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Claiming back rights: The 'family rights' fallacy

So-called “family rights” organisations recently rallied support for a Human Rights Council resolution on the role of the family. Their resolution supposedly supported the protection and promotion of human rights of older persons - but the resolution has critical blind spots and uses children’s rights to promote an anti-LGBT agenda.

CRIN’s full article responding to the resolution and its supporters is now available here.

LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Abuse in religious institutions

Some so-called orphanages in Haiti are trafficking children with living parents into their institutions to keep donations coming in, according to new research by Lumos. The charity, which advocates for the de-institutionalisation of children, details how “orphanages”, some funded primarily by faith-based organisations, are trafficking children into their institutions through deception, coercion or purchase. In some cases, families had been paid $75 to give their children away, the report said, noting that as many as 80 percent of children in Haitian institutions were not orphans. As part of its research, Lumos interviewed 44 children who had been raised in orphanages as well as former orphanage volunteers, health care workers and government officials. The report adds that there is evidence suggesting sexual abuse of children occurred in orphanages, but that such cases "rarely come to light", with even fewer investigated or prosecuted successfully.

A new independent report has concluded that the Church of England “colluded [with the abuser] rather than seeking to help" those harmed by abuse over a 20-year period. As a result of the report a former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has resigned as an honorary assistant bishop over his role in the handling of high profile sexual abuse cases. Carey quit when the current archbishop of Canterbury asked him to “carefully consider his position” after reports that he failed to take action against Peter Ball, formerly a bishop and a convicted sex offender who preyed on men and boys through the church. The report details Ball’s lack of remorse and tendency towards self-aggrandisement while dealing with allegations of abuse. After Ball’s arrest in 1992, seven letters were sent to Carey raising concerns about Ball’s activities. Only one, which the report noted to be the least damning, was passed to the police.

New accusations of historical sexual abuse have been made against a Catholic priest in Guam, taking the number of complaints in the past year to 78 and the tally of alleged abusers to 14. The territory’s archdiocese has been embroiled in a year-long scandal since last year, when the government removed the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases. In the most recent suit, a man claims he was raped and molested by a now-deceased priest more than 100 times during the 1980s. The lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Agana and 50 others is demanding a jury trial and US$5 million in damages. Among the others accused in the recent surge in cases was the island's archbishop, Anthony Apuron, who is facing a Vatican trial after several former altar boys accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s, when he was a parish priest. Apuron has motioned courts to have some of the historical complaints dismissed, claiming that he will not be able to present a “meaningful defence” so long after the alleged abuse.

Health and humanitarian aid

More than 5.6 million children are at increased risk of contracting waterborne diseases, such as cholera and diarrhoeal infections, as the rainy season begins in conflict-affected areas of countries around Lake Chad. The threat of disease outbreaks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria coincides with growing regional insecurity and increased population movements particularly in Nigeria's north-east, according to UNICEF. Increased rainfall will expose millions of children made vulnerable by conflict to the spread of diseases, while also making humanitarian access more difficult as roads become dangerously muddy or flooded. While insecurity means some resources cannot be sent to the region ahead of time, work is underway to supply Niger, Cameroon and Chad with essential drugs and bars of soap to help prevent and combat cholera outbreaks. Unfortunately, less than 20 percent of the $80 million required to meet urgent needs for water, sanitation and hygiene in the Lake Chad Basin for 2017 has so far been received.

Less than 30 percent of the aid pledged to relieve a series of crises in Yemen has been delivered, leaving millions without the medicine they need to survive a new outbreak of cholera. The disease is spreading so quickly that one child is infected nearly every 35 seconds, according to Save the Children, despite treatment being relatively simple. Many thousands more cholera-related deaths are expected, with 300,000 new cases predicted in the coming months. Of suspected cholera cases, 46 percent are reported to be children under 15 years old. The infectious disease is spreading so quickly in part due to the lack of clean drinking water, a legacy of the ongoing war against Saudi Arabia and its effects on the country’s infrastructure. The war has now killed around 8,000 people, and left an estimated 18.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

