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In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Refugees and migration
- Nationality and citizenship
- Sexual abuse
- Education
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Refugees and migration
Refugee and migrant children across Europe are living in “abysmal conditions”, according to the Council of Europe’s Special Representative on migration and refugees, Tomáš Boček. His report, based on visits to detention centres and camps in Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, France and Italy, is a catalogue of abuse and neglect experienced by children in these facilities. Boček reports the arrest of children for begging, violence at the hands of police, an absence of educational and health provision and a failure to ensure that families are reunified. During the last two years, 30 percent of asylum seekers arriving in Europe were children and in 2015 alone, 96,465 unaccompanied children applied for asylum in Europe. Speaking to the Guardian after the launch of the report, Boček reflected on the long term consequences of ill-treatment of these children and the risk of increasing “radicalisation”: “[w]hat these children are going through will define who they will become. And it will also define, in some respects, our common future.”
The European Court of Human Rights has demanded that Hungary cease its plans to move eight unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to a camp constructed out of shipping containers. The Court applied interim measures under Rule 39 to halt the procedures after an application by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. The application was made in response to a new Hungarian law allowing for the detention of migrants in shipping containers along the country’s southern border, which Council of Europe experts have warned will put children at risk of sexual abuse. Claude Janizzi, the chair of the Lanzarote Committee on the protection of children from sexual exploitation and abuse, wrote to the Hungarian prime minister warning that under the reforms, children would be treated as adult asylum seekers and placed in transit zones that would increase their risk of becoming victims of sexual exploitation and abuse. A coalition of civil society organisations has called the move a “flagrant violation of international law”, while UNICEF sounded the alarm over the measure’s potentially traumatising effect on children.
Nationality and citizenship
Campaigners in Sudan are urging the government to end discrimination against children who also have a parent from South Sudan. Activists have pointed out that currently, children born of a Sudanese mother and South Sudanese father, and vice versa, are not given identity or nationality documents, despite it being one of their constitutional rights. Their campaign “Ana Sudani” translated as “I am a Sudanese” highlights records of around 300 affected families, of which about 75 families have filed a lawsuit against the Minister of Interior. Ihsan Abdul-Aziz, a Sudanese activist with the campaign, told Radio Tamazuj that these families frequently encounter discrimination, particularly in education. The issue was predicted as early as 2012 by the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa which noted that at the time of secession, Sudan and South Sudan moved separately to introduce new nationality laws. These laws followed a failure to achieve a negotiated solution on who would become the citizens of the new republic and who would remain the citizens of Sudan, leaving some children without legal recognition of their nationality.
Protesters in Jordan have secured assurances from MPs that they will work to grant full citizenship rights to the children of Jordanian women married to husbands from other countries. Under Jordan’s current rules mothers do not automatically pass their Jordanian citizenship to their children, meaning that it can be difficult for them to access education, healthcare and other services which should be provided by the State. The problem has been evident for years. In 2014, the government announced that it was granting these children certain “privileges”, provided that their mothers had been living in Jordan for a minimum period of five years, but campaigners feel these efforts have stalled, and threatened to protest outside Jordan’s Prime Ministry if their demands are not met. Demonstrators have already staged 75 sit-ins in various parts of the country since their campaign began in 2009, claiming that identification documents issued by the Civil Status and Passports Department were “useless” and “not acknowledged in many government institutions”.
Two Australian children may be separated from their parents or forced to move abroad after the country’s government decided to deport their mother and father to Fiji. Australia’s Assistant Immigration Minister, Alex Hawke, declined to intervene in the case of the Prasad family, despite Jasmita, 15, and her brother Jasneel, 12, being Australian citizens who would be forced to leave their Sydney school and move to a village in Fiji, which they have never visited, if their parents were deported. The family has been living in Australia for nearly 17 years and their children were all born there. Their parents moved to Australia following the military coup in which George Speight overthrew the elected government of then prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry in 2000, after they were caught up in threats and violence by indigenous Fijians from a neighbouring village. The Prasads could be sent to immigration detention or forcibly removed from Australia after 4 April, as Hawke opted not to use discretionary powers contained in the Migration Act to allow them to stay, claiming that it would not be in the public interest to do so.
Sexual abuse
More than 1,100 complaints of sexual abuse of children were made against Anglican clergy and laypersons in Australia between 1980 and the end of 2015, according to data released by the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. The data covers 22 of the 23 Anglican dioceses in the country and reveals that allegations were made against 285 laypeople and 247 ordained clergy during this period. Of these allegations, the Commission has referred 84 alleged perpetrators to police, leading to four prosecutions and 23 investigations which are currently underway. Giving evidence to the Commission, Anne Hywood, general secretary of the church’s general synod, recognised the church’s role in failing to combat abuse: “We apologise for the shameful way we actively worked against and discouraged those who came to us and reported abuse… We are ashamed to acknowledge that we only took notice when the survivors of abuse became a threat to us”. To date, the Anglican church has paid almost AUS$31 million in compensation to survivors of abuse.
An investigative report has found that young people who reported sexual abuse by soldiers in the Central African Republic are still living on the streets, despite pledges that they would be looked after. Swedish journalists found that some of the victims of sexual abuse allegedly carried out by peacekeepers are now homeless, out of school, and making a living on the streets, despite assurances from the UN that they would be protected. UNICEF, which was given the task of overseeing the support of the children abused by peacekeepers, said it was unaware of youngsters who were not getting help, noting that more than 200 children were registered to its assistance programme. UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently outlined the organisation’s latest approach to tackling sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers which called for a focus on victims, ending impunity and backed financial penalties for failures to investigate allegations of sexual abuse. Unfortunately, the report falls short in other areas, failing to address the need for criminal prosecutions and relying on voluntary, non-binding recommendations to States.
