The week in children's rights - 1551

A man in France who had sexual intercourse with an 11-year-old girl will not face rape charges after prosecutors deemed the girl had consented. The 28-year-old man met the girl in a park in a Paris suburb and convinced her to go back to his apartment, where he is accused of sexually abusing her. Her family insisted that the man be charged with rape, as the girl was "paralysed" by fear and "unable to defend herself". But prosecutors decided to only charge the man with sexual abuse of a minor (atteinte sexuel) on the basis that “there was no violence, no constraint, no threat, and no surprise" on the part of the man to justify the charge of rape. Critics say French law supports this reasoning in adult cases, but it does not take into account cases of children under 15, which is the age of sexual consent. One expert on similar cases said “submitting was not consenting”, and that rape victims sometimes “switch off”. Some rights groups have called for the French legal system to introduce a legal age under which sexual consent is never presumed. Ruling on a similar case in 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court said that age difference, the evolution of a relationship, and the older person’s degree of control or influence over the younger are important factors in determining consent.

Reports of suspected child abuse in Japan have reached a record high in the first half of 2017, exceeding the 30,000 mark for the first time since comparable data became available in 2011. According to the National Police Agency, the increase in reported cases may be due to increased public awareness, prompting people to notify authorities of potential child abuse. The number of children who suffered psychological and verbal abuse accounted for more than 70 percent of the total at 21,406. Among them, the number of those who witnessed acts of violence in their homes increased fivefold to 13,859 from the first half of 2012. The figure for physical abuse stood at 5,723, neglect at 3,036, and sexual abuse at 97. Child victims in criminal cases stood at 519, including 27 deaths. Criminal investigations were launched mostly on physical abuse cases. In 61 out of the 72 sexual abuse cases, a family member was the alleged perpetrator.

Tanzania’s Attorney General George Masaju has appealed against the July 2016 High Court ruling raising the minimum age for girls to marry from 15 to 18. The court had struck out Sections 13 and 17 of the Law of Marriage Act which allowed girls to marry at the age of 14 with court consent and at 15 with parental consent, whereas for boys the minimum age was 18. Masaju filed his appeal at the Court of Appeal this month, in which he argues that the High Court erred in its judgement by equalising the marriage age of boys and girls and declaring Sections 13 and 17 of the 1971 Law of Marriages Act irrelevant in today’s era. The appeal also challenges the ruling that customary and Islamic laws do not apply in matters of marriage stated in the law. The organisation Girls Not Brides labelled the move by the Attorney General as ‘disappointing’.

More than half of all schools in Nigeria’s Borno state remain closed, with three million children estimated to be in need of emergency education support, UNICEF has said. Borno is at the epicentre of the country’s conflict with Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has resulted in more than 2,295 teachers being killed, and 19,000 being displaced across the region since 2009. Almost 1,400 schools have been destroyed with the majority unable to reopen due to extensive damage or because they are in areas that remain unsafe. The use of children as human bombs has sown a climate of mistrust among communities in the northeast, and a cholera outbreak has affected more than 3,900 people, including over 2,450 children. “In addition to devastating malnutrition, violence and an outbreak of cholera, the attacks on schools are in danger of creating a lost generation of children, threatening their and the country's future,” UNICEF said in a statement.

As the 2017-2018 school year begins, more than 1.5 million children across West and Central Africa are at risk of going to school hungry or dropping out altogether, due to the lack of financing for nourishing school meals, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has said. With a funding gap of $76 million for its regional programme, the WFP has had to drastically shrink its coverage, despite being the sole or main provider of school meals in many areas of the region. The repercussions of this meal shortage are dramatic, since the WFP-provided lunches and snacks are the only meal many children eat all day. “This is a crisis for education, but also a crisis for nutrition and food security which are the fundamental pillars of development,” said Abdou Dieng, West and Central Africa Regional Director of the WFP. Studies show the meals help improve attendance and performance rates. They are also a key incentive for parents to send their children – particularly girls – to school and to keep them there.

A tribunal in Melbourne, Australia, has ruled that a Christian school unlawfully discriminated against a young Sikh boy, when it refused to accept him as a student if he wore his traditional headwear. In keeping with his family's religion, the five-year-old has never cut his hair and wears a traditional patka on his head. His parents applied to enrol him at Melton Christian College in 2016, but the school told them that its uniform policy required boys to have short hair and not wear headwear from a non-Christian faith. The child’s father alleged the school's decision disadvantaged his son on the basis of his religious beliefs while the school argued it had not prevented the child from enrolling and had only told the family he would have to comply with the uniform policy. Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal member Julie Grainer ruled that the school had excluded the boy from enrolling, and had "indirectly discriminated" against him, in contravention of the Equal Opportunity Act. The tribunal is yet to decide what orders, if any, will be made following her ruling.
 

More than 40 million people, mostly women and girls, were trapped as slaves last year, according to a joint effort to quantify the number of victims worldwide by anti-slavery groups. An estimated 24.9 million people were trapped in forced labour while 15.4 million others were trapped in forced marriages. Almost one quarter of slaves were children, while three quarters were women and girls. The report shows modern slavery to be most prevalent in Africa, followed by Asia and the Pacific. Unlike previous estimates, the findings explicitly include people forced into marriage, seen to be a kind of sexual slavery but often excluded from discussions about modern slavery. A separate report released by the International Labour Organization showed 152 million children to be working, with almost half of those engaged in hazardous work. The anti-slavery groups have called for stronger labour rights, improved governance of migrants, action to address root causes of debt bondage, and better victim identification. The findings were based on surveys conducted in 48 countries and interviews with more than 71,000 people.