Children in armed conflict

The United States has removed Iraq and Myanmar from a list of the world's worst offenders in the use of children as soldiers, disregarding the recommendations of State Department experts and senior diplomats. The list is part of the "Trafficking in Persons" report released annually by the State Department, which ranks countries where children are used as soldiers in governmental or government-supported armed groups. Numerous human rights groups have slammed the decision, with Human Rights Watch (HRW)'s Jo Becker noting that: “Taking Burma and Iraq off the list when they continue to use child soldiers is both contrary to US law and harms children still in the ranks”. Research from the organisation has shown evidence of children being used in the armed forces of Myanmar as recently as 2016, while in Iraq, HRW found that two units recruited children as young as 14 from a camp for displaced persons near Erbil during 2016.

A children’s rights defender has been killed by armed individuals suspected of belonging to national armed forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Alphonse Luanda Kalyamba was the director of an organisation focusing on the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers. In February of this year, Kalyamba was summoned by the Military Prosecutor’s Office and detained for alleged collaboration with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group operating in certain parts of eastern DR Congo. It is believed that the suspicion was as a result of his work with child soldiers. On 10 June 2017, while Kalyamba was detained at Beni prison, the prison was attacked by ADF rebels, and many of the detainees, including Kalyamba, left the prison. On 12 June he contacted the Military Prosecutor’s Office to notify them of his whereabouts and he was told to return to the prison. On his way there he was intercepted by armed individuals who are alleged to have strangled him to death and dumped his body on the side of the road. Front Line Defenders condemned the killing, adding that his murder appeared to be part of a larger pattern of targeting human rights defenders in the country, particularly in North Kivu.
 

Bullying and suicide

New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage suicides in the developed world, at 15.6 per 100,000 people aged 15 to 19, according to a new report by the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti. The rate was substantially higher than the next ranked countries, Lithuania, Finland, Chile and Ireland, and more than eight times worse than the best performing countries, Italy and Portugal. In an average week, two young people kill themselves, and about 20 young people are hospitalised for self-harm, according to the organisation Youthline. Otago University academic Sue Bagshaw works with vulnerable young people and said one of the biggest causes "is marginalisation of young people in terms of casual labour, low wages no jobs". Experts also say the high suicide rate is influenced by a constellation of factors, including socio-economic background, poverty, cultural influences and inequality. UNICEF New Zealand national advocacy manager Prudence Stone said the organisation had been telling successive governments they needed a better strategy for the welfare of children. A draft national suicide prevention strategy has been described as “deeply flawed”.

Eight out of ten young transgender people have self-harmed and almost half have attempted to kill themselves, according to a new study into the experiences of schoolchildren who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) across the United Kingdom. The survey of more than 3,700 LGBT children revealed that while bullying has decreased in the last five years, its impact on young people’s wellbeing and education is profound. The research by Stonewall notes that nine percent of transgender children have received death threats at school, 84 percent say they have self-harmed, and as many as 45 percent have tried to take their own lives. Stonewall’s chief executive, Ruth Hunt, welcomed progress in schools, but said the report should act as “a wake-up call” to schools and politicians, showing how much more still needs to be done to improve LGBT pupils’ experiences. Though schools were found to be much more likely to condemn homophobic bullying than in previous years, fewer than a third of bullied LGBT pupils said teachers intervened when they witnessed the bullying and four out of ten are never taught about LGBT issues at school.

Students across the Philippines experience bullying and discrimination in school because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, Human Rights Watch has said in a new report. While Philippine law provides protections against discrimination and exclusion in schools, lawmakers and school administrators need to take steps to ensure they are fully implemented. The report, ‘Just Let Us Be’, documents the range of abuses against LGBT students in secondary school, detailing widespread bullying and harassment, discriminatory policies and practices, and an absence of supportive resources that undermine the right to education and put LGBT youth at risk. The report involved in-depth interviews and discussions with 98 students and 46 parents, teachers, counsellors, administrators, service providers, and experts on education in ten cities.
 

