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In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Care institutions and orphanages
- Refugees and armed conflict
- Sexual abuse
- Child trafficking
- Child marriage
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Care institutions and orphanages
Almost 100 children and young people have been found on the brink of starvation in orphanages in Belarus. Prosecutors, doctors and officials from children’s homes released evidence of severely malnourished children, including teenagers who weighed as little as 15 kilos and one 20-year-old who weighed just 11.5 kilos, the normal weight of a two or three-year-old child. Several directors of orphanages have already lost their jobs over the scandal and a criminal investigation has been launched into allegations of neglect. The prosecutor’s office responsible for pursuing criminal charges explained that the principal breach of the law was in the failure to provide children adequate medical nutrition, noting that if regular medical checks of the facilities had been conducted, the condition of the children would have been obvious. One orphanage director, Vyacheslav Klimovich, denied responsibility for the harm caused to the children, claiming: “The reason why they do not put on weight lies not in the malnutrition but in their psyche. There is no accessibility as there is no brain there.” For more information on challenging abuses of the rights of children in care institutions, read CRIN’s recent report, “When the State doesn’t care”.
The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights in India, the organisation mandated to investigate complaints and standards in children’s homes, has not conducted an investigation of a home since 2015. The failure to conduct investigations, uncovered through a right to information request, is reportedly because no new members of the Commission were appointed to replace those whose terms expired. News also recently broke of abuses of children in orphanages and children’s homes across India. In one case in Hyderabad, girls living in an orphanage were reported to have been forced to clean a manhole. The incident was filmed by a passerby who handed the footage to police, triggering an investigation into allegations of child labour and cruelty to children. In Guwahati, police arrested three people accused of beating a boy with disabilities in a privately run children’s home. The boy was reportedly beaten severely within hours of arriving at the home, and the extent of his injuries became apparent when he was admitted to hospital. Utsah, an NGO working on the protection of children’s rights, has called for a probe into the incident and the organisation that is running the home.
Cambodia has launched a crackdown on fake orphanages with the aim of returning 3,500 children to their families. A recent government survey found 16,579 children living in 406 orphanages across Cambodia, 80 percent of whom were not actually orphans. Almost one in five Cambodians live below the poverty line, leading some families too poor to care for their children to send them to orphanages in the hope they will be cared for and get an education. There is also a fear that so-called “orphanage tourism” has exacerbated the problem, incentivising the establishment of unlicensed orphanages to attract donations. Some social workers have appealed to tourists to avoid visiting orphanages to prevent child exploitation. UNICEF, which is working with the government to reunite families, said poverty should not be used as a justification for removing a child from parental care, warning that "Children living in unregulated and uninspected institutions are more at risk of neglect, as well as physical and sexual abuse and trafficking". The report also revealed that almost two in five residential care institutions in the country are not inspected at all by the government, while 12 percent are not even registered.
Refugees and armed conflict
More than 11,000 people have fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and sought refuge in neighbouring Angola following a spike of violence in the Kasai Province. Refugees reported that they were fleeing attacks from militia groups, who are targeting police, military officials, and civilians who they believe are supporting or representing the government. UNICEF staff have reported that hundreds of children have been injured in the violence, with some detained, raped, and even executed. UNICEF reported that 2,000 children were being used by militias and that more than 350 schools had been destroyed during the course of the conflict. The health of children is also a serious concern. UNICEF estimates that one in three health centres in the province are no longer functioning, while the UN refugee agency continues to report children arriving in Angola suffering from diarrhoea, fever and malaria. Two children are reported to have already died from severe malnutrition. The brutal conflict in the previously peaceful Kasai region has displaced more than one million civilians from the country since it began in mid-2016.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for accountability for "abhorrent" acts against children in Syria following a deadly bus bombing. The Committee's statement came in response to an attack on a convoy of crowded buses ferrying out of rebel-held territory, believed to have killed more than 120 people, 60 of them children. Footage of the incident shows children gathering around a person giving out sweets just prior to the explosion. The Committee’s message lamented the fact that, yet again, “children are bearing the brunt of horrific attacks in Syria,” and called for all sides to fully cooperate with those investigating violations of international human rights law in the conflict. About 2.4 million children have been displaced since the start of the conflict and some 280,000 are in besieged areas, according to UN figures cited by Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chair of the Committee.
