CRINMAIL Violence against Children 47

6 November 2009 - CRINMAIL Violence against Children 47

 

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- SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Call for expressions of interest in consultation [news]

- GENERAL ASSEMBLY: UN expert urges protection of child detainees [news]

- INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION: Hearings concerning children at 137th session [news]

- Latest news, campaigns and resources

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This list is the primary means of communication for NGOs interested in the UN Study on Violence Against Children and for the Subgroup on Children and Violence. Updates are sent approximately once a month. Please feel free to forward these updates to others who may be interested.
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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SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Call for expressions of interest in consultation [news]

Preparation of the Council of Europe Campaign to stop Sexual Violence against Children 2010: Consultation with Partners on the prevention of sexual abuse of children

Strasbourg, 10-11 December 2009

Background

The Council of Europe children’s strategy for 2009-2011, ‘Provision, Protection and Participation for Children in Europe’, has amongst its major focuses that of eradicating all forms of violence against children. In particular, it calls upon the organisation to launch comprehensive awareness-raising actions to prevent and combat sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children. In response to this mandate, the Council of Europe shall in October 2010, launch a Europe-wide Campaign to stop Sexual Violence against children.

This call for expression of interest is addressed to experts wishing to participate in a meeting, 10-11 December in Strasbourg to prepare a specific aspect of the forthcoming campaign: the prevention of child sexual abuse within the family and community.

Campaign objectives

The campaign will have two key complimentary objectives:

To promote the ratification of the Council of Europe’s primary legal instrument in this area; the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse1 (Lanzarote Convention), as well as the Cybercrime Convention and the Convention on Human Trafficking;

To promote the full implementation of the Lanzarote Convention, through the creation of tools and materials which can be used by state parties to address some of the Convention’s particularly innovative yet challenging provisions.

What will the Campaign focus on?

The Lanzarote Convention addresses the various forms of sexual violence; child pornography, child prostitution, online grooming, child sex tourism and child sexual abuse. Efforts to promote ratification of the instrument will therefore deal with all of these issues through the holding of national and regional seminars and conferences aimed at specific target groups including the legal profession, parliamentarians, law enforcement agencies, the private sector etc.

Given that all forms of sexual violence are closely related, actions aiming to facilitate state implementation of the provisions of the Convention will also address all of these forms of sexual violence.

Special attention will be given to the prevention of child sexual abuse taking place within the family or community setting. This decision is informed by current data which shows that children are most likely to to be abused by those closest to them – a family member, friends or someone living close by.2 Such a focus shall help also avoid duplication with the valuable work already being undertaken by other international and non-governmental organisations in the field of sexual exploitation.

What kind of actions will be undertaken?

The campaign will reflect the many innovative features of the Lanzarote Convention, particularly related to prevention. It shall promote and be informed by child participation. It will look closely at the processes of recruitment and, in particular, the training of those professionals in regular contact with children. It will promote education on sexual violence and the dissemination of information on child protection services, to enable children to contribute to their own protection. It will look at examples of early intervention for potential offenders (especially minors) Finally, it will seek to raise awareness amongst the general public, including parents on sexual violence.

Where do you come in?

Given the complexity and sensitivity of this subject, the Council of Europe is looking to build partnerships with actors having expertise in this area; professional networks, international and national NGO’s, centres of research, relevent public bodies and agencies, communication agencies, the media and other private sector actors . After evaluating the various expressions of interest, selected actors will be invited to a preparatory meeting on the Sexual Violence Campaign - Consultation with Partners on the prevention of Sexual Abuse of children in Strasbourg 10-11 December 2009.

Please note that the Council of Europe has a limited budget available for this event and will only cover expenses of a limited number of experts selected from this process. In order to bring your expertise in this area to our attention, organisers ask you to fill out the form above and to return it to [email protected] no later than 13 November 2009.

For more information, contact:
Council of Europe
Building a Europe for and with children
DG III- Social Cohesion / Council of Europe
B Building - Office B137
F - 67075 Strasbourg Cedex
Tel: +33 3 88 41 22 62; Fax: +33 3 90 21 52 85
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.coe.int/children

Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=21222

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GENERAL ASSEMBLY: UN expert urges protection of child detainees [news]

The UN's top investigator on torture and punishment called Tuesday for a new UN convention to protect the rights of detainees, saying many are held for years and sometimes for a lifetime in inhuman and degrading conditions.

