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In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Sexual abuse and exploitation
- Refugees and migrants
- Health and nutrition
- Child marriage
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Sexual abuse and exploitation
The Catholic church in Guam may resort to selling a number of its 41 "non-essential" properties to settle 91 alleged cases of sexual abuse. During a press conference church officials stated that the Diocese was aiming to settle the cases out of court, but would need to sell off assets to fund a programme of counselling, therapy and compensation. From an initial list of 300 properties believed to have been owned by the church, officials narrowed the list to 41, which are now “on the block”. Guam’s tourism authority claims there are more than 24 Roman Catholic churches on the Pacific island, and the list of properties now potentially on sale includes a former high school, residential plots and at least one beachfront lot. The scale of the country’s child sexual abuse scandal has been growing since March 2017 when Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron was accused of having sexually abused minors. The Archbishop reportedly left the Island in May and was suspended from his post by Pope Francis on 6 June 2017, after former altar boys publicly accused him of sexual abuse and rape.
New evidence that a contractor for the classified advertising website Backpage.com actively solicits sex-related advertisements has been revealed by a company in the United States in an unrelated legal dispute. Among the sex ads posted on the site are those for underage boys and girls, authorities and advocacy groups have said. The Washington-based business alleged that a company in the Philippines was stealing their content and, after taking out a court order, seized documents showed that the company in question, Avion, also worked for Backpage. A trove of emails, audio logs and spreadsheets detailed how workers in the Philippine call center scoured the internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them, offering a free ad on Backpage.com. The documents also showed how Avion’s staff created fake adverts on competitor’s websites, and used them to lure potential clients to real sex-related ads on Backpage. The site has faced intense scrutiny and criticism recently, having been the subject of a US Senate investigation into sex trafficking, and after being linked to numerous cases involving children being trafficked and sexually abused.
A new report from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has revealed an unusually high prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence against children and young adults in Haiti. The MSF report showed that 53 percent of patients seen in its Pran Men’m clinic were under 18, with most having been raped or subjected to other types of sexual abuse. A staggering 80 percent of the young victims knew their attacker, with 11 percent alleging sexual abuse from a member of their own household. One in five of MSF’s child patients at the clinic also reported that they had previously been exposed to sexual or gender-based violence. The organisation called for more preventative measures to be taken, for easier access to emergency contraception and vaccines for victims, for sexual and gender-based violence prevention programmes targeting children and young adults to be reinforced, and for sexual education to be better included in primary and secondary school curricula.
Refugees and migrants
The number of displaced civilians from the Kasaï region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached 1.3 million, according to the latest figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Many fleeing violence in the region are doing so through dense forest without food, drinking water, medicine or clothes and are reaching neighbouring communities with machete and gunshot wounds. New arrivals show signs of deep trauma, but there is a lack of psycho-social support, the agency says. UNHCR reports that the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation is particularly worrying, with children left without proper foster care arrangements. Attempts to meet the needs of unaccompanied and displaced children are underway, though only 700 have so have been reunited with their families.
More than seven million children across West and Central Africa are uprooted from their homes every year because of violence, poverty and climate change, according to a new UNICEF report. Based on a series of interviews with migrants and their families, the report addresses the complex reasons that cause children and their families to leave home, beyond poverty. Fewer than one in five of these children are heading to Europe or elsewhere, leading UNICEF to call for a wider approach to children affected by migration. The report also raises the threat posed by insufficient protection systems, within and across borders, to protect children who leave their homes. “We must broaden the discussion on migration to encompass the vulnerabilities of all children on the move and expand systems to protect them, in all their intended destinations,” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF’s director for the region while launching the report.
The Children’s Commissioner for England has written to the EU’s chief negotiator and the UK’s minister responsible for leaving the EU calling for clarity on the residency rights of EU nationals living in the United Kingdom. Almost 600,000 children in England are EU nationals without British citizenship, more than half of whom were born in the country. The implications of the negotiations for children are huge and will determine whether children will be forced to leave school, friends and family members. The letter to the EU calls for the issue of the residency rights of children to be resolved early in the negotiation process, while the British government is asked to set out proposals on specific issues, including citizenship rights, whether children’s eligibility for residency will be reliant on that of their parents, and the ability of children to study overseas.
Health and nutrition
The UN has warned that more than 80,000 children under the age of fiveliving in western Myanmar are “wasting” from hunger, a condition of rapid and potentially fatal weight loss, and will need treatment for acute malnutrition over the next 12 months. The report from the World Food Programme (WFP) was based on an assessment of villages in the majority-Muslim Rakhine state, where an army crackdown has caused more than 75,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee. Those who remain are facing a food crisis, with one third of homes in Maungdaw, a district particularly affected by the violence, experiencing extreme food deprivation. A quarter of all households assessed by the WFP included only female adults, as a large number of men had left due to the military campaign, and these households had the highest frequency of episodes of severe hunger. The assessment found that no child under the age of two met minimum adequate dietary requirements, and that 225,000 people were in need of humanitarian assistance. In October last year, alleged Rohingya militant attacks on border police sparked government retaliation, which some observers have claimed amounts to ethnic cleansing. Last month Myanmar said it would refuse entry to members of a UN investigation focusing on allegations of killings, rape and torture by security forces against Rohingya Muslims.
