11 July 2006 - CRINMAIL 796
___________________________________________________________
- AFGHANISTAN: Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education [publication]
- JUNIOR 8 2006: Children gather to share views with G8 world leaders [news]
- CHILD PROTECTION POLL: Sudan the most dangerous place for children [news]
- CHILD TRAFFICKING: West and Central African nations sign accord [news]
- REFUGEE CHILDREN: Guidelines on determining the best interests of the child [publication]
- ISRAEL/PALESTINE: Listen to the children on Israel's wall [news]
- CRIN SERVICES: Newsletter, CRINMAIL and website services [news]
___________________________________________________________
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.
___________________________________________________________
AFGHANISTAN: Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education [publication]
[LONDON, 11 July 2006] – Escalating attacks by the Taliban and other armed groups on teachers, students and schools in Afghanistan are shutting down schools and depriving another generation of an education, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Schools for girls have been hit particularly hard, threatening to undo advances in education since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.
In the 142-page report, Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch documented 204 incidents of attacks on teachers, students and schools since January 2005. This number, which underestimates the severity of the crisis due to the difficulty of gathering data in Afghanistan, reflects a sharp increase in attacks as the security situation in many parts of the country has deteriorated. There appear to have been more attacks on the education system in the first half of 2006 than in all of 2005. Southern and southeastern Afghanistan face the most serious threat, but schools in other areas have also been attacked.
“Schools are being shut down by bombs and threats, denying another generation of Afghan girls an education and the chance for a better life,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, co-author of the report. “Attacks on schools by the Taliban and other groups that are intended to terrorise the civilian population are war crimes and jeopardize Afghanistan’s future.”
Human Rights Watch found entire districts in Afghanistan where attacks had closed all schools and driven out the teachers and non-governmental organisations providing education. Insecurity, societal resistance in some quarters to equal access to education for girls, and a lack of resources mean that, despite advances in recent years, the majority of girls in the country remain out of school. Nearly one-third of districts have no girls’ schools.
The assault on education in Afghanistan is part of a dramatic resurgence over the past year of armed opposition to the central government and its international supporters. In addition to targeting educational facilities, the Taliban and other armed groups have used tactics previously rare in Afghanistan, such as suicide bombings against civilians and attacks on aid workers. Threatening messages – known as “night letters” – targeting teachers, students and government employees now appear with far greater frequency than before.
The Taliban and allied groups, such as warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, were responsible for many, but not all, of the attacks on schools and teachers that Human Rights Watch investigated. In other instances, local warlords have carried out such attacks to strengthen their local control. Afghanistan’s rapidly growing criminal networks, many involved in the production and trade of narcotics, also target schools because in many areas they are the only symbol of government authority.
“The Taliban, local warlords and criminal groups now share the goal of weakening the central government, creating a perfect storm of violence that threatens Afghanistan’s recovery and reconstruction,” said Sam Zarifi, co-author of the report. “These groups are exploiting the international forces’ failures on security in order to alienate Afghans from a central government that can’t protect them.”
Human Rights Watch called on armed opposition groups, including the Taliban and Hezb-e Islami, to immediately halt all attacks on civilians and civilian objects, in particular teachers, students and schools. The organisation also urged the Afghan government, NATO and the US-led coalition forces to implement a security policy firmly tethered to the development needs of the Afghan people. The Afghan government, with international support, needs a strategy to monitor, prevent and respond to attacks on education. At a minimum, it should keep track of attacks, identify and protect schools most at risk, and strengthen Afghanistan’s feeble police force so that it can investigate, arrest and prosecute those responsible.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9156
For more information, contact:
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10118-3299
Tel: 00 1 212 216 1837; Fax: 00 1 212 736-1300
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.hrw.org
Further information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUNIOR 8 2006: Children gather to share views with G8 world leaders [news]
[PUSHKIN, 10 July 2006] – Young people from G8 countries today opened the “Junior 8” in Pushkin, near St. Petersburg. With an agenda that parallels the G8 itself, they will have the opportunity to share their views directly with the world’s leaders. The J8 has brought together more than 60 youths aged 13- 17, representing all G8 countries, to discuss what they think the G8 leaders should do about some of the most serious global issues.
Hosted by the Russian Federation Government, in partnership with UNICEF, the Junior 8 will focus on the key themes of this year’s G8 agenda: Education, Energy Security and HIV/AIDS. The children will also discuss violence and other issues they see as priorities. Their recommendations will be presented to the G8 leadership.
“The decisions that are made this week by the leaders of the G8 will affect the future, and the future is where we will all live the rest of our lives,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman, at the opening of the Junior 8. “In an increasingly global village, as we are drawn closer together both literally and figuratively, these young people represent not just the J8, but all countries around the world.”