Education
The United States' Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that school must provide individualised education to children with disabilities, in one of the most significant special education cases to reach the high court in decades. The court’s decision requires schools to consider each child’s individual strengths and weaknesses, rather than simply providing a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Advocates and parents say the case dramatically expands the rights of special education students helping millions of students. The Supreme Court said that a child’s “educational programme must be appropriately ambitious in light of his circumstances” and that “every child should have the chance to meet challenging objectives” even if the child is not fully integrated into regular classrooms. Any standard, the court said, that is not centered on “student progress would do little to remedy the pervasive and tragic academic stagnation that prompted Congress to act” when it passed the 1975 law that provides federal funds to help states cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
The Prime Minister of Jamaica has announced that the country will amend its Education Act to prohibit corporal punishment in schools. The Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, said alternative systems of discipline and behaviour management must become the main systems of discipline in schools, and highlighted increased spending on teacher training, designed to empower teachers in working with children. Jamaicans for Justice said it welcomed the announcement, noting that such a measure, if robustly implemented, will advance the welfare of all children by affirming in law that violence ought never to be the way we discipline children. Corporal punishment in Jamaica has already been outlawed in early childhood institutions, children’s homes, and places of safety, under the Child Care and Protection Act, but remains legal in the family home.
Ethnic minorities in Hong Kong have voiced concern about the discriminatory education system and its impacts on children for whom Chinese is not a first language. The Chinese proficiency of many ethnic minorities in Hong Kong remains poor, and the lack of a suitable Chinese curriculum that caters to their learning needs, and embraces diversity and inclusiveness, seriously hampers the learning of these children, according to Phyllis Cheung, director of Hong Kong Unison. Racial equality is a serious issue in Hong Kong, with people from ethnic minority communities already being disproportionately singled out for detailed searches, identity checks and investigations by police, security and border control personnel. For the new administration of Hong Kong to ensure greater equality, many are calling for the State to improve the quality of Chinese-language education for all ethnic minority children so that they can reach a level where they can ultimately find appropriate employment.
At the launch of the UNDP annual Human Development Report, the French Minister of State for Development and Francophonie, Jean-Marie Le Guen, declared that “France will act against any attempts at commercialisation of education” and that France considers that “education is a public service” and “a common good that cannot be profited from”. This stance constitutes a major commitment from France as the privatisation and commercialisation of primary and secondary education accelerates throughout the world, particularly in poorer countries. It notably differs from the United Kingdom’s approach, which promotes the privatisation of education through DFID, by financing multinational corporations such as Bridge International Academies. Hélène Ferrer, coordinator of Coalition Éducation, responded: “We welcome the unambiguous position expressed by M. Le Guen against commercialisation of education. This strengthens the efforts undertaken by France to promote education systems respectful of human rights”.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Global: Children’s Peace Prize 2017
Organisation: KidsRights
Submission deadline: 31 March 2017
Side event: Identifying and Preventing Abuse of Children with Mental Disabilities in Institutions
Organisation: Mental Disability Advocacy Centre
Date: 31 March 2017
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Course: International Children’s Rights
Organisation: Leiden University
Application deadline: 1 April 2017 (non-EU) / 15 June 2017 (EU students)
Dates: September 2017 - Summer 2018
Location: Leiden, The Netherlands
Education: 2017 Institute of the Center for Education Diplomacy
Organisation: Association for Childhood Education International
Dates: 20 - 22 April 2017
Location: Washington, DC, United States
Education: Online course on Child Rights-based Approaches
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 26 April - 11 July 2017
Location: Online
Europe: Justice for Children Award
Organisations: DCI and OMCT
Submission deadline: 30 April 2017
Juvenile justice: Youth Justice Summit
Organisation: Youth Justice Legal Centre
Date: 12 May 2017
Location: London, United Kingdom
Course: Implementing the UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children
Organisation: CELCIS
Date: 15 May 2017
Location: Online
Best interests: International Conference on Shared Parenting
Organisations: National Parents Organization & the International Council on Shared Parenting
Dates: 29-31 May 2017
Location: Boston, United States
Course: Online course on Child Rights Governance
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 31 May - 11 July 2017
Location: Online
Child abuse: ISPCAN European conference on child abuse & neglect
Organisation: International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect
Dates: 1-4 October 2017
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
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EMPLOYMENT
Child Rights International Network: Executive Assistant
Application deadline: Rolling
Location: London
Child Soldiers International: Director of Programmes
Application deadline: 3 April 2017
Location: Negotiable
Just For Kids Law: Trainee Youth Advocate
Application deadline: 2 May 2017
Location: London, United Kingdom
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LEAK OF THE WEEK
This week we learnt two valuable lessons about how gender affects the way you should present yourself: 1) women and girls should not wear tight clothes on planes, and 2) but they should learn how to behave politely at a dinner party.
In the first story, a United Airlines flight in the United States refused to allow two girls to board the plane because they were wearing leggings, which company staff considered improper. Critics said the move was sexist and sexualises young girls. Their father, who was wearing shorts, was not told to cover up - or shave his legs.
In a second tale of human ridiculousness, a school in Canada is offering female students a course on “Women’s Studies”, which covers all-important issues such as nail care, dinner party etiquette and how to choose the most flattering hairstyles and clothing. Perhaps the school felt that including material on gender equality, historic female figures, and critical theory would’ve clashed with the schoolgirls’ nail varnish and hair-dos? |
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