Latest news and reports
- LGBT rights
- Juvenile justice
- Armed conflict and displacement
- Education

Upcoming events

Employment

A group of African States is attempting to block progress on LGBT issues by challenging the appointment of an Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity in the UN General Assembly. The expert, Vitit Muntarbhorn, was appointed in September 2016 and is charged with investigating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Botswana’s ambassador to the UN, Charles Ntwaagae, said African nations “are alarmed” that the Human Rights Council is attempting to focus on people “on the grounds of their sexual interests and behaviours". Worryingly, Ntwaagae said African countries want to stress that sexual orientation and gender identity “are not and should not be linked to existing international human rights instruments”. The UN has worked to improve LGBT rights in recent years but has repeatedly run into opposition from some States, especially in the Middle East and Africa, with further resistance from China and Russia. According to a UN report from last year, at least 76 countries retain laws used to criminalise and harass people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, while an increasing number of States are passing laws against 'the promotion of homosexuality to children' on spurious grounds of ‘protection’.

Authorities in Morocco have pressed charges of homosexuality against two teenage girls who will stand trial this week after allegedly being caught kissing. Police detained the pair, a 16-year-old and 17-year-old, in Marrakech last Thursday according to activist Omar Arbib from the Moroccan Association of Human Rights. “They were caught kissing and hugging on the roof of a house in Hay Mohammadi district,” said Arbib. Someone photographed them, sent the picture to the family who informed the police and the two girls were arrested later that day, he said. They have already appeared before prosecutors and are due in court to face charges of “licentious or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex” under article 489 of the Moroccan penal code. The Moroccan Association of Human Rights has appointed a lawyer to defend the girls who face a prison sentence of between six months and three years.

A regional court in Russia has declared the blocking of an online LGBT advice page illegal in an ongoing battle over access to information via social media. The page, “Children-404", provides support and advice for adolescents experiencing discrimination related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. In late October the Kaluga Regional Court clarified that the page should not have been blocked on the popular Russian language social network “VKontakte” as it was placed on the register of banned sites without the required examination from a prosecutor in court. The page, founded in 2013, has repeatedly been blocked or removed from VKontakte over the years due to restrictive laws designed to “protect children” from “harmful information” on LGBT rights, leaving many teens with questions about their sexuality without support. CRIN believes that access to information is crucial for a child's development and for the development of an open and just society. Read more about censorship and children's access to information here.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Japan to do more to provide LGBT inclusive education to school children. With Japan’s national curriculum under review this year, the government has a once-in-a-decade opportunity to improve the situation and protect LGBT children from harassment and bullying at school. Japanese students told Human Rights Watch that because of a lack of an LGBT-inclusive curriculum, the information they received from teachers about LGBT people was inaccurate, sometimes bigoted, and based entirely on teachers’ personal views of sexuality rather than science or human rights. According to a HRW report, Japanese schools were found to be focusing on maintaining harmony rather than protecting vulnerable students and that children in Japan wanted to learn sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom – and not from stereotyped news reports or anti-gay slurs.

 

Despite public rejection of a long-awaited peace deal, children recruited to fight with the Colombian guerilla group FARC-EP are being separated and sent home by the group. The move is part of an agreed deal between the rebels and the Colombian government to sustain peace while further negotiations on ending the country’s decades-long civil war continue. The effort has been welcomed by the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, who described it as “an important humanitarian trust-building measure”, and stated that “the universal desire to build a better future for our children, can truly serve as an entry point to negotiate peace”. However, not all of the children feel the same way, with many having been abducted or joining voluntarily at a young age to escape poverty or abuse. Victoria Sandino, a commander with FARC-EP, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview that many were still wary of leaving as the organisation acted as “a big family for all of us”. Around 11,000 children have been recruited into the ranks of FARC-EP since 1975, and an estimated 6,000 have either deserted or been rescued by state forces.

Intense fighting in Iraq against the so-called Islamic State continues to take a devastating toll on civilians, with many children being killed or recruited to fight against the coalition of governments driving the violent extremist group from the city of Mosul. Residents have reported that fighters demanded children as young as nine be handed over to them to help with the battle, also using loudspeakers to declare people should “leave their villages or be severely punished”. The group has also been kidnapping civilians to use as human shields, with the UN estimating that some 1,500 families are being taken to Mosul airport by militants. On top of all of this UNICEF has reported that more than 20,000 people have been displaced by the offensive, leaving more than 10,000 children in desperate need of food, water, medicine and other essential services.

As many as 90,000 young refugees from Central African Republic (CAR) living in Cameroon are out of school, and vulnerable to violence, sexual abuse and early marriage, according to UNICEF. The agency recently revealed that its work in the region had been “reduced to skeletal projects” solely due to lack of funding and that the 194,517 children in Cameroon were suffering from malnutrition, of whom 71,433 were experiencing severe acute malnutrition. Though refugee camps provide free education, a full two-thirds of displaced people, driven from their homes by violence or drought, live in villages and struggle to afford enrolment fees, often sending their sons to work and forcing their daughters to marry. Some parents have formed associations to try to secure an education for their children, but feel if they are faced with the choice between classes or food for their children they can only afford to pay for their survival.
 

Education

Parent associations in Spain have called for a boycott of weekend homework by state school pupils in protest against the “unacceptable” workload, which is seen to be jeopardising the school and family life balance and placing too much pressure on students. A 2012 report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that 15-year-olds in Spain have 6.5 hours of homework per week, significantly higher than the 4.9 hour average across the 38 OECD countries. Parent groups across the country have stressed the importance of free time and play for children, and have expressed concern over what they see as schools delegating some of their teaching responsibilities to parents, with some institutions increasingly implementing shorter school days to save money.

A new law in China has banned for-profit private primary and middle schools from operating in the country, in an attempt to control the loosely-regulated private school industry and ensure equality. Providers of primary and middle schools must become non-profit by September 2017 and comply with state policies and government curricula. China has a nationwide free nine-year compulsory education system funded by the central government, but over 12 million students attending private primary and middle schools could be affected by the new law. Concerns have been raised in particular over its potentially negative impact on the children of migrant workers, who face obstacles to accessing public education in major cities because of restrictive criteria such as the need for a local residency permit.

The High Court in Uganda has ordered the closure of 63 Bridge International Academies, a chain of low-cost private schools supported by foundations including those of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. The judge ruled that the schools were not properly licensed, and had been using unsanitary and inadequate facilities and unqualified teachers. Bridge International operates a low-cost model which offers cheap and standardised education by incorporating technology into teaching. While some praise the company for improving investment in and access to education in developing countries, the low-cost education model has attracted significant criticism. The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh, described the Liberian government’s decision this year to outsource its primary education system to Bridge International as a “gross violation of the right to education”; and the company is still awaiting the decision of a court in Busia County, Kenya concerning the local government’s decision to close the academies there last June. The company will be appealing the Ugandan High Court’s ruling.