8 August 2006 - CRINMAIL 804
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- SRI LANKA: Aid Agency Warns of Impending Humanitarian Crisis [news]
- LEBANON: Toll of a War that Shames the World [news]
- HIV AND AIDS: Why Churches Can Play a Crucial Role in Tackling the Pandemic [report]
- NETHERLANDS: Dutch Government Allows Establishment of Paedophile Political Party [opinion piece]
- CHINA: Vow on Sex-Based Abortion [news]
- DISCUSS: What Rights are Being Neglected? [CRIN blog]
**NEWS IN BRIEF**
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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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SRI LANKA: Aid Agency Warns of Impending Humanitarian Crisis [news]
[7 August 2006] - Save the Children warned on Monday of a humanitarian crisis as fighting continues in eastern Sri Lanka. Save the Children continue to scale up their relief effort as violence in the area surrounding Muttur, near Trincomalee, escalated Sunday evening and Monday morning after a brief lull.
It is estimated that over 20,000 people have moved to Kantale in the Trincomalee district after leaving their homes due to the fighting in Muttur. Over the last two days Save the Children have supplied non food items including sleeping mats, sheets, towels and hygiene kits, kitchen utensils and some children's clothes to over 1,200 families.
Save the Children's Child Protection Advisor is in the district helping children who have been separated from their families during the exodus.
Richard Mawer, Save the Children Programme Director in Sri Lanka, says “Fighting has become more severe and moved into heavily populated areas over the last few days, causing families and children to flee their homes to escape rockets and artillery fire. This is a humanitarian crisis and we are concerned for the children who have been caught up in the fighting.”
He also noted with grave concern the killing of 15 national staff of the international humanitarian organisation Action Contre la Faim in Muttur. “These killings send a clear message that humanitarian space and ability to work is under threat, and this is especially worrying given the escalation in violence and the potential for ever greater violence given this breakdown.”
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9657
For more information, contact:
Save the Children UK
1 St John's Lane, London EC1M 4AR, United Kingdom
Tel: + 44 20 7012 6400; Fax: + 44 20 7012 6963
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.savethechildren.org.uk
Further information
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LEBANON: Toll of a War that Shames the World [news]
[8 August 2006] - 29 Lebanese Army soldiers have been killed. 3,293 Lebanese have been wounded. 45 per cent of the casualties have been children. 913,000 Lebanese have been displaced (300,000 of whom are children). 94 Israelis have been killed and 1,867 wounded.
10,000 Israeli soldiers are currently fighting Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. 3,000 rockets have been fired at Israel by Hizbollah. The average number of rockets fired daily by Hizbollah in the first week of the conflict was 90. Over the past five days, it has been 169.
Israel has flown 8,700 bombing sorties, destroying 146 bridges and 72 roads. Damage caused to Lebanon's infrastructure is estimated at $2bn. Up to 30,000 tons of oil have spilled into the Mediterranean since an Israeli air strike on Jieh power station.
The international community (apart from Britain and the US) has called for an immediate ceasefire. As yet, the number of UN resolutions: 0
[Source: The Independent]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9661
Further information
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HIV AND AIDS: Why Churches Can Play a Crucial Role in Tackling the Pandemic [report]
[LONDON, 7 August 2006] - A week before the International AIDS Conference in Toronto a new report from Tearfund reveals that a hidden army of millions of church volunteers is tackling Africa’s AIDS crisis head on. But they lack the international support and funding which could turn the continent’s one million churches into one of the single most effective weapons for halting the pandemic.
The report, Faith Untapped, estimates the value of the churches’ care for orphans, the sick and elderly at over £2.5 billion annually – yet the churches doing this work barely rate a mention in global strategies for tackling AIDS in Africa, where 24 million people are infected in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
One week ahead of the 16th UN International AIDS Conference in Toronto (13 - 18 August), which will look at ‘bringing effective HIV prevention and treatment strategies to communities the world over’, the Tearfund report states: "Churches’ long reach, deep into people’s psyche and far down potholed tracks into even the most remote villages, means they are uniquely placed to respond to people’s needs. Their reach often extends far beyond that of governments and NGOs.”
