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NEWS AND REPORT ROUND-UP
Corporal punishment
So far this year, five more States have enacted a full prohibition on all forms of corporal punishment of children. These are Malta, Brazil, Bolivia, Cape Verde and, most recently, Argentina. The wording in each State’s new legislation shows increased recognition of corporal punishment as a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Further information:
Inhuman sentencing and juvenile justice
CRIN’s research indicates that in 14 countries capital punishment for children remains on the statute books or is carried out despite being prohibited. Reports from the past year, including Amnesty International's annual review of the death penalty worldwide, indicate that four men were executed in Iran for offences allegedly committed while under the age of 18, one in Gaza, and three in Saudi Arabia. In May in the Maldives, two people were sentenced to death by the Juvenile Court in relation to a murder committed when they were under 18 years of age. Executions of child offenders are also thought to have taken place in Yemen, where a systemic lack of birth certificates often means that juveniles are tried and executed as adults, as the actual age of an offender is not clear.
The Maldives overturned a 60-year moratorium on the use of capital punishment, adopting a new Penal Code which permits the death penalty in cases of murder, including when committed by a child. Brunei Darussalam followed suit by implementing the first phase of a new penal code based on Sharia law, which, if fully implemented, will allow children as young as 15 to be stoned to death for adultery, robbery in which murder is committed, rape and homosexual intercourse between males, among other acts.
A new Interactive Map which details the extent of flogging sentences in Iran aims to draw attention to a widely used but under-reported form of criminal punishment, including against children. The map, which documents flogging sentences since April 2001, includes cases where children have received 99 lashes for having an “illicit” relationship and 228 lashes for robbery and drinking alcohol, among many others.
Looking at another form of inhuman sentencing of children, a new CRIN report reviews the laws and practices of the States within the European Union with regards to life imprisonment of children. The report finds that in three States - Cyprus, France, and the United Kingdom (including England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) - life imprisonment remains lawful for children.
There is also a worrying trend among several States of lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR). Bolivia reduced the MACR from 16 to 14 after lawmakers approved the new Children and Adolescents Code. The proposal was first raised in response to rising crime rates, with supporters claiming that it is a way of preventing criminal gangs from recruiting children to carry out offences because they know they will not be prosecuted. But the country’s ombudsman, Ronaldo Villena, criticised the new provision, saying “it responds to the problem of social violence by criminalising a vulnerable population group [and] doesn’t respond to any of the [root] causes.”
Meanwhile in Denmark, several major political parties have proposed lowering the MACR from the current 14 to 12. In India, a bill that would permit child offenders aged 16 or older to be tried as adults in certain cases was introduced in the lower house of the Indian parliament in August. Meanwhile Uruguay has scheduled a referendum on whether to lower the MACR from 18 to 16. The referendum is set to take place this month to coincide with the presidential election. Following a visit to the country, the Rapporteur on the Rights of the Child of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Rosa María Ortiz, reminded the State that excluding under-18s from the juvenile justice system is unacceptable and could constitute a violation of international law.
Further information:
Abuse in religious institutions
The past few months have given rise to a number of positive developments towards securing accountability for sexual abuse of children in religious institutions. In Australia, the Salvation Army is currently being investigated by the government's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse over historical abuse claims, including over alleged abuse in four boys' homes in the 1960s and 70s. Ireland’s government also launched a statutory inquiry into abuse of children in state-funded Catholic children’s homes following the discovery of a mass grave on the site of a home run by nuns in which up to 796 children are believed to be buried.
In June in the United Kingdom, a senior Jehovah's Witness was jailed for sexually abusing two girls, with the court hearing how the man used his role to “exploit and abuse” members of his congregation between 1987 and 1995. He had previously been cleared of the complaints by a Jehovah's Witness judicial committee after the women reported his behaviour to the church.
Also in June, the Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic was convicted of sexual abuse and defrocked, the first such sentence handed down against a senior papal representative. Polish-born Józef Wesołowski, the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to be investigated for alleged sex abuse, is now awaiting a criminal trial. Previously, the Vatican was accused of shielding Wesołowski from criminal investigations in the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile a man in Poland became the first person to challenge the country’s Catholic Church for its refusal to provide compensation to people who were abused as children by members of the clergy. In another first, the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico filed a criminal complaint against a priest accused of child sex abuse after the Vatican ordered his removal.
Vicars of the Church of England in the United Kingdom could be allowed to report serious crimes they hear about during confessions by parishioners, including confessions of sexual abuse, if changes to the law of the Church of England are introduced later this year. Church of England bishops in the UK are themselves facing questioning as part of a nationwide inquiry into abuse in institutions.
On the downside in the United States, federal judges failed to reinstate a $680 million lawsuit against a Jewish high school for alleged sexual abuse, which had been dismissed by a lower court because the statute of limitations had expired. The plaintiffs, 34 former students of the school, allege that school administrators and teachers systematically covered-up and “facilitated” decades of sexual abuse against students during the 1970s and 80s. The case reinforces the notion that complaints of sexual abuse of children should not be time-barred.
Read more about the campaign to end sexual violence in religious institutions.
Harmful practices based on tradition & culture
In March, Egypt launched its first-ever prosecution against female genital mutilation (FGM). Dr Raslan Fadl is facing charges in relation to the death of a 13-year-old girl on whom he allegedly performed FGM. The girl’s father, who requested the procedure, is also facing prosecution. The practice was banned in Egypt in 2008, but is still widely accepted and carried out by many doctors in private. Similarly in Kenya, where the practice was banned in 2001, advocates warn that FGM is moving underground, with parents taking their daughters to remote regions to undergo the procedure in secret.
