10 July 2006 - Rights CRINMAIL 25
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HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: First Session and Special Session [news]
EUROPE: The Human Rights Dimension of Juvenile Justice [speech]
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS: Coming of Age [opinion piece]
TRAFFICKING: Reference Guide on Protecting the Rights of Child Victims [guide]
CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: Global Report on the Impact of Implementation [publication]
COURSE: International Human Rights Law
CRIN: Rights Forum [announcement]
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Rights CRINMAIL is a component of a project of the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN). It is published monthly with the purpose of informing and building the community of practitioners in rights-based programming. Your submissions are welcome. To contribute, email us at[email protected].
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HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: First Session Closes and Special Session Starts [news]
[LONDON, 4 July 2006] - The Human Rights Council concluded its first session last Friday, 30th June. During the two-week session, which started on Monday 19th June, the Council adopted eight Resolutions, three Decisions and two Statements by the President.
Most of the discussions that took place among Council members, observer States, NGOs, National Human Rights Institutions, and representatives from special procedures and treaty bodies, focused on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006 (which established the HRC). This included consideration of reports from the working groups of the Commission on Human Rights and discussions on procedural matters as set out in the GA Resolution.
Other topics of discussions included pressing human rights issues (such as the situation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine; support for the Abuja Agreement (Darfur); avoiding incitement to hatred and violence for reasons of religion or race; the human rights of migrants; and the role of human rights defenders in promoting and protecting human rights); and dialogue and cooperation on human rights. The Council adopted a Resolution on incitement to racial and religious hatred and the promotion of tolerance and the President of the Council, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, issued a Statement on hostage-taking.
Procedural issues
The Council also adopted a Resolution on the universal periodic review mechanism, which would periodically review the situation of human rights in all countries (starting with Council members), and a Decision on the extension of all mandates, mechanisms, functions and responsibilities of the Commission on Human Rights. Finally, the Council adopted a Decision on a framework for a programme of work for the first year, and also debated the issue of dialogue and cooperation on human rights, which included human rights education and learning, advisory services, technical assistance and capacity-building.
New legal instruments
After its deliberations, the Council decided to adopt a Resolution on the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and a Resolution on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Both texts were forwarded to the General Assembly for adoption at its next session. The Council also issued a Statement to welcome the entry into force on 22 June 2006 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which was adopted on 18 December 2002 by the General Assembly in its Resolution 57/199.
With regards to the situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories, the Council adopted a Resolution in which it decided to undertake substantive consideration of the human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories at its next session and to incorporate this issue in its following sessions.
Special session
Twenty-one Member States of the 47 Member States requested the Council to hold a Special Session on the situation on human rights in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories on Wednesday 5th July, 3-6pm, in the Salle des Assemblées, at the Palais des Nations, in Geneva.
As a result, the Council adopted a Resolution on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory in which it decided to urgently dispatch the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories to undertake a fact-finding mission on the situation. The Resolution was adopted by a vote of 29 in favour, 11 against and five abstentions. The Resolution:
requests Israel to end its military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory;
expresses grave concern at the detrimental impact of the current Israeli military operation on the already deteriorating humanitarian conditions of the Palestinian people;
urges Israel to immediately release the arrested Palestinian ministers, and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council;
and decides to dispatch an urgent fact-finding mission headed by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Next Session
The Second (regular) session of the Human Rights Council will be held from 18 September to 6 October 2006; the 3rd session, from 27 November to 8 December; the 4th, from 12 March to 6 April 2007.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9050
Further information
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EUROPE: The Human Rights Dimension of Juvenile Justice [speech]
Presentation by Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, at the Conference of the Prosecutors General of Europe, which was held in Moscow from 5-6 July 2006:
"There is a popular perception that a large proportion of crimes in society are committed by teenagers and that juvenile delinquency on the whole is getting worse and worse. Indeed, some media promote this impression with vigour. The truth, however, is different.
