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In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Toxics and radiation
- Civil and political rights
- Sexual violence
- Education
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Toxics and radiation
A new investigation by humanitarian news agency IRIN has highlighted the harmful impact of the Liberian mining industry on children’s rights. As a result of working in and living in close proximity to mines, investigators found that children suffered from numerous medical conditions and had been forced to relocate. Liberia’s mining industry has been engulfed by controversy for decades, with violence and corruption reportedly being commonplace. Most recently, an accident at New Liberty Gold mine released cyanide and arsenic, byproducts of the mining process, into a nearby river in which villages downstream used to fish, bathe and wash clothes. Despite children developing rashes, allegedly as a result of water contamination, no medical tests have been conducted. Furthermore, holding guilty parties to account remains challenging due to the complex ownership structure of the mines, where shell companies are used and registered in opaque overseas jurisdictions.
Western clothing brands have been accused of using child labour in their supply chain in a recent investigation into the leather industry in Bangladesh. The report by Transparentem claims leather that has been made using child labour, and under dangerous, polluted conditions, has been used in factories where goods are produced for major Western shoe and handbag brands. Companies named in the report responded noting their concern, but they claimed that the leather used in their particular products was made elsewhere. Accusations around child labour have long plagued Hazaribagh, a Dhaka neighborhood with more than 150 tanneries which has been found to be one of the most polluted places in the world. Though legislation in Bangladesh prohibits employment for under-18s, video evidence and interviews appear to show children working in tanneries in Hazaribagh. The British Medical Journal has also recently published evidence that child Bangladeshi tannery workers were suffering from untreated rashes and infections, asthma and other lung problems.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, children working at a recycling plant have been found to be part of a lucrative supply chain run by Coca-Cola and seven Mexican bottling companies. The company that runs the plant has said it is aware that children participate in the collection of waste for the plant. However, the company has not taken any strict measures to address the issue and the president of PetStar, Jaime Camara, who runs Coca-Cola Mexico's largest recycling plant, admitted "some" children might be caught up in the process, adding that the company seeks "not to be involved when they are identified."
Documents revealing the long-term impacts of nuclear tests carried out in Kazakhstan have recently surfaced, having been covered-up since the 1950s. More Soviet nuclear weapons tests were carried out in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan in the 1950s and 1960s than anywhere else in the world. The recently released records show that at the time, over 600 people, including many children, were immediately hospitalised with radiation sickness, over four times the number that were hospitalised after the Chernobyl disaster. Researchers found widespread and persistent radioactive contamination of soil and food across the towns and villages of eastern Kazakhstan. The reports also show that a special clinic tasked with tracking radiation and its health effects in the region had a register of more than 100,000 individuals, including children, who had been exposed to the tests. To date, no one knows how many people have died as a result of these weapon tests.
Civil and political rights
A wave of protests across Russia has seen the mobilisation of a discontented generation, with students and younger children turning out to demonstrate against alleged corruption. The mass outrage was prompted by an investigation which was conducted by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organisation headed by Alexey Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition figure who has announced his intention to run in the 2018 presidential elections. While the youth element in the recent protests has been dismissed by government as simply a band of gullible children, the truth is that young people, particularly those who are increasingly exposed to ideas from outside of Russia, are beginning to question their “patriotic” upbringing. After detaining hundreds of people the government broke its silence to claim that young people had been paid to turn up to demonstrate.
The president of one of Australia's top intelligence bodies has called for the use of software in primary schools and high schools to log key presses and capture screenshots of children’s personal devices. Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers Dr Phillip Kowalick showed the software to a police technology forum, claiming it had helped alert teachers and authorities in the UK to potential suicides, child grooming, bullying, domestic violence and radicalisation, but brushing over concerns about children’s rights to privacy, free expression and information. The technology bears many similarities to others used to fulfill the country’s ‘Prevent strategy duty’, a system which requires schools to report signs of potential ‘radicalisation’ to police. Prevent has received widespread criticism from international experts and UK politicians, with the UK Parliament’s joint committee on human rights having already called for an independent review of the strategy.