The participants include young people from each of the G8 member countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, UK and USA. The views of children from non-G8 countries, will be included via a series of videoconferences linking the Junior 8 to children from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
The delegates attending the Junior 8 from all countries except Russia were selected through an essay competition organised by the Morgan Stanley International Foundation, with additional children selected by UNICEF. Russian participants won their places through a televised competition.
The young participants will discuss key G8 agenda items including:
Education
- Nearly 115 million children worldwide are out of school – 54 per cent of them girls;
- Three quarters of the children out of school have mothers who did not go to school themselves.
HIV and AIDS
-
Worldwide, 2.3 million children are living with HIV;
-
In 2005, 540,000 children were infected with HIV and 380,000 died as a result of AIDS-related illnesses;
-
An estimated 15 million children have lost one or both parents to the disease.
Violence
- It is estimated that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year;
- An estimated 1.8 million children – mostly girls – are sexually exploited in the commercial sex trade each year;
- At any one time, around 250,000 children are being used in armed conflict: to fight, to act as messengers or spies, as porters or used for sex.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9158
Further information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHILD PROTECTION POLL: Sudan the most dangerous place for children [news]
[LONDON, July 11 2006] - Sudan, Uganda and Congo are the world's three most dangerous places for children due to wars that have brought death, disease and displacement to millions, a Reuters AlertNet poll showed on Tuesday.
Around half of respondents picked Sudan as one of their three choices, with many singling out the troubled western region of Darfur. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) says 1.8 million children have been affected by a three-year conflict in Darfur, where they risk being recruited to fight and are especially vulnerable to disease and malnutrition.
"It is a traumatised population and you can see it in the children's faces," said Hollywood actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow, who last month visited camps for some of the 2.5 million displaced by Darfur's war. "Everyone has lost family, seen villages burn, seen relatives raped, been raped."
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres - who selected Congo, Uganda and the Sudan/Chad border, where some 200,000 refugees from Darfur eke out an existence - pointed to the physical and psychological consequences of living in crowded, underfunded camps "which are not conducive for a healthy child development".
In southern Sudan, children also suffer the effects of low-level violence, poverty and a lack of basic services. The region is struggling to recover from a 21-year civil war with the north that killed 2 million people, as 600,000 refugees forced to flee the country trickle home.
AlertNet, a humanitarian news website run by Reuters Foundation, asked 112 aid experts and journalists to highlight the world's most dangerous places for children.
After Sudan, they chose northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Somalia, India, the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Myanmar - with the top three clearly ahead.
More than 2 million children worldwide have died as a direct result of armed conflict in the past decade, and about 20 million have been forced to flee their homes, according to UNICEF. More than a million have been orphaned or separated from their families.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9154
Further information:
Read the article in full
FACTFILE: The world's 10 most dangerous places for children
Sex abuse, work and war deny childhood to tens of millions
Children suffer outside media glare - research
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHILD TRAFFICKING: West and Central African nations sign accord [news]
[ABUJA, 7 July 2006] – A multilateral accord against the trafficking of women and children was signed in Abuja yesterday, as UNICEF and its partners spearheaded a joint ministerial conference of 26 West and Central African countries, representatives of European governments and the International Labour Organisation.
“No country in West and Central Africa can claim not to face the problem of human trafficking,” said UNICEF’s director for the region, Esther Guluma, at the opening of the two-day conference. “Only a holistic approach can successfully stop this exploitation of children that is a violation of their human rights, dignity and freedom of movement,” she added. “One of the most efficient ways is the connection of a regional partnership. This conference is a milestone in building this collaboration.”
The newly signed accord will target people like a father in Benin who negotiated a “good price” for his three 10-year-old sons. He received 10,000 Centrale Franc Africain (about $20) as a down-payment from a trafficker for the boys to leave their village to go to work in Nigeria, and was told he would get 90,000 CFA ($180) for his sons’ labour for a year.
The money was about enough to keep the man’s large family of 4 wives and 20 children fed for a month. But his three sons had no idea what faced them in Nigeria. “They told us we were going to work with chickens and collect eggs,” said one of the boys, “but when we arrived in Nigeria, we had to work like adults crushing stone at the quarries. It was terrible work, really tough. We got very little to eat and we were not allowed to go anywhere.” For his part, the father explained: “It is what is done around here. I was promised good money for the boys for one year. We are very poor.”
Each year, hundreds of thousands of children are trafficked across porous borders throughout West and Central Africa. In Nigeria, for example, where the borders with Benin and Cameroon are 773 km and 1,690 km long, respectively, it is difficult to control trafficking.
Now widely considered a form of modern-day slavery, this practice has its roots in an old tradition based on the quest for a better life. Children would be placed with relatives in cities to receive an education, in return for helping out in the home. Often, parents don’t know – or don’t want to know – what happens to their children who end up being exploited, physically and mentally abused as domestic workers or forced into prostitution.