In most European countries, teenagers are not dominant in the overall crime statistics. Also, juvenile crime rates remain more or less stable from year to year across our continent.
This does not mean that the problem is insignificant. A worrying trend reported from several countries is that some crimes committed by young offenders have become more violent or otherwise more serious. This is a warning signal in itself.
Moreover, the presence of even a relatively few young lawbreakers is a bad omen. Individuals who start a criminal career early on are usually not easy to reintegrate into normal life. That is one reason why it is necessary to discuss the problem of juvenile justice in depth. General prosecutors – as a corner stone in any system of justice – could give a significant contribution to this discussion.
There are two different trends for the moment in Europe. One is to reduce the age of criminal responsibility and to lock up more children at younger ages. The other trend is – in the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – to avoid criminalisation and to seek family-based or other social alternatives to imprisonment.
I am going to argue for the second approach. In that I am supported not only by the UN Convention but also by the European Network of Children’s Ombudspersons. In a statement 2003 no less than 21 national ombudspersons stressed that children in conflict with the law are first and foremost children who still have human rights.
They proposed that the age of criminal responsibility should not be lowered but raised - with the aim of progressively reaching 18 and that innovative systems of responding to juvenile offenders below that age should be tried with a genuine focus on their education, reintegration and rehabilitation.
The Convention of the Rights of the Child – ratified by all European states - asks governments to establish a minimum age below which children shall be presumed not to have the capacity to infringe the penal law. The treaty does not spell out at which precise age the line should be drawn. However, the Committee monitoring the implementation of the Convention has expressed concern about the low age in several countries. In most European states, children are held criminally responsible between 12 and 15 or 16, but there are also examples of age limits as low as seven, eight and 10.
Though the message of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is that criminalisation of children should be avoided, this does not mean that young offenders should be treated as if they have no responsibility. On the contrary, it is important that young offenders are held responsible for their actions and, for instance, take part in repairing the damage that they have caused.
The question is what kind of mechanism should replace the ordinary criminal justice system in such cases. The procedures should recognise the damage to the victims and it should make the young offender understand that the deed was not acceptable. Such a separate juvenile mechanism should aim at recognition of guilt and sanctions which rehabilitate.
It is in the sanction process that we find the difference to an ordinary criminal procedure. In juvenile justice there should be no retribution. The intention is to establish responsibility and, at the same time, to promote re-integration. The young offender should learn the lesson and never repeat the wrongdoing.
This is not easy in reality. It requires innovative and effective community sanctions. In principle, the offender’s parents or other legal guardian should be involved, unless this is deemed counter-productive for the rehabilitation of the child. Whatever the process, there should be a possibility for the child to challenge the accusations and even appeal.
An interesting procedure for “settlements” has been introduced in Slovenia. There, a case of an accused juvenile can be referred to a mediator if this is agreed by the prosecutor, the victim and the accused. The mediator then seeks to reach a settlement which would be satisfactory to both the victim and the accused and a trial can thereby be avoided.
One aspect should be further stressed: the importance of a prompt response to the wrongdoing. Delayed procedures – which is a problem in several European countries today - are particularly unfortunate when it comes to young offenders whose bad actions should be seen as a cry for immediate help. Prosecutors may have a role in securing that court procedures in these cases are as short as possible.
The UN Convention asks for separate procedures also for juveniles brought to court. These should be child-friendly and, again, the purpose is rehabilitation and re-integration rather than to punish for the sake of retribution. For this to work, there is a need for everyone involved, including judges and prosecutors, to be educated not only about the law but also about the special needs of children.
Read the full speech: http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=9089
For more information, contact:
Council of Europe
Nationality and Family Law Unit, Private Law Department, Directorate General I – Legal Affairs, F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex, France
Tel: +33 3 88 41 25 51
Website: http://www.coe.int
More information
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CHILDREN’S RIGHTS: Coming of Age [opinion piece]
There has been a dramatic surge in parliamentary support for a smacking ban, with a record 170 MPs supporting Greg Pope MP's motion to grant children the same legal protection from assault as adults, reflecting the turnaround in public attitudes over the past generation.
