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In this issue:

Widening the Democratic Space: youth in public decision making

Last year the Human Rights Council decided to establish a forum on human rights, democracy and the rule of law to promote dialogue and cooperation between States, and to identify best practices, challenges and opportunities for States in effectively implementing all three.

The theme of the 2016 Forum, to be held in November, is “Widening the Democratic Space: the role of youth in public decision-making”. CRIN has sent its own submission ahead of the forum, focusing on freedom of expression, freedom of association, children's right to vote and access to justice for children.

Read CRIN's submission to the Forum on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law on our website.

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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Violence

Leaked documents from Australia's offshore detention centre in Nauru have revealed a catalogue of abuses carried out against asylum seekers, and most frequently against children seeking asylum. More than 2,000 incident reports were released, detailing assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, and complaints about living conditions endured by those trying to claim refuge in Australia. More than half of the reports involve children, despite the fact that fewer than one in five inmates in the detention centre are under 18. Human rights groups have called for an end to the detention of children, while the UN Refugee Agency said that it was “gravely concerned by the reports”. The reports suggest that staff at the centre operate with impunity when abusing detainees, with alleged incidents of violence, coercion and rape appearing again and again throughout the documents. Shortly before the release of the reports from Nauru, a new task force investigating the treatment of children in detention centres in Australia’s Northern Territory agreed to extend its investigation to cover fresh allegations of abuse. The task force will now also review all complaints made to police involving children detained at Don Dale and Alice Springs Detention Centres between 2006 and July 2016, including reviewing all previous police investigations involving alleged assaults on young people in detention. 

An incident in which a teacher in India repeatedly slapped a nine-year-old in the face is set to trigger a legal challenge demanding enforcement of a ban on corporal punishment in the state’s schools. In 2004, the High Court of Calcutta ruled that corporal punishment used in state schools was unlawful, but in light of high profile cases of teachers continuing to use violence against children, the lawyer who brought the case more than a decade ago has said he intends to file a new complaint. India committed to ban corporal punishment in all settings during its reviews before the UN Human Rights Council in 2012, but to date this prohibition is yet to be achieved in the home, in some alternative care settings, in day care, in schools and as a sentence for offences tried in traditional justice systems.

An inspection of Medway secure training centre - a detention facility for children in the United Kingdom - has found “serious and widespread failings”, including high levels of violence and poor oversight over the use of force and restraint. The centre was the focus of a scandal earlier this year when a BBC documentary uncovered staff assaulting children and falsifying records. Since the allegations came to light, G4S has withdrawn from its contracts to run detention facilities for children in the UK and 12 people have been arrested following allegations of using unnecessary force at the facility. Speaking about the latest report, Andrew Nealson of the Howard League for Penal Reform criticised the UK’s facilities for detaining children, saying: “It is not simply the secure training centres which have proved failed models of child custody. In both young offender institutions and secure training centres we see problems of violence and cultures far removed from the caring environments children need.”
 

Access to information

An Israeli government minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, has admitted that at least “hundreds” of children were abducted from their parents in the 1950s, after reviewing archived material from a 2001 inquiry. The Kedmi inquiry found that as many as 5,000 children, mostly from Yemen, may have disappeared in the State's first six years alone, although it examined only 1,000 of those cases. Jacob Kedmi, a former Supreme Court judge who died recently, concluded that most of the children had died and been hurriedly buried. Evidence from the inquiry will not be made public until 2071. Hanegbi's statement appears to confirm the whitewash long-suspected by the children’s families. The revelations are likely to add pressure on the government to open the State's adoption files to uncover the extent of the disappearances and seek to reunite families. The majority of the missing children were from Jewish families who had arrived from Arab countries shortly after Israel's creation in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

A book relating the experiences of minors who spent last year in a detention centre in Chile has been censored by a government agency. "Cartas Adentro" (Letters from inside) was suppressed by the regional director of SENAME, which is responsible for children in state care. The book includes a chapter called "Protest", in which young people speak out against their living conditions and make requests for recreational facilities and visits from loved-ones. In one letter a minor with the initials PO explains "I write this letter to complain about the system, a bad system which is against minors. Your staff treat us very badly, like animals, they hit us with no motivation or right, and throw our clothes in the bathroom bin, what do you think?" The minutes of a meeting on 14 July revealed that the director of the centre declared it necessary to read the young people's letters to file a complaint about the supposed mistreatment of young people by the police. The NGO Libre Alegre said it would release the letters only under judicial order and that the book will be launched by the Culture Council. SENAME itself is currently being investigated for as many as 300 deaths of children in its facilities.
 

Health and discrimination

Demand for sterilisation procedures in Venezuela has exploded as the country’s ongoing crisis continues to restrict access to everyday items. The country, known to have one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Latin America, has been suffering a crisis which has left its economy devastated, with long queues for groceries now a normal part of everyday life and with contraceptives now extremely hard to find. Many women are now opting to undergo sterilisation procedures to prevent pregnancies, as they are unable to get an abortion unless their life is in danger, and because the cost of raising a child in the current climate is too high. When children are born it is often in an overcrowded or under-supplied facility, with scant food available for newborns inside or outside the hospital. On top of all of this Venezuela’s national neonatal mortality rate was recorded as 8.9 per 1,000 live births last year, considerably higher than the 7.7 per 1,000 average of the Americas as a whole.