More than 150 children have died crossing the Central Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy so far this year, according to UNICEF estimates. The true number of dead children is almost certainly higher however, as many children seeking refuge overseas are unaccompanied, meaning their deaths often go unreported. Since the start of 2017, nearly 37,000 refugees and migrants, 13 percent of whom are children, reached Italy by sea via the Central Mediterranean route. This represents a 42 percent increase on the same period last year, despite the grave risks involved in travelling the route. At least 849 people have been lost at sea since January and, during the Easter weekend alone, more than 8,300 people were rescued from the sea between Libya and Italy. The number of unaccompanied and separated children risking their lives on the Central Mediterranean has also dramatically increased, with 1,875 arriving in Italy during January and February this year – a 40 percent increase on 2016.
Sexual abuse
In the United Kingdom, 252 potential suspects and over 560 victims have been identified by officers investigating child sexual abuse at football clubs, police say. A total of 311 football clubs, spanning clubs ranging from amateur to professional, are involved in the inquiry, called Operation Hydrant. The ages of the victims, 96 percent of whom are male, range from four to 20. A hotline was set up to report abuse last year when a number of ex-footballers said they had been victims as youngsters. There have also been reports of widespread abuse in several other sports, including rugby, gymnastics, martial arts, tennis, wrestling, golf, sailing, athletics, cricket and swimming. The governing body of football in the UK, the Football Association, has begun an independent review into its handling of abuse allegations in the years prior to 2005.
A French soldier has gone on trial in Paris for allegedly sexually abusing two girls while he was stationed in Burkina Faso. The man, identified as “Sebastien L”, was part of French forces deployed against Islamist militant groups across five countries in the Sahel region of North Africa. He is alleged to have filmed himself sexually abusing the girls in a hotel swimming pool in Ouagadougou in 2015 and, if convicted, faces a sentence of up to 10 years’ imprisonment. In recent months, French courts have struggled to prosecute soldiers for sexual offences committed while deployed. In January, a judicial panel decided not to bring charges against six soldiers accused of abusing children in the Central African Republic during a peacekeeping mission. For more information on sexual violence committed by peacekeepers against children and attempts to bring perpetrators to justice, see CRIN’s advocacy guide.
The UN has been accused of refusing to cooperate with human rights groups pursuing child support payments for women left pregnant by UN peacekeeping forces in Haiti. Lawyers representing ten women plan to pursue child support cases through civil action, but say they need the UN’s assistance to proceed, as most of the men involved are no longer in the country. A legal firm in Haiti wrote to the UN in August requesting the results of DNA tests administered to some of the women, but has received no reply. However, the UN mission in Haiti has stated that it is in contact with the country’s foreign ministry regarding the cases and is awaiting further details in relation to one of the women. In one case, a soldier, who was repatriated to Uruguay, initially sent $350 when the child was born, but has since stopped sending assistance. Further reports of sexual abuse emerged recently, with claims that 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children from 2004 to 2007, though none were ever imprisoned.
Child trafficking
Cuba should introduce new legislation to ensure that trafficking victims can be identified and helped, according to the UN Special Rapporteur (SR) on trafficking in persons, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro. In a statement concluding a five-day visit to Cuba - the first time a UN expert has visited the country in ten years - the SR called on authorities to take stronger action against offenders, and to extend protections to all children, not just those under 16. The SR noted with concern that although prostitution is not a crime, individuals, including children between the ages of 16 and 18, are often detained in "rehabilitation centres" when being exploited for sex. She recommended that the protection of children from sexually motivated crimes should be extended to everyone under 18 years old. The SR also praised Cuba’s universal and free systems for education, healthcare and social security, saying they helped to reduce the vulnerability of Cuban citizens to trafficking, and welcomed the State’s recently approved National Action Plan to combat human trafficking.
Exploitative recruitment agencies may have trafficked hundreds or thousands of children to Hong Kong, Singapore and other Asian countries to work as domestic workers, rights groups say. Research suggests that there are more than 340,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong alone, at least half of them from the Philippines, with Indonesians making up the next biggest group. Among trafficked workers, children are often the easiest targets for criminal networks in the region, with many sent by their parents to act as a source of income for their family. Many are issued with forged travel documents not knowing they are fake in order to get around restrictions on child labour, and some are at risk of being prosecuted for possessing these forged documents. Campaigners say that Hong Kong in particular needs a comprehensive anti-trafficking law to protect victims and prevent them from being sent to jail when using forged passports from unscrupulous agencies.
In India, approximately 250,000 children are registered as having gone missing between January 2012 to March 2017, according to official figures. But campaigners say these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, as many cases are not registered by parents or the police, and the children are frequently dismissed as runaways. It is believed that most are sold into slavery, but a lack of training of police, child welfare and protection staff, poor inter-agency coordination and public apathy is hampering the battle to locate India's so-called "lost generation". Missing children are so common in India that notices printed in classified sections of India's daily newspapers are buried alongside tender notices and job vacancies, with blurred black and white photos alongside a description and a contact number. Delhi-based anti-trafficking charity Shakti Vahini, claims that up to 70 percent of the missing children found are victims of trafficking and slavery. Most are reportedly trafficked by gangs who lure, transport and sell children on to employers.