Veena O’Sullivan, Tearfund’s HIV and AIDS advisor, says: “We need fresh thinking on tackling AIDS in Africa. There are two million congregations of different faiths. In some churches every single member is involved in caring for orphans and vulnerable children. International donors must urgently seek to understand the nature of faith, recognise churches’ potential to be more effective and ensure funding quickly reaches the grassroots of African society where the money is most needed.”
The report, the foreword of which is written by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, also calls for recognition by churches, that as well as a hidden force for good in the struggle against AIDS, they have often been part of the problem. “Churches should look again at their own attitudes to gender, sex and HIV and AIDS, and recognise the part they often play in fuelling stigma and discrimination,” the report says.
“Too often church leaders fail to talk openly about sex and so miss the opportunity to change attitudes and behaviour.”
Lord Carey adds: “If we put our own house in order and if we are properly resourced and trained, churches and other faith groups could become one of the single most effective strategies for tackling the HIV and AIDS pandemic.”
Underlining the potential of the churches to expand their current role, the reports states: “There are more than 250,000 congregations in the AIDS belt of East and Southern Africa alone – more than enough to support the region’s 12 million orphans. Kenya alone has 80,000 congregations: if each cared for 20 orphans, all the country’s 1.6 million orphans would be supported.”
Lord Carey explains that churches have a distinct role in bringing hope where AIDS had brought devastation. “There is hope, even in remote communities decimated by disease and largely overlooked by the rest of humanity. I have seen it firsthand. And much of this hope lies in the hands of African churches which, for years, have been on the front line… For these people of faith, hope is not abstract: it is something practical and powerful…”
Among the mounting evidence of churches’ impact cited in Faith Untapped:
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97 per cent of congregations across six African countries are working with orphans and vulnerable children according to a UNICEF survey
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Church volunteers in one Kenyan project are supporting 29,000 people affecting by HIV and AIDS
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Another survey showed that 79 per cent of churches and Christian NGOs in Namibia were responding to HIV and AIDS
The report concludes that churches in Africa are ideally placed to save thousands more lives by extending their work into areas such as the prevention of transmission of the HIV virus from mothers to children. For around £7 per mother and child, many of the 600,000 new annual infections during pregnancy or early infancy could be prevented.
Professor Andrew Tomkins, OBE, of London’s Institute of Child Health, explains in the report: “Churches could support pregnant women, educating them about the risks to their unborn child…they could provide treatments through established health networks. And their biblical understanding of the special value of children, born and unborn, makes them highly motivated to defend child rights. Most importantly, churches must address stigma, for which they must take some responsibility.”
Faith Untapped concludes: “It is now time for recognition and investment to help churches become one of the world’s most effective responses to the global AIDS crisis.”
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=9634
For more information, contact:
Tearfund
100 Church Road, Teddington TW11 8QE, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 208 977 9144
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tearfund.org
Further information
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NETHERLANDS: Dutch Government Allows Establishment of Paedophile Political Party [opinion piece]
In May 2006 a new political party was formed in the Netherlands: the PNVD (Party for Neighbourly Love, Freedom and Diversity). The founders of this party are paedophiles, and as such they are well known to the police and the authorities. They are members of Martijn, an organisation for paedophiles, which was recently reported to the police by the National Reporting Point for Child Pornography, for grooming children for sex on internet sites.
The PNVD party programme includes the following points:
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lowering the age of consent for sexual acts between children and adults to 12 years;
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making participation in child pornography legal from age 16;
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legalisation of child pornography with quality control;
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allowing children to smoke, drink and gamble from age 12.
Whatever else the party programme states, the ultimate goal of its founders is to legalise the abuse of children.
