmark, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Finland and Algeria.
Information about this session is available at: www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/crcs40.htm. This link will include all the country documentation for the Committee's 40th session, including: States Parties Reports, lists of issues, States' written replies to the lists of issues, delegation lists and statements, as well as the Committee's concluding observations. It will be updated on a daily basis during the session.
For more information, contact:
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Committee on the Rights of the Child
8-14 Avenue de la Paix, CH 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Tel: + 41 22 917 9000; Fax: + 41 22 917 9022
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc
NGO Alternative reports for the 40th Session are available on the CRIN website at: http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.25/annex-vi-crin.shtml
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- EMPLOYMENT: Quality Programmes Manager [job posting]
Location: Kabul, Afghanistan
The Afghanistan country programme is in the process of reshaping to more appropriately operate effectively in a post-conflict climate. The new national Government is described as fragile, the security situation is volatile. Today Afghanistan has some of the lowest human development indicators in the world, way behind all its neighbours and falls at the bottom of the 177 countries ranked. The programme is developing a new approach of smaller, more focussed pilot projects that provide high level impact. This work will be implemented by a small, creative, flexible and mobile team which has a solid understanding of children's rights and project implementation approaches that model sound service delivery targeted advocacy and change processes for democratic development.
This job exists to improve the quality of the project work of Save the Children in Afghanistan and lead the programme direction change over the next two years. A key responsibility will be to develop with the programme staff the basic documentation required by Save the Children UK and donors for the purposes of reporting and accountability and for measuring programme impact. The outputs of this position will be Global Impact Monitoring reports, thematic programme plans for education, health and protection in emergencies; Country Strategy document and project evaluations and assessments. This post holder will lead the team in the Effective Programming initiatives for the country programme.
For more information, contact:
Christina Archer, Programme Officer (South and Central Asia)
Save the Children UK
1 St. John's Lane, London EC1M 4AR, UK
Tel: + 44 20 7012 6400; Fax: + 44 20 7012 6963
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk
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