27 April 2006 - CRINMAIL 775
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- DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Children in Armed Conflict [publication]
- GLOBAL ACTION WEEK FOR EDUCATION: 18 Million Teachers Needed by 2015 [news]
- SUDAN: More Aid Needed as Child Malnutrition Rises in Darfur [news]
- ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN: Strengthening Community Structures [event]
- EDUCATION: Child Rights, Classroom and School Management [course]
- EMPLOYMENT: Child Rights Initiative at the Human Rights Law Network [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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DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Children in Armed Conflict [publication]
[KINSHASA/NEW YORK, 26 April 2006] – Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to endure some of the most inhumane treatment found anywhere in the world, despite outward signs of progress, according to a new report by the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. The report, Struggling to Survive: Children in Armed Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, documents dozens of continued, pervasive and egregious violations against children by all armed forces and groups operating in DRC and urges that immediate actions be taken to protect Congolese children and to hold the perpetrators of crimes against children accountable.
"Despite the presence of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping operation, the promise of upcoming elections and billions of dollars granted by donors for post-conflict reconstruction in DRC, most Congolese children are not faring any better than they were three years ago – and for some children, health, safety and well-being have drastically deteriorated,” said Julia Freedson, Director of Watchlist, a global network of non-governmental organisations based in New York.
Struggling to Survive details heinous violations against children’s security and rights in each of the six major categories identified by the UN Security Council. These categories include killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, abduction of children, denial of humanitarian assistance for children, attacks on schools and hospitals and recruitment and use of children into armed forces and groups. In addition, the report documents a multitude of other abuses, including forced displacement of children, coercion of children into the illegal exploitation of natural resources and arbitrary detention of children.
Violations against children are committed against a backdrop of outward progress towards reconstruction in DRC, such as the demobilisation of thousands of children from armed forces and groups, the significant decrease in the number of displaced people in some areas, serious efforts to confront sexual violence and exploitation and the integration of combatants from armed groups into a unified national army. Another recent positive step taken was the International Criminal Court’s arrest of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo of the Union des Patriotes Congolais on charges of enlisting, conscripting and using children in hostilities in DRC.
“Outward signs of progress should not lull the international community into a false sense that children in DRC now live in safety,” warned Kathleen Hunt, CARE International’s UN Representative and Chairperson of the Watchlist. “To the contrary, stark evidence of the ongoing rape and mutilation of girls, recruitment and use of children by armed groups and other despicable abuses against children continues to be well-documented. In addition, it’s widely known that thousands of Congolese children are dying of preventable diseases every day and others are missing out on educational opportunities and other possibilities for advancing their lives.”
“The Congolese governing authorities, the UN team and others have yet to implement an effective structure of child protection in DRC. A wide gap remains between commitments to protect children in theory and actual practices on the ground. The widespread trafficking of small arms, difficulties in the disarmament and demobilisation process, and the persistence of general insecurity in the eastern DRC will continue to contribute in the weak structure for protection of children for the foreseeable future,” said Beck - Bukeni T. Waruzi, Director of Ajedi-Ka /Child Soldiers Project, a local child protection agency operating in eastern DRC.
“Immediate and sustained actions must be taken immediately by the governing authorities of DRC, all armed groups operating in DRC, the UN Security Council, the United Nations Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), the humanitarian community in DRC, donors and the International Criminal Court to protect Congolese children from further violations and to find remedies for those who have already endured imponderable suffering,” Hunt added.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8096
Further information
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Security Council Resolution 1612 (July 2005) established a comprehensive monitoring and reporting mechanism to ensure the protection of children exposed to armed conflict.
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For more information, contact:
Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict
c/o Womens' Commission for
Refugee Women and Children
122 E. 42nd Street, 12th floor
New York, NY 10168, US
Tel: +1 212 551 3111; Fax: +1 212 551 3180
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.watchlist.org
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GLOBAL ACTION WEEK FOR EDUCATION: 18 Million Teachers Needed by 2015 [news]
[UNITED NATIONS, 25 April 2006] - More than 18 million new teachers will be needed over the next nine years to meet a UN goal of providing primary education to all the world's children by 2015, UNESCO said on Tuesday. UNESCO, headquartered in Paris, is the UN system's educational scientific and cultural arm.