Meanwhile, a number of prominent peers are supporting amendments to the Police and Justice bill, currently in the Lords, to reinstate reporting restrictions for children subject to Asbo proceedings and to end penal custody for children. The latter is given particular resonance following the findings of last week's inquiry into the murder of Zahid Mubarek, which stated categorically that we lock up too many children.
And the Children's Rights Alliance for England is campaigning for pupils to have the right to have their views considered in matters affecting the everyday running of their schools included in the Education bill, which would give English children entitlements that their Scottish peers have enjoyed since 2000.
So will we soon be witness to latter-day child Chartists marching for suffrage with Smarties? It's not difficult to make the case that children's rights are poorly served in the UK. Children can, by law, be assaulted by their parents if it meets the requirement of "reasonable chastisement". A young offender can be tried in an adult court and named and shamed in newspapers, in direct contravention of their internationally recognised human rights.
Although the government has committed itself to the elimination of child poverty, the numbers of children growing up without warm beds or hot meals remains unacceptable. And adults could be argued to be depriving children, and their children's children, of the right to a future, as they leave them with a planet on the brink of environmental collapse.
Meanwhile, across the globe, children are proving themselves to be thoroughly competent. Ten-year-olds head households in war-torn Africa. Child labourers unionise in India. Because children can doesn't always mean children should. But ordinary children in extraordinary circumstances are continually revealing capabilities that remain unexplored in their more fortunate peers. The possibilities offered by a rights-based approach need not deprive children of their childhoods nor dissolve into a reductio ad absurdum of votes for toddlers.
But it makes for a poor fit with New Labour's construction of child citizenship, which could be characterised as requiring social conformity in the present and employability in the future. Indeed, many adults think that children already have too many rights, perhaps because they confuse rights with pester-power. But acquiring designer clothes or state-of-the-art technology is not the same as having rights. Adults fear that "rights" means children refusing to go to bed at a reasonable hour, demanding extortionate pocket money, and divorcing their parents if they don't give them what they want.
This misunderstands how children's rights might operate in practice.
Children's citizenship is different from that of adults. Of course parents and the state are often best-placed to make decisions for children. But the fear that rights will create a generation of mini militants grabbing what they can from the diminishing pot of adult power, is based on a fundamental misconception about what growing up is really like. It suggests that childhood is a time free of challenge or difficulty, when rights are unnecessary and would only be used for petty personal gain.
It follows that children's rights cannot be exercised in isolation. Their rights to provision, protection and participation, laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, must be balanced with adults' responsibility to facilitate them, and children's own responsibility to exercise those rights with consideration for others. Children's rights need not be an affront to adult authority.
Bertrand Russell said that "no political theory is adequate unless it is applicable to children as well as to men and women". But it is a far more paternalistic tradition that has prevailed in modern times. In some ways, it's akin to how women's and ethnic minorities' rights - or lack of them - were framed. Indeed, it's been argued that children are now in the position once occupied by the idealised bourgeois wife and mother, as historian Harry Hendrick puts it, "pampered and loved, an essential ornament serving as testimony to domestic bliss, but subservient to male power."
We are living in an era of child-panic, when concerns about children's wellbeing have become all-consuming. Childhood has become the crucible for every adult anxiety - sex, technology, consumerism, safety, achievement, respect, the proper shape of a life. Of course adults worry about children. Changes in how childhood is lived attack at the deepest level our sense of personal history and our ideas of what make us human. The work of raising children is love and life-enhancing, but also difficult, and poorly supported.
But if we are to reach a consensus on the kinds of morals, ambitions and characters we want our children to have, then we need to return to a notion of common citizenship. It's time to rebel against the modern absolute of individualism. Parenting cannot happen in isolation. As the saying goes, it takes a village. It takes a country. And it also takes a recognition that children themselves can play a part in their development.
