The week in children's rights - 1548

Research undertaken by the UN has concluded that poverty and state violence, not religion, are driving young Africans to join militant groups. Researchers interviewed nearly 500 fighters, many of whom were recruited as children, with around 70 percent reporting that the arrest or killing of a friend or relative by security forces was their “tipping point”. The study highlights how marginalisation and neglect, usually starting in childhood, combined with few economic prospects or outlets for meaningful civic participation drive people towards extremist groups. The study also suggests that a better understanding of religion can make people less susceptible to recruitment by extremists. Among those interviewed, receiving at least six years of religious schooling was shown to reduce the likelihood of joining an extremist group by as much as 32 percent. Additionally, although more than half of the interviewees cited religion as a reason for joining an extremist group, 57 percent had not read religious texts, or understood little to nothing of them.

An Indonesian school with 200 students has been accused of harbouring and possibly encouraging children and teachers who have travelled to fight for the so-called Islamic State (IS) group. A Reuters investigation found that at least 12 people went on from the Islamic boarding school, known as Ibnu Mas’ud, to attempt to fight for IS between 2013 and 2016. Four were students, and Reuters said it had viewed a YouTube video in which the school’s principal endorsed the ultra-conservative strand of Islam known as Salafism, which links militant groups like IS and Al-Qaeda. In the video, Principal Masyahadi reportedly said: “Ibnu Mas’ud ensures that Muslim children are preoccupied with efforts to understand their religion correctly so they become a generation that understands the religion and will fight for the religion”. The facility hosts students aged from around five to fifteen years old and while government sources confirmed it was not registered as a school, no action has been taken to shut it down since it opened ten years ago.

Dozens of boys from Afghanistan have been returned from Taliban training camps near the country’s border with Pakistan. Afghan forces freed around 40 children during multiple raids near the border, with many reportedly recruited from poor families after militants promised to provide them with a religious education. Boys as young as four were among those being trained as fighters, or groomed for use as human bombs. Some children reported being kidnapped and given drugs which made them “dizzy and confused” during their ordeals, while others were paraded alongside their abductors in front of the media after they were rescued, with total disregard for their needs as victims. The use of children as combatants in Afghanistan was highlighted last year when it was reported that that the Taliban was training and deploying children for various military operations, including the production and planting of improvised explosive devices.

A study of 93 schools in Liberia has shown that low-cost private school operator, Bridge International Academies, is not fulfilling its learning promises and is violating ethical principles. The independent research adds to concerns about Bridge’s operation and expansion plans raised in previous studies, which the company has repeatedly dismissed as biased. According to the research, Bridge schools have only achieved limited gains in learning for children, despite allegedly pushing out teachers and carrying out mass-expulsions of students. Civil society groups opposed to Bridge claim that the company tries to skew results by pouring large sums of money into selected schools in an unsustainable way, while failing to replicate results in other schools. A statement signed by 174 organisations published last month called on investors to cease all investments in Bridge International Academies and to take immediate steps to addressing the issues identified with their business model.

In Zimbabwe, cash-strapped parents and guardians who are unable to afford school fees have resorted to offering livestock and their manual labour to keep their children in education. Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector is in sharp decline and cash circulation has plummeted, resulting in 13,000 pupils dropping out of school due to unpaid fees. Zimbabwe’s education minister told the state-controlled weekly newspaper the Sunday Mail that schools needed to be “flexible”, allowing local people to work for them or trade animals instead of paying fees in cash. However, some civil society groups have criticised these alternative payments as “archaic”. The practice “decimates local people’s social and economic traditional fabric”, said Robson Chere from the Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe. The union puts the number of parents and guardians with children in school at 4.5 million countrywide, and estimates that 60 percent have resorted to using livestock and their own labour as a way of paying school fees.

Under reforms made over the summer, girls in Saudi Arabia will be able to take part in physical education in state schools for the first time. As with driving, sports and exercise have long been off-limits to women and girls in the country, including watching sports in a public stadium. The country’s ministry of education said that physical education classes for girls will be introduced “gradually” and “in accordance to Islamic Shariah regulations”. With sports being off-limits to women for so long, the country has few qualified trainers or sports instructors, and physical spaces for women to exercise or play sports are virtually non-existent. Women are still banned from driving in Saudi Arabia, presenting an obvious obstacle to taking part in team training or sports events. The country has more than a hundred national or international sports federations for men in sports such as soccer, volleyball and basketball, but still no federations at all for women or girls.

In the Karachi region of Pakistan, the electricity supply to 1,457 schools has been disconnected, after the local government has failed to pay suppliers or allocate funds in its annual budget to clear its arrears. Despite promises to the electricity providers to pay the outstanding bills, the local government did not deliver, and the schools have been cut off from the grid until payment is received. The incident is the latest illustration of the problems facing the education system in the region. More than half of schools in the Karachi area are functioning without electricity. There has been a fall of 50 percent in school enrolment in the last ten years and a lack of basic facilities, combined with a shortage of qualified teaching staff, has resulted in a steep decline in education standards.

CASE STUDY: First steps taken on ending anti-Roma discrimination in schools

Roma children in the Czech Republic are often segregated in schools, unfairly labelled as “mentally disabled” and shunted into “special” classes or schools. In 1999, D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic became the first case in Czech history to seek an end to this discrimination. In 2007, after a series of rulings and appeals, the European Court of Human Rights called the practice what it is: racial discrimination.

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.