Also in India, the discovery of the body of a 12-year-old girl who was trafficked to work as a maid in Bengaluru, has raised fresh concerns about child domestic work. Preliminary investigations suggest the girl had fallen to her death from the ninth floor apartment where she had worked for two years after being sent by a New Delhi-based agency. The child's death has prompted a police investigation to find other girls who may have been recruited by the same agency. There are an estimated 50 million domestic workers in India, most of them women and girls, who are often exploited in the absence of any legal protection, women's rights campaigners say.
Child marriage
The High Court of Bangladesh has demanded that the government show that its new child marriage law is not discriminatory and unconstitutional by early May. The move comes in response to a petition filed by two human rights organisations which claim that the Child Marriage Restraint Act, passed as part of the government’s pledge to end child marriage, contains a provision allowing underage unions in “special circumstances”. The provision was designed to reduce the severe stigma faced by girls who are raped or sexually assaulted, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina defended the law for taking account of the “realities” of rural society. The petitioners argue that the bill will encourage child marriage and lead to girls being forced to marry their rapists, in violation of Bangladesh’s international obligations. The petition comes a month after the first child marriage under the new law was administered in a case involving a girl, now 16, who had developed a relationship years ago with a man, now 25, and fallen pregnant. After their families negotiated a marriage the man refused the proposal, the girl filed a rape case with police and the man was sent to prison. The court later administered the marriage and acquitted the man of the rape charges.
Three child marriage survivors in Indonesia are challenging the country’s 1974 Marriage Law by calling on the Constitutional Court to raise the legal age of marriage for women from 16 to 19, the current minimum age for men. The complainants are three former child brides, now in their thirties, who were forced to marry at the ages of 13 and 14 as a result of financial hardship. The women are represented by Koalisi 18+, a grassroots coalition dedicated to ending child and forced marriage, which unsuccessfully filed a judicial review before the Constitutional Court two years ago. In its judgment of June 2015, the court upheld the 1974 Marriage Law, finding that a higher minimum age would not solve the health and social issues faced by child brides. The coalition hopes its new petition, this time based on survivors’ real-life experiences, will better highlight the damage caused by child marriage to child brides and their children.
A 17-year-old girl has approached the family court in Jodhpur, India to challenge her marriage, contracted by her family when she was 15. Following the death of her grandmother in 2015, the girl was married off to a neighbour in accordance with rural tradition. The girl filed a petition with the court after facing pressure from family members and community leaders to go to her in-laws, who threatened to abduct her when she refused. The prevalence of child marriage in the state of Rajasthan is above the national average, though official surveys show a fall in the percentage of women in the state aged 20-24 who had married before the age of 18, from 65.2 percent in 2005 to 35.4 percent in 2015. The decline may be due to state authorities becoming more proactive in their preventive efforts, mobilising around auspicious days and ritual ceremonies, but many worry that child marriages have simply become harder to detect. Communities often contract the marriage of girls as young as seven, but only send them to their in-law’s homes when they reach the age of 18 in an attempt to circumvent the law.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Education: Childhood Studies and Children’s Rights
Application deadline: 30 April 2017
Dates: October 2017 - February 2019
Location: Potsdam, Germany
Europe: Justice for Children Award
Organisations: DCI and OMCT
Submission deadline: 30 April 2017
Disability: Ensuring rights of children with mental disabilities through capacity building and monitoring
Organisation: Mental Disability Advocacy Centre
Date: 10 May 2017
Location: Brussels, Belgium
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
Conference: Children on the move in southeast Asia
Organisations: Save the Children, Terre de Hommes, the International Detention Coalition & the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network
Dates: 24-25 May 2017
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
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
When it comes to discussing systemic discrimination, inequality and violence against women at the UN, it makes sense to allow only the most experienced experts in the field time to contribute to the debate. In light of this, the election of Saudi Arabia to the UN Commission on the Status of Women actually makes a kind of twisted sense.
No country in the world is even close to Saudi Arabia when it comes to treating women as second class citizens, so perhaps including them will show how far many other members have come. Research on the country’s guardianship system recently demonstrated that adult women must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel abroad, marry, or be released from prison, and may require a guardian’s consent to work or get health care.
We also recently saw how the first meeting of a girls’ council, supposedly focused on giving women more opportunities and equality, was convened by 13 men. If this track record should serve as anything to the UN Commission, it should be a reminder of what States should strive to avoid. |
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