Developing nations have the greatest needs but are poorly equipped to fulfill them because of lack of money and qualified personnel, UNESCO's Montreal-based Institute for Statistics said in a recent report: Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015.
The goal of universal primary education by 2015 is one of the main global development goals set by a UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000. Among other top UN goals are halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and stemming the spread of AIDS.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's most impoverished region, needs more teachers than any other part of the globe, requiring an additional 1.6 million teachers to ensure a primary education for all by the target date, the institute said. That is a 68 per cent increase, from 2.4 million to 4 million teachers.
Among those nations facing the greatest challenge are Chad, which will need nearly four times as many primary teachers as it has now, and Ethiopia, which will have to double the number of teachers.
Arab states will need to create 450,000 new teaching posts, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, the institute said, while another 325,000 teachers will be required in southern and western Asia, primarily in Afghanistan.
In some countries, however, the school-age population is expected to shrink, meaning fewer teachers will be needed. China, for example, is projected to need 1.8 million fewer teachers, Brazil 146,000 and India 50,000 by 2015. "This provides an opportunity to improve education quality by investing more resources per teacher and pupil," the institute said.
It noted that the poorest countries may have no choice but to turn to untrained instructors and parents to meet their teaching needs, but advised them to try to improve instructors' skills and compensation rather than lower standards.
[Source: AlertNet]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8106
Further information
For more information, contact:
Global Campaign for Education
GCE, PO Box 521733, Saxonwold, 2132, South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)11 447 4111; Fax: +27 (0)11 447 4138
Email: [email protected] .
Website: http://www.campaignforeducation.org
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SUDAN: More Aid Needed as Child Malnutrition Rises in Darfur [news]
Malnutrition is increasing again in Sudan's Darfur region, where increased violence and lack of funds are hampering aid efforts, the UN has said. Clinics have seen a 20 per cent increase in severely malnourished children since January, a spokesman for the UN children's agency, UNICEF, said.
The surge in fighting has forced some 200,000 people to flee, bringing the total displaced to over two million.
Mediators are trying to get the warring sides to reach a peace deal by Sunday. The African Union has set a 30 April deadline for the government and rebel groups to accept their draft peace agreement which addresses power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security. "This is decision time. No more procrastination, no more antics, no more delaying tactics. The eyes of the world are on you," said Ahmed Salim Ahmed, the chief AU mediator.
Nearly two years of the AU-mediated talks in Abuja between the Sudanese government and the two main rebel groups have failed to end a conflict regarded as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
UNICEF is now warning that the situation is once again worsening. "We need to raise the alarm bell," said Ted Chaiban, head of UNICEF's mission to Sudan. "We're losing ground. We need to stop this deterioration." In the last three months alone, there had been 200,000 people newly displaced in Darfur, Mr Chaiban said. "In any other country that would be front-page news". "Southern Darfur has seen both government-rebel fighting but also jockeying for power between the rebel movements," Mr Chaiban said.
About a third of displaced people are cut off from aid as humanitarian agencies cannot reach them because of the fighting. Aid agencies last year managed to bring the malnutrition rate below the emergency threshold of 15 per cent but south Darfur was seeing those figures again, Mr Chaiban said.
"Admissions to therapeutic feeding centres where severely malnourished children go are up by 20 per cent since January. Admissions in the supplementary feeding centre where moderately malnourished children go are up by 50 per cent," he said.
UNICEF had received only $15m of the $89m promised by donors so it was having to cut back on some aid programmes. "We don't have the resources to buy nutritional supplies. It's a double jeopardy to have lack of security, lack of access and now lack of funding," Mr Chaiban said.
Sudan's government has consistently said the scale of the problem in Darfur is being exaggerated for political reasons. The authorities in Khartoum deny backing the Arab Janjaweed militias which are accused of mass rape, killing and looting.