Granting young people a more central role in society is not a panacea for the multitude of challenges that attend contemporary childhood. Children need limits to learn from, but that is not the same as limiting them purely by virtue of how old they are. Adult authority which is necessary should not be confused with adult power that is abused.
Nor should contemplation of children's rights - whether it involves the UN Convention, domestic legislation or a more intangible cultural change - be seen as an inevitable erosion of those of adults. If anything, offering power to a child augments the adult's role in teaching them how to use it humanely.
Children's rights are not a liberal luxury. They are real, and deserved. Children have the right not to be hit, to make mistakes and to learn from them. They have the right to be consulted about decisions that affect their future. Children's rights are respected in countless ordinary homes across the country. But where they are not, particularly in the case of children growing up on the margins, they must be fought for.
[Source: The Guardian]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/hrbap/index.asp?action=theme.infoitem&item=9090
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TRAFFICKING: Reference Guide on Protecting the Rights of Child Victims [guide]
The UNICEF Regional Office for Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CEE/CIS) has launched the Reference Guide on Protecting the Rights of Child Victims of Trafficking in Europe, a new tool designed specifically for use by those working to protect children victims of trafficking within the European region.
Human trafficking is not a new phenomenon nor is it one that occurs only in select countries or regions. Yet, one of the most significant conclusions derived from years of research and information-gathering on trafficking is that in order to prevent trafficking and protect the rights of those most vulnerable – children – one must understand trafficking in the context of the unique socio-cultural-political realities that influence its practice in countries and communities worldwide.
To that extent, this Guide addresses the protection of the rights of child victims of trafficking in the European region. Furthermore, the Guide is exceptional in that it has been designed for utilisation by a broad range of child rights advocates – whether one is a child protection worker in Ukraine, a social worker in Russia, a border patrol officer in Albania, a driver in Moldova or a parliamentarian in Brussels.
In essence, the Guide can be viewed as a tool that provides:
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a deeper understanding of the business of trafficking
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a checklist of what to do when dealing with child victims of trafficking
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recommendations for interventions that respect and account for the special rights and needs of child victims of trafficking.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=9059&flag=report
For more information, contact:
UNICEF - Communication Section
Regional Office for CEE/CIS
Tel: +41 22 909 5410
Website: http://www.unicef.org/ceecis
More information
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CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: Global Report on the Impact of Implementation [publication]
The report was presented at the Third Europe and Central Asia Conference, Palencia, Spain, 19 June 2006. The global report is composed of the following texts:
General Comments of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in English and Spanish;
General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in English.
An Executive summary in English and Spanish is available.
Key findings in Spanish and English are also available.
Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in English available on CD rom.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=8787&flag=report
For more information, contact:
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
Piazza SS. Annunziata 12, 50122 Florence, Italy
Tel: + 39 55 203 30
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.unicef-irc.org
Further information
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COURSE: International Human Rights Law
The courses are intended for persons who are interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of international human rights standards and the international machinery of the United Nations, Council of Europe, the OAS and the African Union for implementing these standards and how this machinery works in practice.
Persons working for NGOs or in government as well as graduate students, university teachers and legal and other professionals who would find such an understanding of value or interest would be suitable candidates. A law degree or other training in law is a help but by no means essential.
Participants are awarded a Certificate of Attendance.
Visit: http://www.crin.org/hrbap/index.asp?action=theme.infoitem&item=9076
For more information, contact:
Mo Grigg
Human Rights Law Centre
School of Law, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
Tel: +44 (0)115 84 66309; Fax: +44 (0)115 84 66 579
Email: [email protected].
Website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/law/hrlc/hrlc_short_courses.htm#general
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CRIN: Rights Forum [announcement]
The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) will shortly be disbanding its D-Group on rights-based approaches to programming. If your organisation has an interest in taking up the moderation of this forum, please email us at: [email protected]
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