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A young woman in Iran is facing execution after she gave birth to a stillborn child in Euromieh central prison. The execution had been put on hold during her pregnancy, as Iranian law does not permit the death penalty to be carried out against pregnant women, but may now go ahead within weeks. Zeinab Sokian was sentenced to death in 2012 for allegedly killing her husband when she was 17 years old. She had married the man two years earlier and Human Rights Watch reports that he frequently subjected Zeinab to beatings and abuse. Iran reformed its law on the death penalty in 2013, giving judges discretion as to whether to impose the death penalty for offences committed by children, but girls can still be sentenced to death from the age of eight and boys from the age of 14.

The UN Secretary-General has released two reports on the death penalty and moratorium on the use of the death penalty. While calling for the abolition of the death penalty for any offence committed while under the age of 18, the reports also raise concern that the abolition of the death penalty for children can lead to an increase in the life imprisonment of children, which the Secretary-General called for States to prevent. The reports were released shortly before world day against the death penalty. Marking the day, the UN Secretary-General focused on the death penalty for people found guilty of terrorism offences and the resumption of executions for terrorist related offences after lengthy moratoria, which has also affected children accused of terrorism offences. In December 2014, Pakistan reintroduced the death penalty, initially for terrorism offences, and has since carried out at least four executions against people who were children at the time they allegedly committed their offences. To find out more about countries that retain the death penalty for children, read our country reports on inhuman sentencing.

A State-owned business based in Northern Ireland is helping to furnish an Egyptian juvenile court, despite concerns over mass trials and death sentences in the country, according to Reprieve. The work is based on a €10 million, EU funded project to support the administration of justice in Egypt, but Reprieve has raised concern about UK and EU complicity in abuses within the Egyptian justice system. Since July 2014, the Egyptian government has been heavily criticised for human rights abuses against protesters, journalists, opposition activists and children, with the use of torture commonly reported. Ibrahim Halawa, a student from Dublin who was 17 when he was arrested in Egypt in 2014, is currently awaiting trial in the country alongside 493 other prisoners and civil society organisations have raised concerns that he may face a death sentence handed down in one of the mass trials that have become common in the country.
 

Egypt has approved more stringent penalties for those who carry out female genital mutilation (FGM), raising the maximum sentence from two years to seven, and up to 15 years if the case results in permanent disability or death. Amendments to the penal code further stipulate a sentence of between one and three years for anyone who escorts a girl to undergo FGM. Egypt criminalised the practice in 2008, but only one criminal prosecution has so far resulted in a conviction. Nine in ten women and girls aged 15 to 49 have undergone FGM in the country, a measure which continues to be perceived as a way of protecting chastity. Human Rights Watch welcomed the new penalties but urged further reforms to ensure that laws and policies are enforced, and to guarantee funding and other resources to achieve a comprehensive response. To find out more read a report by the International NGO Council on Violence against children on harmful practices based on religion, culture, tradition or superstition.

Pakistan's parliament has passed legislation against 'honour killings', mandating life imprisonment for convicted perpetrators regardless of whether the victim’s relatives forgive them. As many as 500 women are killed in the country each year at the hands of family members over perceived attacks on their honour. These typically involve eloping, ‘fraternising’ with a man or any other behaviour viewed as being at odds with conservative values imposed on women. Until now the law has allowed perpetrators to escape punishment by seeking forgiveness from family members - often the very people colluding in the crime. The recent legislation was approved three months after an outspoken social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was strangled by her brother. Rights activist Farzana Bari cautioned that the law continues to allow a judge to decide whether a murder qualifies as an ‘honour killing’. Other commentators said that how the law is enforced would show how serious the authorities are about ending the violation. Read more on moves to protect the family at the expense of individuals’ rights.

A children's rights group in India has called for the arrest of the parents of a 13-year-old girl from the Jain community who died after observing a religious fast for 68 days. The girl, Aradhana Samdhariya, suffered a cardiac arrest on 3 October, a day after her family held a procession in the southern city of Hyderabad in which she rode in a chariot with her parents to celebrate the end of her fast. Her relatives insist that Aradhana had insisted on completing the ritual, despite their objections, and publicly denied forcing the girl to fast during the holy period of Chaumasa. However, the incident has reignited questions around whether the religious tradition is failing to protect the most vulnerable. In 2015, the country’s Supreme Court rejected a ruling by the Rajasthan High Court comparing the ritual with suicide.
 