The party programme is very deceptive: it lends an air of legality to its activities and by cloaking their agenda in the language of children's 'right to sex', there is a very real danger that they could convince outsiders to vote for them. By giving sex with children an air of normality, the PNVD creates a climate that leads to abuse of children.
The PNVD appeals to the right to freedom of speech. But Article 10 of the European Treaty for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms emphatically states that freedom of speech can be made subject to conditions, limitations or sanctions, in order to protect the rights of others, public health and morals. Freedom of speech and freedom of sexual orientation are rights of a different order. Paedophilia has only to do with abuse of children.
According to several law experts, the Dutch government could ban and dissolve the PNVD, based on Article 20, Book II of Civil Law, defining it as being against the public order.
But the Dutch government refuses to interfere. Mr Donner, Minister of Justice, states that democracy is more important than protecting children, and that he will only interfere if and when the members of the PNVD commit illegal acts. There is currently no investigation into the party or the founding members.
The Foundation Profit for the World’s Children is a children’s rights organisation in the Netherlands. Its most important project is NO KIDDING, a national campaign against abuse and maltreatment of children. In the interest of all children, Profit for the World’s Children objects to the intended formation of the PNVD and requests that the Dutch government take appropriate measures against this party of paedophiles.
Profit for the World’s Children urges the international community to sign the petition, react and send their statements to the Dutch government and press.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9621&flag=news
For more information, contact:
Profit for the World’s Children
Enckerkamp 5, 3853HK Horst, The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 341 495848
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.p-w-c.org
Further information
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CHINA: Vow on Sex-Based Abortion [news]
[2 August 2006] - China will punish health workers who help to abort female foetuses, despite a recent decision not to criminalise the practice, an official said. China's legislature scrapped a bill in June that would have introduced fines and prison terms for aborting girls. But an official said that did not mean there was any relaxation in the policy against selective abortion.
The practice stems from a preference for sons, especially in rural areas, and China's one-child policy. As a result, official figures suggest there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls in China, Xinhua news agency said, a figure much higher than the global ratio of 103 to 107 boys for 100 girls. However, some population experts are cautious about these figures, suspecting that some female births go unreported.
An official with the State Commission for Population and Family Planning (SCPFP) told the agency that family planning laws still forbade selective abortion for non-medical purposes. "The decision to not criminalise sex selection abortions does not mean any policy relaxation," he said.
Authorities have prosecuted 3,000 cases of selective abortions for non-medical purposes over the last two years, the agency said. This comes as an activist who raised concerns about forced abortion and sterilisation in Shandong province is set to be tried on public order offences. Chen Guangcheng had accused officials in Linyi city of forcing people to have abortions or sterilisations to enforce the one-child policy. Chen was due to go on trial in July, but the court hearing was postponed.
An article in Time magazine in September 2005 claimed that some 7,000 people had been sterilised against their will in Shandong. Several workers were later arrested or sacked over the claims, state media reported.
China brought in its one-child policy 25 years ago, in a drive to curb population growth.
[Source: BBC]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9611
Further information
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DISCUSS: What Rights are Being Neglected? [CRIN blog]
All children’s rights do not receive equal attention. Children’s economic and social rights generally receive much greater attention than their civil and political rights. Some issues are given considerable attention, while others are neglected.
One of CRIN’s objectives is to focus on ‘neglected’ and ‘new and emerging’ areas of children’s rights where gaps are identified. To do this, we need your help.
We want to start a debate to give our members and users a chance to participate more actively in the network by sharing their ideas.
Do you think some rights are more ‘popular’ than others? Which ones are too controversial? What would you like CRIN to focus on.
Tell us what you think by posting a comment on the CRIN blog.
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
The 8th Session of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Drafting of the Disability Convention will take place in New York from 14 - 25 August 2006
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=7265&flag=event
Visit the new-look website of the Young Lives project, and international study of childhood poverty
http://www.younglives.org.uk/
Coming soon: Special edition of CRINMAIL on children in conflict with the law
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