"In many countries of the world, places of detention are constantly overcrowded, filthy and lack the minimum facilities necessary to allow for a dignified existence," Manfred Nowak said. "Moreover, tuberculosis and other highly contagious diseases are rife."

In a statement to the U.N. General Assembly committee dealing with humanitarian issues, he said the suffering caused by the few hours of torture in the early days of detention — often to extract confessions — is often outweighed by the suffering detainees have to endure for years.

While many people think torture is primarily the fate of political prisoners, Nowak said "in reality, most of the victims of arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman conditions of detention are ordinary people, usually belonging to the poorest and most disadvantaged sectors of society" — including children, the disabled, gays and lesbians, drug addicts, illegal aliens, and members of religious and ethnic minorities.

According to "cautious estimates," he said, more than 1 million children are currently being held in police stations, pre-trial facilities, prisons, closed children's homes and similar places of detention.

"In general, I am alarmed by the very low age of criminal liability in many countries," he said. "During my missions, I came across boys and girls as young as 9 or 10 years who were deprived of their liberty, many of them in prolonged pre-trial detention."

"Far too many of the children whom I met on my visits are held in severely overcrowded cells, under deplorable sanitary and hygienic conditions. Moreover, I have found children deprived of their liberty to be at a very high risk of ill-treatment," he said.

Nowak, an independent investigator appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, told the assembly committee that the "time has come to draft and adopt a special U.N. Convention on the Rights of Detainees."

One of the most important rights and needs of detainees, he said, "is sufficient contact with the outside world."

Detainees should also enjoy freedom of religion, expression, information and association, and in principle, they should also enjoy the right to vote, Nowak said.

Detainees also have a right "to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing ... (and) to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes the need for medical services in detention facilities," he said.

Nowak said he was encouraged that Uruguay's president got rid of tiny metal boxes that hundreds of convicts and pretrial detainees spent months, and even years, in at the Libertad prison after he denounced the appalling conditions. And he praised Nigeria's former president for closing down a "torture room" at police headquarters in Lagos where more than 100 detainees — including women — were subjected to a variety of tortures including gunshots in their legs that were left untreated.

Nowak criticised the government in Equatorial Guinea for rejecting a report on his visit last November and December which said detainees were forced to spend weeks, even months, in dark, filthy police cells with nothing but a concrete floor and no toilets.

Some cells were so overcrowded, he said, that there was no space for all the detainees to sleep at the same time — a problem he also found in Georgia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Togo and Moldova's separatist Trans-Dniester region.

Nowak said in the coming months he has invitations to visit Zimbabwe and Jamaica, and hopes to go to Cuba and Iran next year. He lamented that most Arab countries, except for Jordan, have not allowed him to visit.

Further information

For more information, contact:
AFP - Agence France Presse
Web: http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en

Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=21135

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- INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION: Hearings concerning children at 137th session [news]

[22 October 2009] – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hold its 137th session from 28 October – 13 November 2009 in Washington, D.C.

The Commission will hold hearings on issues of concern in the Americas on 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th of November. Find the full list of hearings here.

Child rights issues on the agenda include:

3 November 2009
* The situation of children in detention centres in Jamaica, presented by Jamaicans for Justice
* Violence against women and children on the Haitian-Dominican Republic border, presented by the Regroupement des Citoyens por la Protection des Droits Humains (RECIPRODH).

Audio recordings of the hearings will be available on the Commission's website. Some of the sessions will be webcast live on the OAS website.

Anyone interested in attending the public hearings may do so, and no advance registration is required. Journalists do not need any special accreditation.

Information on child rights at the session will be available on CRIN's news page on the Inter-American Commission. To send us information on child rights at the Inter-American Commission, please email [email protected].

Further information

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- Latest news, campaigns and resources

VIOLENCE: WWSF campaign against child abuse and violence, 19 November 2009
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=21155

DISCRIMINATION: Global Report on Status Offences, CRIN, October 2009
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=20838&flag=report

CHILE: Stop violence against indigenous children, Inter Press Service, 28 October 2009
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=21167

CHINA: Website set up to recover trafficked children, Agence France Presse, 28 October 2009
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=21168


Further news and reports: http://www.crin.org/violence/

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This Update is an electronic mailing list administered by the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN), in collaboration with the co-chairs of the NGO Advisory Panel and the NGO Subgroup on Children and Violence. CRIN does not accredit, validate or substantiate any information posted by members to this Update. The validity and accuracy of any information is the responsibility of the originator.

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