The three boys trafficked from Benin were lucky. After eight months of hard labour in Nigeria, a countryman reported their case to the police and they were taken home. Their school fees are being paid by UNICEF and its partners to ensure that their father is not tempted to re-sell them.
Financial assistance for the poorest families and other initiatives – like mobile cinemas that screen educational films for people living in remote villages – help to inform vulnerable families about the reality of child trafficking. There’s hope that the joint ministerial conference now wrapping up in Abuja can go one step further toward putting an end to this illicit and dehumanizing practice.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9157
Further information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
REFUGEE CHILDREN: Guidelines on determining the best interests of the child [publication]
[May 2006] - The UNHCR Guidelines on Formal Determination of the Best Interests of the Child are part of the commitment by UNHCR to disseminate materials on the rights of refugee children, drawing on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international human rights law. Information collected from a variety of reports, including the Annual Protection Reports, as well as through participatory assessments, indicates that there is no consistency among field offices as to when and how Best Interests Determinations should be carried out.
The Guidelines are for the benefit of staff from UNHCR, implementing and operational partners who are required to make and document a formal determination of the best interests of the child at field level. While the Guidelines also make reference to obligations by States and UNHCR’s monitoring and supportive role, these are not addressed in a comprehensive manner. The Guidelines identify the underlying principles that can be used to construct a framework for ensuring compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child in a formal Best Interests Determination (BID). They set out the legal and other principles that will guide decision-makers in
-
When to make a formal Best Interests Determination;
-
Who should make the determination and what procedural safeguards should be followed;
-
How criteria should be applied to take a decision in a particular case.
The Guidelines make frequent reference to other aspects of UNHCR’s work with children, including the identification of unaccompanied and separated children, registration procedures, tracing and the appointment of a guardian. Guidance on these issues which are generally preconditions for a proper formal BID are included in the 1994 Refugee Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care as well as in the 2004 Inter-Agency Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children and in the reference materials listed in these two documents.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9112
For more information, contact:
UNHCR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500, CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 739 8111
Website: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ISRAEL/PALESTINE: Listen to the children on Israel's wall [news]
[LONDON, 7 July 2006] - Two years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advised that Israel’s separation wall should be taken down, two members of the International Save the Children Alliance working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories report that Palestinian children still fear the wall and talk forcefully about its negative impacts on their lives.
The Israeli government began construction of the wall five years ago. Built almost entirely on West Bank lands, the wall is over twice as long as the 1967 border with Israel. Snaking around populated areas along the border, the Wall encroaches upon nearly 22 kilometers of Palestinian land in the West Bank. The wall is eight metres high, twice the height of the Berlin Wall, and made of cement. In other areas it is an electrified metal fence with trenches, patrol roads, razor wire and motion sensors on each side.
Palestinian children have told Save the Children that the wall prevents them from going to school, from seeing their family and friends, and from getting health care. They said they feel insecure and afraid of it, and that their families are poorer and have lost their lands because of it.
In Nazlet Issa, a village in the northern part of the West Bank, children have been experiencing the impact of the wall since 2002. The wall was constructed in the middle of the village, separating families and neighbours, preventing people from going to work, and children from going to schools.
14-year-old Basma said: "This wall takes [away] our simple rights. There are many children who have these rights, but we don't have the right to visit family or people outside the village, or go to parks or the zoo or to the pool. Our life starts to look like wishes…".
Palestinian children call on the world to "remove this wall because it steals our freedom". On the two-year anniversary of the ICJ ruling, members of the International Save the Children Alliance urge the Israeli government to heed the experience of Palestinian children, and to act on the advice of the ICJ to immediately stop construction of the wall and dismantle the sections already in existence.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9148
Further information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CRIN SERVICES: Newsletter, CRINMAIL and website services [news]
Newsletter/CRINMAIL
CRIN Newsletter 19, Children and Violence, has just been published in Spanish (Infancia y violencia) and French (Les Enfants et la violence). A limited number of hard copies are available from the CRIN office - email: [email protected].
In addition, as the UN Study on Violence Against Children is drawing to a close, and its presentation to the UN General Assembly is approaching, CRIN will be sending special English CRINMAILs on violence against children every fortnight. A special CRINMAIL on torture was sent on 29th June. The next special CRINMAIL will be sent on 20th July and will focus on harmful traditional practices.
To submit information on this or other related topics, email us at: [email protected]
Website
New features have recently been added to the CRIN website:
___________________________________________________________
The CRINMAIL is an electronic mailing list of the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN). CRIN does not accredit, validate or substantiate any information posted by members to the CRINMAIL. The validity and accuracy of any information is the responsibility of the originator. To subscribe, unsubscribe or view list archives, visit http://www.crin.org/email.
___________________________________________________________