Weaknesses in the public health system in Brazil risk a fresh outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Published two months after the government declared that the virus was no longer an emergency, the report asserts that the underlying conditions that caused the outbreak to be so damaging have not been addressed. The report also highlighted the need for better information and access to contraception and safe abortion, which is illegal in most cases. Zika was first identified in Brazil in 2014 and spread rapidly throughout the country, with 191,992 cases in 2016 and 9,351 new cases by May this year. Brazil’s ministry of health said that Zika was responsible for the majority of the 2,753 cases of the microcephaly birth defect which causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads leading to cognitive and learning difficulties. According to the World Health Organization, 35 million people in Brazil do not have adequate sanitation and 3.8 million people do not have access to safe drinking water.
Eleven teenagers have died as a result of botched circumcisions within two weeks of the winter initiation season in South Africa. According to the Provincial Department of Traditional Affairs, all of the deaths occurred in Eastern Cape province, a known hotbed of circumcision-related deaths. Viewed as a sacred practice by some communities in the country, many boys undergo circumcision as part of an initiation ritual, as the practice is considered to mark boys’ transition into adulthood and many undergo the procedure as part of their initiation. The government has struggled to regulate the practice, despite having launched a “Zero Deaths” campaign and imposing requirements for initiation schools, including holding permits and imposing mandatory training for traditional circumcisers. Despite the measures, more than 70 initiates died at initiation schools last year, with scores of others hospitalised in Eastern Cape alone, according to the Community Development Foundation of South Africa, which deals with the safety of initiates. Estimates suggest that there have been at least 1,000 penile amputations over the last ten years as a result of botched circumcisions.
Child marriage
The parliament of Honduras has raised the minimum age of marriage to 18, replacing a previous law that had allowed children to marry at 16 if they had their parents' approval. The bill was passed unanimously by 128 legislators from seven parties and is stricter than laws in most European Union nations. In Honduras, one in four girls aged 14 to 19 becomes pregnant at least once, and at least 40 percent of women have experienced gender-based violence. The rate of female homicides, known as femicide, is 14.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, with the majority of victims being girls, teenagers and younger women. Campaigners have expressed optimism that other countries in Latin America might follow the example set by Honduras and remove exceptions to the law where parental permission is given. Lawmakers in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, which also have high rates of child marriage, are believed to also be considering similar reforms.
Youth entertainment broadcaster MTV is launching new drama series in Egypt and India to generate debate on issues often seen as taboo, including female genital mutilation, child marriage and sex work. "We will be using gripping plots based on true stories from young people so that we can de-stigmatise issues, debunk unhelpful stereotypes and catalyse social change," said Georgia Arnold, head of MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation. Both series will also include plotlines around family planning and gender-based violence. The dramas follow the successful MTV series “Shuga”, aired in 40 African countries, which emphasised the importance of contraception and family planning, and which studies showed made its viewers twice as likely to get tested for HIV. Egypt has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world, and progress on reducing child marriage has stalled, with the practice rising in some regions. In India, thousands of girls are sexually exploited, often by traffickers who lure them with promises of good jobs or marriage.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Funding opportunity: FRIDA - Climate & environmental justice grants
Application deadline: 23 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
Date: 9-11 October 2017
Location: Honolulu, United States
EMPLOYMENT
UNICEF Turkey: Consultancy on Protection for Children
Application deadline: 21 July 2017
Location: Ankara, Turkey
LEAK OF THE WEEK
The Catholic Church, and particularly the Vatican, are well known for their magnificent cathedrals, collections of golden ornaments and for owning one of the world’s largest art collections, all topped off with a dollop of extra funding from a community of believing donors worldwide.
Sadly this does not seem to be enough to meet the needs of the modern clergy, avowed to live “a life of simplicity”, but this week caught up in scandals alleging misuse of funds and detailing the locations of hundreds of properties on a tiny Pacific island.
While the situation in Guam has already been reported in this newsletter, a special mention must go to Vatican prosecutors going after the former President and Treasurer of the Holy See’s own children’s hospital. The pair are accused of using 422,000 Euros from the hospital’s fundraising foundation to renovate a cardinal's apartment. Must be one hell of a redecoration. Perhaps he so admires the Sistine Chapel ceiling that he wanted to recreate it?
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