In June, the High Court of Israel voided a ruling by the Supreme Rabbinical Court that required a woman to perform male circumcision on her one-year-old son following a demand by the child’s father in divorce proceedings. The Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein previously said “the rabbinical court had exceeded its authority” (as circumcision is not an issue related to divorce proceedings, for which it has jurisdiction) and that “it’s doubtful that the rabbinical court’s decision was made based on the principle of what’s best for the child.” Meanwhile in South Africa, health officials say they plan to promote routine “medical” male circumcision among infants and young boys. Advocates, however, warn that circumcision for medical reasons should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and not performed as part of a blanket policy. They suggest such a policy could violate the country’s Children’s Act. Conversely in Zimbabwe, a senator has introduced a law in Parliament to ban circumcision of boys, saying the practice violates children’s right to consent and amounts to genital mutilation.
In September, Bangladesh approved the Child Marriage Prevention Act, a law which sets a two-year jail term for any person responsible for child marriage, including parents or guardians of the child and the marriage registrar. Although the current minimum age for marriage is set by legislation at 18 for girls and 21 for boys, Bangladesh has the highest rate of child marriage in South Asia, with two out of every three girls getting married before they are 18. Earlier in the year in Morocco, lawmakers repealed an article in the penal code that allowed a rapist to escape prosecution if he married his underage victim. Advocates, however, warn that while the minimum age for marriage in the country is 18, judges routinely approve much younger unions. Notably, over 50 percent of violence against women is believed to take place within marriage, yet marital rape is not recognised as a criminal offence.
So-called “honour killings” more than doubled in the Palestinian territories last year, according to official figures. Experts say the rise is partly due to ongoing leniency for perpetrators and social acceptance of violence against women. Such attitudes also permeate justice institutions, as “Judges are members of the same society in which honour killings take place,” said Anam al-Inchasi, a judge, explaining why sentences to-date are so lenient. Women’s rights advocates have repeatedly urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to repeal sections of a penal code that allow for short sentences for perpetrators. In May, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, voiced her discontent with the term “honour killing” in response to the stoning of a woman in Pakistan for marrying a man of her choice against her family’s wishes: “I do not even wish to use the phrase ‘honour killing’: there is not the faintest vestige of honour in killing a woman in this way.”
Several reports have also recently been launched, including one on the practice of child sacrifice in Uganda, and what may be the first-ever report into the global scale of witchcraft accusations and persecution, muti killings (killings involving mutilation) and human sacrifice.
Read more in the report by the International NGO Council on Violence against Children on harmful practices based on tradition, culture, religion or superstition.
State neglect
There were a number of significant rulings by international and regional human rights bodies against state authorities in July alone regarding state neglect over the deaths of children.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that Guatemala failed to protect the right to life and personal integrity of a 15-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted, tortured and brutally murdered in 2001. The Court found that the State failed to properly investigate the girl’s murder, including failure to take appropriate steps when she was reported missing, flaws in the preservation of the crime scene when her body was discovered, and deficiencies in the handling and analysis of the evidence gathered. According to the Court, the State also failed to address and resolve the ingrained culture of violence and discrimination against women that permeates Guatemalan society, which it says was at the root of the flawed investigation.
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found Romania guilty of violating the right to life of an 18-year-old who had spent his life in state institutions. The victim - who was of Roma origin - had been abandoned at birth and placed in an orphanage, and was diagnosed as being HIV-positive and severely mentally disabled. He died after being transferred to an ill-equipped psychiatric hospital in 2004. The Court ruled that the victim’s rights to life and an effective legal remedy had been violated because he had not received adequate care or appropriate treatment for his condition. It also said that the authorities, aware of the lack of resources in the hospital where he had been placed, had unreasonably put his life in danger. Moreover, the State had failed to conduct an effective investigation into his death.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) found Spain guilty of neglect for failing to prevent the death in 2003 of a girl who was killed by her father, despite dozens of domestic violence complaints filed against him. The mother of the girl, who at the time was separated from the girl’s father, had filed more than 30 police complaints between 1999 and 2001 seeking a restraining order against him. But the father was still granted unsupervised arranged visits with the girl, during one of which he shot her dead and then committed suicide. According to a 2012 report by Save the Children, family courts in Spain systematically fail to take children's best interests into account during court proceedings on domestic abuse. A summary and the full decision of the CEDAW decision are available in CRIN’s legal database.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Juvenile justice: Special panel discussion on children deprived of liberty
Organisation: Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty
Date: 14 October 2014
Location: New York, United States
Child labour: Course on eliminating harmful practices in agriculture
Organisation: International Labour Organization
Date: 27-31 October 2014
Location: Turin, Italy
Child protection: The role of child helplines in protecting children and young people online
Organisation: Child Helpline International
Date: 30-31 October 2014
Location: London, United Kingdom
Child labour: Course on ‘Laws, policies and reporting tools - supporting the fight against child labour’
Organisation: International Labour Organization
Dates: 3-7 November 2014
Location: Turin, Italy
Gender: 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium 2014
Organisation: MenEngage
Date: 10-13 November 2014
Location: New Delhi, India
Juvenile justice: ‘Making deprivation of children’s liberty a last resort - Towards evidence-based policies & alternatives’
Organisation: International Juvenile Justice Observatory
Event date: 3-4 December 2014
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Juvenile justice: World Congress on Juvenile Justice - Towards restorative justice?
Organisation: Terre des hommes et al.
Date: 26-30 January 2015
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
THE LAST WORD
“Achieving law reform to prohibit corporal punishment of children marks a turning point in a State’s relationship with its youngest citizens. It signals a recognition of children as human beings, respect for their rights, a commitment to fostering their growth and development in a violence-free environment and a vision of a society based on the premise that conflict can be resolved peacefully.”
-- Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children
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