Sexual violence
A judge in Mexico has caused outrage by dismissing charges against a young man accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl on the basis that he did not have “lascivious intent”. The girl testified that she was dragged into a car with four young men, two of whom sexually assaulted her. The specific case revolves around allegations against one of the men accused of sexual assault. The judge accepted that the girl had been forced into the car, that the man had touched the girl’s breasts and “introduced his fingers into her vagina” but that he lacked the sexual intent necessary for the offence. The ruling has triggered widespread criticism. Prosecutors for the state of Veracruz spoke out against the decision, saying it “violates the rights of sexual attack victims”, the judge has been suspended pending an investigation, and the oversight agency for the courts may also investigate the judge’s actions. National activists have highlighted the case as demonstrating the impunity of wealthy young men with political connections in the country. The case only came to court following a campaign by the girl’s father which was picked up by the media, after authorities appeared uninterested.
Technological advances, including the increasing availability of high speed internet are fuelling a surge in sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines, according to the International Justice Mission. The organisation, which works on modern day slavery, reports that more than 2,000 cases of potential online sexual exploitation are referred every month and the Philippine’s department of justice reported more than 8,000 referrals from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children over a four month period. The rise in online exploitation of children in the Philippines is reported to be linked to the widespread use of English in the country, enabling abusers to give instructions to victims in a mutually understood language. UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million children are trafficked every year for sexual exploitation, but these figures exclude online sexual exploitation.
Discrimination
The United States has included an organisation repeatedly classified as an anti-LGBT hate group in its delegation for a set of high-level UN meetings on women's equality and empowerment. The Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) was named by the US State Department to attend the meetings, despite being listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for at least five years. C-FAM's longtime leader, Austin Ruse, is often quoted saying he supports the criminalisation of homosexuality, and articles he has written have accused the administration of former President Barack Obama of promoting a "homosexual agenda". The move comes despite recent progress at the UN on LGBT rights with the appointment of an Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, who recently completed his first State visit.
A court in Switzerland has ruled that a spa broke the law in refusing access to five disabled children. In 2012 five mentally and physically disabled children aged 6 to 14 were refused entry to the Heilbad Unterrechstein thermal baths, as staff claimed their presence would “‘bother other customers”, adding that groups of disabled people were only allowed in the spa when it was not busy. Four associations for people with disabilities then launched a suit against the spa on behalf of the five children. Five years later, the court ruled that the spa had discriminated against the children because of their disability, breaching Swiss equality laws. In a statement the four associations called the judgment “pioneering” and noted that it showed how disabled people are still routinely exposed to discrimination. The organisations expressed their hope that the judgement would “mark a turning point and help raise awareness” of the issue.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has criticised Australia for the “disturbing” number of Aboriginal children it has imprisoned. During her latest state visit Victoria Tauli-Corpuz found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are about 17 times more likely to be involved in the justice system than their peers - making up just three percent of the country’s inhabitants, but about a quarter of Australia's prison population. Tauli-Corpuz said: “I visited Cleveland Youth Detention Centre in Townsville, Queensland, where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children constitute 95 percent of the children detained. Many have been going from out-of-home care into detention”. The SR noted that Australia would need to improve its treatment of indigenous people if it hoped to secure a spot on the Human Rights Council, adding: “These children are essentially being punished for being poor and in most cases, prison will only aggravate the cycle of violence, poverty and crime”.
In the United Kingdom as many as 30 people are believed to have been involved in a suspected hate crime which left a young asylum-seeker with a fractured spine, a fractured eye socket and a bleed on the brain. Reker Ahmed, a 17-year-old Kurdish-Iranian who arrived unaccompanied in the UK a few months ago, was seriously injured in the assault in Croydon on Friday. Sixteen arrests have been made in the investigation so far and police are trying to speak to Ahmed’s family in Iran. Investigators say that he was “very lucky not to have lost his life”, and the Kurdish community of Croydon is still trying to come to terms with why “a quiet boy who stayed out of trouble” would be subjected to such a senseless, violent attack.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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
Just For Kids Law: Trainee Youth Advocate
Application deadline: 2 May 2017
Location: London, United Kingdom
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LEAK OF THE WEEK
CRIN’s general enquiries inbox routinely receives correspondence on a range of topics, from requests for support and partnership to complaints about mind control and the second coming of Jesus Christ ( seriously). This week however we were sent an email so out of touch with what we do that we felt it deserved a special mention here.
The email in question requested that the CRIN team add an app for spying on children to an area of our website dealing with children’s rights during the world’s current refugee crisis. Ignoring the fact that it was not related to that section at all, the app itself is a privacy nightmare, focused on parental control over children’s correspondence.
The software monitors all of a child’s texts, phone calls and social media communication and tracks their movements, flagrantly ignoring a number of their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, privacy and correspondence, and freedom of expression being the most obvious. Needless to say this app is extremely unlikely to appear on our website, except perhaps in the relevant case law section. |
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