Education

Research into the effects of privatising education in Liberia has been blocked by the country’s government, despite the Ministry of Education recently striking a deal to hand over management of 50 schools to a private provider. More than 30 academics signed an open letter to George Werner, Minister of Education of Liberia, expressing their concern about his reluctance to permit independent research on privatisation and his “rush” to expand the country’s pilot programme before evidence on its effectiveness is available. Among the providers of “low-cost” private education is Bridge International Academies (BIA), a company which has been hit with numerous lawsuits in other countries over conditions in its schools. In 2016 Werner announced that he was outsourcing the management of 50 schools to BIA. Although this was reduced to 25 schools at first, the company’s funders are hoping BIA will run up to 250 Liberian schools from next year.

Evolution has been deemed too complicated and controversial to be taught in Turkey’s schools, according to senior education officials in the country. Alpaslan Durmuş, who chairs Turkey’s board of education, said that the subject would be removed from the curriculum by 2019 and not taught until undergraduate level. While the final changes have not yet been formally announced, Turkish media has predicted a diminished role in the curriculum for the study of modern Turkey’s secular founder, and an increase in the number of hours devoted to studying religion. Durmuş also said that a greater emphasis would be placed on the contributions of Muslim and Turkish scientists, with history classes moving away from a “Euro-centric” approach. Opposition figures claim that the government is pursuing a covert Islamist agenda which runs contrary to the republic’s founding values.

Stigma against young mothers and victims of sexual violence is being fuelled by Tanzania’s ban on pregnant girls in schools, campaigners claim. Fresh concerns about discriminatory attitudes towards pregnant girls were raised when President John Magufuli’s claimed at a rally last week that "As long as I am president ... no pregnant student will be allowed to return to school". The statement prompted outrage from girls’ rights organisation Equality Now, which noted that denying pregnant girls and new mothers access to education is a clear violation of their rights. The latest research from the Center for Reproductive Rights suggests that more than 55,000 Tanzanian schoolgirls have been expelled from school over the last decade for being pregnant, with the Tanzania Bureau of Statistics recently reporting that the nation has the highest adolescent pregnancy and birth rates in the world.

Kenya has promised free sanitary pads to all schoolgirls to encourage them to go to school during their menstruation, rather than staying at home. Under a new law, the government has now guaranteed all girls "free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels" with a safe place to dispose of them. The law also aims to keep girls in school and out of child marriages or exploitative work. UNESCO estimates that around half of all school-age girls in the world do not have access to sanitary pads, and the stigma still associated with periods in many countries makes them vulnerable to a number of potential rights abuses. Albanous Gituru, director of Shining Hope for Communities, a girls' school in Nairobi's Kibera slum, noted that girls can miss up to 15 days of school each term because they cannot afford sanitary products, adding that "This will give girls confidence to attend class on any day of the month, consequently improving their academic performance."
 

CASE STUDY: State had no right to remove children of blind parents

Two blind parents argued against the removal of their seven children and claimed that the authorities were obliged to provide financial support to help them, all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights.

Read the full case study here.

CRIN’s collection of case studies illustrates different approaches to using the law in children’s rights advocacy. Throughout the world advocates are changing legislation and societies for the better through what is known as strategic litigation - when a case seeks broader impact than simply bringing justice in a case at hand. Looking at how these efforts work in practice, CRIN is interviewing those involved in cases and looking at their outcomes and the impact they created. We will highlight both successful cases and less successful ones - which have still had an impact - to allow advocates to learn from previous efforts to challenge children’s rights abuses.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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

EMPLOYMENT

UNICEF Turkey: Consultancy on Protection for Children
Application deadline: 30 June 2017
Location: Ankara, Turkey

Plan International Thailand: Consultant
Application deadline: 9 July 2017
Location: Negotiable

Conflict Dynamics International: Children & Armed Conflict Program Director
Application deadline: 10 July 2017
Location: Cambridge, United States

Asia-Europe Foundation: Training on Human Rights & Children
Application deadline: 19 July 2017
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

GOOD NEWS