Child labour

New research from UNICEF has estimated that girls aged five to 14 spend 160 million more hours a day doing unpaid household chores than boys globally. The report, Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls, claims that girls sacrifice opportunities to learn, grow and enjoy their childhood from a young age, and are only expected to do more as they reach adolescence. The report includes the first global estimates on the time girls spend doing household chores including cooking, cleaning, caring for family members and collecting water and firewood. These responsibilities limit a girl’s time to play, socialise and study, with chores like the collection of firewood and water also potentially putting girls at risk of sexual violence. According to the report, girls in Somalia spend the greatest amount of time on household chores, usually doing 26 hours of extra work per week, while girls in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa reportedly spend nearly double the amount of time on household chores than boys from the same regions.

In India the government has begun to raid mines, arrest traders and take steps to regulate the mining of mica, a mineral exported for use in car paint and makeup. The extraction of the mineral has recently been linked to child labour and a three-month investigation in the mica-producing state of Jharkhand found that at least seven children had died since June as a result of working in hazardous and illegal mining operations. After evidence of the use of child labour was published, several companies, most notably car manufacturer Volkswagen, moved to suspend their ties with Indian mica suppliers, or to strengthen oversight of mines potentially using child labour in their supply chain. The use of child labour in mining was also recently highlighted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in relation to cobalt, a metal used in electric car batteries. A report from Amnesty International detailed how a lack of scrutiny meant that there was a “significant risk of cobalt mined by children ending up in the batteries of electric cars”, noting that more than half of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC.

A labour rights group has claimed that many of Bangladesh’s garment factories are still using child labour and are unsafe for their workers. Speaking to Radio New Zealand, Workers Rights Consortium’s director Scott Nova said that many workers faced “severe safety hazards”, including a lack of fire doors and exit routes, as well as a shortage of sprinklers and alarm systems. Nova named H&M, the biggest buyer of clothing in Bangladesh, as slow to act in improving conditions in factories they buy from despite the outcry after the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013. Allegations of the use of child labour in factories which supply H&M have also been levelled in Myanmar, after two investigative journalists from Sweden claimed they had found girls as young as 14 working 12-hour days in two factories outside Rangoon, in breach of national law and international labour conventions.

Refugees

Two refugee children from Egypt and Ethiopia, aged nine and 11, were reportedly ordered to use separate bathrooms at a private school in Italy after parents of other students claimed they posed a ‘health risk’. The school was prompted to put separate toilets in place ‘as a precaution’ after several families threatened to pull their children out of school for fear of contamination, despite being shown medical records demonstrating that the refugee children were in good health. The school ended the policy of segregation only after receiving widespread condemnation. Meanwhile, a number of parents padlocked the gates of a school in the village of Profitis in Greece, protesting a nationwide programme to allow some 1,500 refugee children access to education. Police officers formed a corridor to escort the 40 children inside as some parents voiced their concerns about rape and infectious diseases. The Greek education minister, Nikos Filis, claimed that the demonstration was an isolated incident, and that pupils in other schools across the country received a warm welcome from parents and teachers.

A leading refugee charity has begun legal action against the Home Office over its failure to admit hundreds of unaccompanied refugee children stranded in refugee camps in Calais. The organisation, Help Refugees, claims the United Kingdom has failed to comply with obligations to bring the children into the country. Lawyers for the charity sent a formal letter to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, demanding urgent implementation of section 67 of the Immigration Act, known as the ‘Dubs Amendment’, with judicial review proceedings to be commenced if the government fails to do so. The legal action comes amid increasing concern for the safety of unaccompanied refugee children, with demolition of the ‘Jungle’ camp expected to begin next week. As many as 387 children have been identified by charities as eligible to come to the UK under the Dubs Amendment and the Dublin Regulations but the Home Office has reportedly refused to respond to official requests from French authorities to accept unaccompanied children. Rudd met with her French counterpart on Monday, and announced to MPs that the French authorities had agreed to verify the list of eligible child refugees by the end of the week, after which the UK will ‘move quickly’ to remove them, prioritising children under the age of 12. Rudd did not clarify the exact number of children who qualify for relocation, but said that 300 would be ‘a really good result’.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged Nauru to take immediate action to investigate all allegations of mistreatment, abuse and sexual assault against asylum-seeking and refugee children held on the island. In its concluding observations on the initial report of Nauru, which largely focused on refugee and asylum-seeking children, the Committee expressed grave concerns about the traumatic effects of living for prolonged periods in the detention-like conditions of the regional processing centres, where incidents of physical, psychological and sexual abuse have been widely reported. The Committee found that the memorandum of understanding between Australia and Nauru for the processing of asylum claims fails to take into account the best interests of the child, and that asylum-seeking and refugee children were not processed in line with the best interests of the children. The report also drew attention to the lack of basic facilities in the centres, such as safe drinking water, counselling and health services. The Committee called on the government to immediately establish measures to guarantee the protection, prevention and rehabilitation of children exposed to ill-treatment and abuse, and to impose compulsory training and mandatory reporting requirements on all relevant professionals.