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In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Sexual abuse
- Armed conflict
- LGBT rights
- Climate change
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Sexual abuse
An Associated Press investigation of UN missions during the past 12 years found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world — signaling the crisis is much larger than previously known. The agency found that more than 300 allegations involved children, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time. The AP interviewed alleged victims, current and former UN officials and investigators and sought answers from 23 countries on the number of peacekeepers who faced such allegations and what, if anything, was done to investigate. With rare exceptions, few States responded to repeated requests, while the names of individuals found guilty are kept confidential, making accountability impossible to determine. One incident highlighted in the investigation details how in Haiti, at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children from 2004 to 2007, according to a leaked UN report. In the wake of the report, 114 peacekeepers were sent home, but none were ever imprisoned.
A Malaysian politician has caused outrage by suggesting that victims of rape should marry their rapists and that some 12-year-old girls are “physically and spiritually” ready to marry. Shabudin Yahaya of the ruling Barisan National coalition made the comments during a parliamentary debate during which he suggested that, "Perhaps through marriage they [the rape victim and rapist] can lead a healthier, better life. And the person who was raped will not necessarily have a bleak future … She will have a husband at least, and this could serve as a remedy to growing social problems". Children’s organisations have condemned the comments, describing them as reinforcing a view that rape is acceptable. Malaysian law allows Muslim girls to marry from the age of 16 and boys from 18, but younger children can marry with the permission of their parents and religious courts. In May last year, the Malaysian government reported that more than 9,000 child marriages had taken place in the country over the previous five years.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has ruled that Scottish law on sexual offences committed against children is not compatible with the right to private life. The case involved a 19-year-old man charged with engaging in sexual intercourse with a girl who was 14 at the time. He claimed that he believed the girl was over the age of 16, which is a defence for this offence, but under Scottish law, this “honest belief” defence is not available where a person has already been charged with a sexual offence involving a child. The man had previously been charged, but not prosecuted, for sexual offences allegedly committed when he was 14. The allegations were that he had exposed himself to children and showed pornography to a young boy, but these were dealt with out of court. The latest decision fell within the ambit of the right to private life because the prosecution disclosed the man’s previous criminal record to the court. The Scottish government argued that any restriction on the right to private life was justified, because the rule acted as a warning about sexual offences against children, so that the defence could not be continuously raised by someone who had been accused of a string of offences in which they claimed to believe that the victim was older than 16. The court dismissed this argument, however, as the offences the man had been accused of previously were not related to his belief in the age of the victims and so could not be viewed as a warning about these kinds of offences.
Armed conflict
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that 20 children were among the 80 people killed when civilians were targeted by a chemical attack in a town in Idlib province in northern Syria last week. Hundreds suffered symptoms consistent with reaction to a nerve agent in what Western powers claim was a Syrian government airstrike. The Syrian military denied using any chemical agents, while its ally Russia said an airstrike hit a rebel depot full of chemical munitions. One 14-year-old resident, who had just left her house when the attack took place, described to The New York Times how an aircraft dropped a bomb on a building a short distance away which produced an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud. “It was like a winter fog,” she said, adding that she saw others arrive by car to help before breathing in the gas themselves and dying. Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of these kinds of weapons due to their small size and developing bodies, and they experience long-term effects more frequently and severely after such attacks.
Concerns about civilian casualties have also been raised again in Iraq after a United States-led coalition airstrike destroyed several houses packed with families in Mosul, allegedly to kill a handful of so-called Islamic State (IS) fighters. As large numbers of men, women and children sheltered in rooms and basements, their homes were hit on 13 March and then again four days later, reducing the buildings to rubble. Iraqi military leaders halted their push to recapture west Mosul from IS as international outrage grew over the deaths, now numbering at least 150. The coalition has now committed to a change of strategy including fewer airstrikes, in part due to the increased use of civilians as human shields by IS. The deadly attack on the Jadida neighbourhood is thought to have been one of the deadliest bombing raids for civilians since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and rescuers were reportedly pulling bodies from the rubble more than a week after the bombs landed.
More than half of the thousands of people fleeing ongoing violence in South Sudan to Uganda are children, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Uganda’s northern Lamwo district has reportedly received more than 6,000 South Sudanese asylum-seekers since 3 April after “an indiscriminate attack” by South Sudan’s armed forces on the town of Pajok. Refugees report witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many arrested or killed, including children. Many people are believed to still be hiding in the bush as they try to find their way to Uganda, while main roads out of the town are reportedly blocked by armed groups. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, with one of its camps recently becoming the largest in the world. Some 192,000 refugees have arrived since the start of 2017 with an average of 2000 people fleeing insecurity, violence and famine every day. More than 62 percent of these new arrivals are children.
