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In this issue:

NEWS IN BRIEF

Armed conflict

• Organisations urge UN to add 11 parties to blacklist of child rights violators
• UN reports nearly 1,500 boys recruited for use in Yemen’s armed conflict
• Guns assembled in Europe possibly exported for use in conflicts involving child soldiers

Juvenile justice

• First life imprisonment sentences for children under India’s juvenile justice reforms
• UK High Court to hear legal challenge to prolonged solitary confinement of child detainee
• New youth justice sentencing guidelines aim to avoid criminalising children

Discrimination

• Roma children in Slovakia routinely assessed as having ‘mild mental disabilities’

Child abuse

• New law in Bangladesh opens doors for rapists to marry child victims
• Religious institutions in New Zealand not required to vet workers with access to children
• Rape law revisions in Japan seek to bring archaic definitions into modern era

Right to health

• Another Wayuu child dies amid grave malnutrition crisis in Colombia
• WHO releases global child health report blasting cost of polluted environment

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS AT THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

Children's rights are given most prominence at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) during its first session of the year, which features the annual day on the rights of the child. The focus of this year’s annual day was the protection of children’s rights when implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. CRIN has been reporting live from the Council’s 34th session this week, producing daily round-ups of each day and live coverage using #HRC34 on Twitter.

As well as the annual day, children’s rights have featured in discussions throughout the Council’s 34th session, as a number of UN independent experts with thematic mandates presented their annual reports. Here is a quick round-up of the highlights of the main children’s rights issues discussed so far.
 

3 March

The day featured a panel discussion on climate change and children’s rights. The main points focused on how children and future generations will bear the brunt of environmental degradation, despite being the least responsible. And on this basis, it was emphasised throughout that children should be involved in mitigating the effects of climate change, including through education to help them become environmentally aware from a young age - something that today’s duty bearers seem to have missed. Rights-based arguments saw panelists underline that climate change poses an existential threat to children’s very survival, as it threatens an array of substantive rights, including to food and water, to health and development. Read more about the day here.
 

6 March

The annual day on the rights of the child opened with a stark reminder of the huge divide between the realisation of children’s rights in the developed and the developing world, and that without the implementation of rights, meeting the SDGs will be affected. UN thematic experts explained how, in the context of achieving the SDGs, issues such as counter-terrorism and cultural rights, hate crime, child sexual violence and discrimination, among others, can hinder a sustainable future. The discussion later focused on how the SDGs can be used to reinforce children’s rights respect, but there was little debate on the use of mechanisms like complaints procedures to do this, despite access to justice itself being included as a SDG (no.16.3) and a means of ensuring all of the goals are met. Read more about the day here.

7 March

Children's freedom of religion is frequently violated by state and non-state actors, according to the report by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion. He also noted that children, among others, are particularly vulnerable to discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, and hit back at States which argued that his mandate should not cover violations against minorities, particularly gender and sexual minorities. The report by the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children focused on international adoption, explaining that the targets of illegal adoption tend to be mothers in precarious situations, often in rural environments with little education, and said that States of origin and receiving States needed to accept their responsibility when illegal international adoption takes place. Read more about the day here.

Meanwhile the top UN expert on tackling violence against children focused her annual report on the opportunities provided by the SDG target to end all forms of violence against children, and celebrated how an increasing number of States are banning all forms of violence against children. And in the last report of her mandate, the top UN diplomat on children in armed conflict regretted that despite increased cooperation from States there are still several ongoing conflicts in which the level of cruelty remains “unthinkable”, highlighting how conflicts can also affect access to water, food and basic medical care.
 

8 March

The report by Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment was dedicated to biodiversity, and gave a friendly reminder that many antibiotics and cancer treatments - including successful treatments for childhood leukaemia - were developed from chemicals found naturally in plants. Meanwhile the Special Rapporteur on the right to food used her report, which was developed alongside the Special Rapporteur on toxics, to highlight how the global use of pesticides affects human rights, calling for an international treaty on the use of pesticides. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights singled out a number of States in his annual report, as he ran through a list of the most serious violations of human rights during the last year. Among them was the Philippines, which he criticised for moving to lower the country’s minimum age of criminal responsibility and to reintroduce the death penalty. Also discussed were the persecution of Rohingya people in Myanmar and Hungary for its poor treatment of migrants and refugees.  
 

Every single day

Discussions at the Human Rights Council are often behind schedule, no thanks in particular to the state delegations which think of the UN as a playground for congratulating themselves on jobs well done, or to throw diplomatic hissy fits at one another.

For example, a whole 20 minutes was carved off the annual day on the rights of the child because of a territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which continued for what felt like another 20 minutes the following day. Turkey, Cyprus and Greece were no better behaved, as they apparently mistook SDG discussions for a history class about Cyprus.

Meanwhile during the presentation of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion, the United States and China delegations respectively patted their own backs to the point of bruising as they explained their excellence in promoting freedom of religion and tolerance, despite not fooling any soul present.

LEAK OF THE WEEK