The Constitutional Court of Spain has ruled that undocumented migrants do not have the right to access free healthcare, but has conceded that immigrant and refugee children have the same right to access healthcare as Spanish children. The ruling comes despite pleas from NGOs and previous messages from the United Nations and the Council of Europe on the importance of access to healthcare for all people. In 2014 the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Nils Muižnieks, noted that Spain’s children were especially vulnerable to falling through the cracks of the national health service, because of “rapidly rising poverty, homelessness and malnutrition among them”, and called for governments to remember that they “have a duty to maintain health and social protection floors which are available to everybody at all times”.

A new study of exposure to heavy metals in the children of Iraq has revealed the toxic legacy of decades of conflict. Researchers found that the baby teeth of several Iraqi children contained as much as 50 times more lead than teeth from children in Lebanon and Iran. The study detailed how bombings and the presence of military infrastructure increased the number of toxic substances children were exposed to before birth, potentially resulting in birth defects or deformities. Other effects of conflict on children’s health have been documented in Iraq, with a spike in birth defects reported to be consistent with “very major mutagenic exposure”.
 

Sexual abuse

Reports of sexual offences in the United Kingdom’s schools have almost trebled in the last four years, according to figures compiled by Plan International. The new statistics revealed that reports of sexual offences in schools jumped from 719 in 2011-12 to almost 2,000 in 2014-15, with girls reported as victims in two thirds of incidents. MPs launched an inquiry into sexual violence and harassment in schools in April this year after research showed that many incidents go unreported, while others are “brushed off” by teachers because of the young age of the children involved.

Following the removal of a statute of limitations for institutional child sexual abuse, the Australian state of Queensland has announced plans to allow class action lawsuits for the first time. Victims in a string of high profile sexual abuse cases will be able to use the new power to bring a lawsuit together, a situation which will help them deal with the emotional and financial pressures associated with such a claim, which would otherwise fall upon individual victims. However, the government also recently announced that previous compensation deals reached between individuals and institutions would stand, and could not be challenged again under the new law.

In Malaysia a man believed to have escaped justice after marrying his alleged 14-year-old rape victim has been ordered to undergo a retrial. The man is suspected of raping the girl last year, and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in jail if found guilty of sexually abusing the child. Activists have pointed to the case as yet another example of the flawed system of allowing Islamic courts to grant child marriages at their own discretion, with some calling for an outright ban on all child marriage. Campaigners from the Kuala Lumpur-based Women's Aid Organisation explained that the practice was still very common in Malaysia, even amongst under-15s, despite the fact that affected children are often locked into a lifetime of further violence and sexual abuse.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Foster care: International Foster Care 2016 European Conference
Organisation: International Foster Care Organisation
Dates: 1-4 September 2016
Location: Sheffield, UK

Advertising: Child rights based tools for protecting kids from alcohol marketing
Organisation: IOGT International
Dates: 2 September 2016
Location: Bratislava, Slovakia

Participation: Young Citizens & Society: Fostering Civic Participation
Organisation: University of Strathclyde
Dates: 2-3 September 2016
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Changing Global Perceptions: Child Protection & Bodily Integrity
Organisation: Genital Autonomy
Dates: 14-16 September 2016
Location: Keele, UK

Education: Achieving education for all and eliminating child labour
Organisation: The International Training Centre of the ILO
Dates: 25-30 September 2016
Location: Turin, Italy

Alternative care: International alternative care conference
Organisation: University of Geneva and Institut de droits l’enfant
Dates: 3-5 October 2016
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Family separation: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Children Separated From Their Families Across International Borders
Organisation: International Social Service
Event date: 13 October 2016
Location: Maryland, US

Education: Master of Advanced Studies in Children's Rights
Application deadline: 1 November 2016
Dates: February 2017 – November 2018
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Education in Emergencies
Organisation: HREA
Dates: 2 November-13 December 2016
Location: online (e-learning course)

Children in War and Armed Conflicts
Organisation: HREA
Dates: 2 November-13 December 2016
Location: online (e-learning course)

Right to work: Eliminating child labour and promoting decent work in agriculture
Organisation:The International Training Centre of the ILO (ITCILO)
Dates: 14-18 November
Location: Turin, Italy
 

EMPLOYMENT

Orchid Project: Chief Operating Officer
Application deadline: Rolling
Location: London, United Kingdom

Center for Reproductive Rights: Global Advocacy Adviser
Application deadline: Rolling
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

UNICEF: New and Emerging Talent Initiative (NETI)
Application deadline: 14 August 2016
Location: Various

Defence for Children International: Executive Director
Application deadline: 15 August 2016
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Eurochild: Child Participation & Network Development Officer
Application deadline: 25 August 2016
Location: Brussels, Belgium

Consortium for Street Children: CEO
Application deadline: 4 September 2016
Location: London, United Kingdom

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LEAK OF THE WEEK

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