Urgent and sustained psychosocial support is needed for as many as 200,000 children in eastern Ukraine, to address the trauma of living through more than three years of violence, UNICEF reports. Roughly a quarter of children in the two regions most severely affected by the ongoing conflict, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, have been living in chronic fear and uncertainty due to sporadic shelling, unpredictable fighting and dangers from landmines and other unexploded ordnance. Parents, teachers, school directors and psychologists continue to report striking behaviour changes in children as young as three years old, with symptoms including severe anxiety, bed-wetting, nightmares and aggressive behaviour increasingly common. The majority of the 200,000 children in need of support in eastern Ukraine are not currently receiving adequate care as services are stretched and underfunded. So far UNICEF has received less than a third of the funding it requires, and the agency is appealing for $31.2 million to support children and families affected by the conflict.
LGBT rights
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that France’s requirement that transgender people undergo sterilisation in order to obtain legal gender recognition is a violation of the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Court held that making recognition of gender identity conditional on a medical operation amounted to making the right to respect for private life conditional on relinquishing the right to respect for one’s physical integrity. The Court ruled, however, that there was no breach of Article 8 regarding requirements for applicants to prove they had gender identity disorder or to undergo a medical examination. Transgender Europe hailed the decision as a “victory”, while describing the part of the ruling on medical examinations as “regrettable”, and commented that “the 22 states in which a sterilisation is still mandatory will have to swiftly end this practice”.
Osaka has become the first city in Japan to recognise same-sex couples as foster parents, after the city government registered two men as the foster parents of a teenage boy who has been under their care since February. The couple attended lectures, training and reviews by the city’s child consultation centre in autumn 2015, and the city granted their request for guardianship after determining that the couple understood the foster care system and were financially capable of raising a child. While there is no law excluding same-sex couples from becoming foster parents in Japan, many same-sex couples find their applications rejected by public authorities. Previously, a female couple were recognised as eligible to become foster parents, but only individually as single parents. According to the country’s welfare ministry, 45,000 neglected or physically abused children are in need of foster care, and many activists call for recognition of more types of foster parents to care for these children.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court of Nebraska, United States, has ruled that a former state policy banning gay couples from becoming foster parents is unconstitutional. Equating the policy to a “whites only” employment sign, the Court dismissed the state’s argument that the policy was not enforced, noting that the policy was not removed from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services website until 2015 and had led to significant confusion. The case was initiated four years ago by three same-sex couples who argued that the 1995 policy was discriminatory. The Court ordered the state to pay the couples' court costs and attorney fees.
Climate change
In India, a nine-year-old has filed a lawsuit against the federal government for failing to take action on climate change, warning that the next generation will pay the price of State inaction. In her petition to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a special court for environment-related cases, Ridhima Pandey said the government had failed to implement its own laws dealing with the environment and calls on the government “to take effective, science-based action to reduce and minimise the adverse impacts of climate change”. Her demands also include that the government assess industrial projects for climate-related issues, prepare a “carbon budget”, and create a national climate recovery plan. Despite passing several laws to protect India’s forests, clean up its rivers and improve air quality, critics claim implementation is poor and economic growth takes precedence over environmental concerns. India has four of the ten worst cities in the world in terms of air pollution, and together India and China are believed to account for more than half the total global deaths attributable to air pollution in 2015. The NGT has asked the Ministry of Environment and the Central Pollution Control Board to respond within two weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of children in England and Wales are exposed to illegal levels of air pollution from diesel vehicles at schools and nurseries, a joint investigation by the Guardian and Greenpeace’s investigations unit has revealed. The investigation analysed the latest government data, exposing how dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution from diesel traffic threatens the health of children in towns and cities across the country. The research demonstrates that more than 1,000 nurseries are close to roads where the level of nitrogen dioxide from diesel traffic exceeds the legal limit of 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air. The worst pollution pocket, with a level of NO2 almost twice the legal limit, was at a nursery in Tower Hamlets, east London. Chris Griffiths, a professor of primary care and public health at Barts and the London School of Medicine, said the findings called for a dramatic change in attitudes within society and from government. He added: “The research on exposure to traffic fumes and children’s lung growth is pretty consistent. It shows that such exposure reduces lung growth, produces long term ill health and can cause premature death.”
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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
"The sexual acts described by the nine victims are simply too many to be presented exhaustively in this report, especially since each claimed multiple sexual partners at various locations where the Sri Lankan contingents were deployed throughout Haiti over several years... The evidence shows that from late 2004 to mid-October 2007, at least 134 military members of the current and previous Sri Lankan contingents sexually exploited and abused at least nine Haitian children"
- Leaked report from the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services detailing allegations of sexual abuse of children by Sri Lankan peacekeepers.
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