The government has reacted angrily to Tuesday's decision by the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on four Sudanese nationals accused of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region. The four include two rebel leaders, a former Sudanese air force chief, and the leader of a pro-government militia, accused of widespread atrocities.
It was "unfortunate and ill-timed" and sent a "negative message" that could undermine the African Union's peace negotiations, the official Suna news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. "The efforts currently being exerted in Abuja have neared their end and what is needed now is support and not the use of the stick," spokesman Jamal Ibrahim said.
[Source: BBC News]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8104
Further information
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ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN: Strengthening Community Structures [event]
Date: 20-22 June 2006
Location: Kisumu, Kenya
The Christian Children’s Fund - Kenya is hosting a National conference on Strengthening Existing Community Structures on OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) Care and Support, to be held in June 2006. The conference subthemes are:
- Best Practices in OVC Care and Support Programmes
- Enhancing Child Participation on OVC Care and Support
- Promoting Policy that provide Support Environment to OVC Care
Organisers are calling for abstracts on all the major areas of OVC care and support management and policy influence. All selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings and best papers presented will be eligible for inclusion in Official Christian Children’s Fund publications.
Submission deadline: 19 May 2006
Registration deadline: 10 June 2006
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8115&flag=event
For more information, contact:
OVC Secretariat
Christian Children’s Fund - Kenya
PO Box 14083 00800, Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254 20 4444890/3; Fax: +254 20 4444426
Email: [email protected]
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EDUCATION: Child Rights, Classroom and School Management [course]
Date: Phase I: 18 September to 16 October 2006 - Phase II: March 2007
Location: Lund, Sweden, and Vietnam
The overall objective of the course, from a development perspective, is to enhance the right to relevant education to all - an education that empowers the poor and excluded parts of the population to participate as active and informed citizens in all aspects of development.
International Training Programmes (ITP) are organised by the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida). These programmes aim at enhancing managerial and technical skills in partner countries and cover subjects of strategic importance to economic and social development. Special emphasis is placed on areas in which Sweden has a considerable level of expertise to offer.
Sweden has extensive experience of working with the mainstreaming of democratic governance and human rights in policy, legal instruments and practice and it is actively working to promote the right to education for all. Sida has therefore decided on sponsoring the international training programme "Child Rights, Classroom and School Management" scheduled to take place in 2006 in Sweden and South Africa.
The right to, in and through education will be the guiding principle in this course and the training programme has a child rights based approach. The programme aims to develop the skills and attitudes in favour of rights-based educational work at classroom and school level. The programme gives opportunities to compare and share experiences among the participants from different countries while taking into consideration the Convention of the Rights of the Child, Education for all and other internationally agreed declarations.
The training will be conducted in English. The target group for the training programme are persons working with pedagogical support and pedagogical development, at school level, district level and central level. In addition, the course will also be open for application to professional staff at NGOs working in the field of education and human rights, based in developing countries.
The following countries are welcome to apply for 2006: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Laos, Lesotho, Malawi, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, The Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia.
Application deadline: 16 May 2006
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8114
For more information, contact:
Richard Stenelo, Programme Co-ordinator
Lund University Education AB
Box 117, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden
Tel: + 46 46 222 07 52; Fax: + 46 46 222 07 50
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.education.lu.se/sida/child
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EMPLOYMENT: Child Rights Initiative at the Human Rights Law Network [job posting]
The Child Rights Initiative (CRI) is a unit of the Human Rights Law Network, a collective of lawyers and activists dedicated to advancing human rights and access to basic resources for marginalised communities. CRI intervenes in cases of child labour, children in conflict with law, child sexual abuse, child marriage, child trafficking, child health and the right to education. CRI works to ensure that all existing laws concerning children are implemented, and new laws are framed, to protect and promote the rights of children. The Child Rights Initiative is seeking to recruit for the following posts:
Application deadline: 3 May 2006
For more information, contact:
Human Rights Law Network
65, Masjid Road, Jungpura, New Delhi-110014, India
Email: [email protected]
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