In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Sexual abuse and exploitation
- Juvenile justice
- Violence against children
- Refugees and migration
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Sexual abuse and exploitation
Activists have accused Tanzania’s leaders of “promoting a culture of human rights violations” after the president pardoned two high-profile men convicted of raping children. President John Magufuli pardoned the two men - both of whom were convicted of the rape of 10 primary school children - along with thousands of other prisoners, in his independence day speech on Saturday. The move coincided with calls for pregnant schoolgirls to be arrested. The released rapists are singer Nguzu Viking, known as Babu Seya, and his son, Johnson Ngazu, known as Papii Kocha, who were pardoned after serving 13 years of their life sentences. The pair have claimed that their trial was politically motivated and lodged a complaint with the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights. Fazia Mohamed, director of Equality Now’s Africa office, said: “It is unacceptable that convicted child molesters walk free by order of a president who simultaneously denies victims of assault access to education if they become pregnant”. Other groups also voiced their condemnation of the move, claiming that as so few cases make it to court at all, pardoning two high-profile rapists would send a terrible message to affected girls and women.
Nearly 100,000 people in India have called for the government to take action against adults who pay to sexually abuse children. Sex offenders in India can be sentenced to life imprisonment, but the law is rarely applied in cases of children being sexually exploited for profit, campaigners say. The issue was highlighted after a petition started by a member of India’s ruling party gathered widespread support, noting that hardly any adults who pay to sexually abuse children are being punished in the country. Shaina Nana Chudasama, a spokesperson for the Mumbai unit of the party, said that she had heard stories of people abusing children and being let off with a warning from police. Campaigners also pointed to the findings of a study on child sexual exploitation showing that perpetrators often go free, while exploited children are frequently arrested alongside brothel keepers who exploit them.
Juvenile justice
The United States Court of Appeals has ruled that a police officer who photographed a teenage boy’s genitalia as part of an investigation into a sexting case violated the child’s right to privacy under the US Constitution. The 17-year-old had been accused of child pornography offences for sending a sexually explicit video of himself to his girlfriend. As part of the investigation, detective David Abbot obtained a search warrant to take photographs of the boy’s erect penis to compare with the video. The detective is alleged to have ordered the boy to masturbate to achieve an erection in the presence of two other armed police officers so that he could take photographs. The court was clear that this search violated the boy’s right to privacy, finding that they could not “perceive any circumstance that would justify a police search requiring an individual to masturbate in the presence of others”. The court also rejected the claim that the officer was protected by his immunity as a government official, as the officer could not rely on a search warrant that was “objectively unreasonable”.
Police chiefs in England and Wales have said that they may be unlawfully detaining as many as 2,000 people a year who are in need of mental health care, including children. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, a person cannot usually be kept in police detention for more than 24 hours without being charged, but new data has revealed 264 cases in which people were held for longer when judged to be in need of mental healthcare. One of the cases involved a child who was held at a police station for five days. The figures cover three months of 2016 and less than half of police forces in England and Wales, leading the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to estimate that more than 2,000 people may be affected every year. The NPCC has said that mental health services are not available quickly enough, and several police forces have called for an inquiry into the situation by the Care Quality Commission.
The chief magistrate of Meru county, Kenya, has asked authorities to build a juvenile remand centre, so children can finally be held separately from adults in the region. Meru chief magistrate Lucy Ambasi noted that the county has the highest number of juvenile cases before its courts, yet still has no secure facilities in which to hold child offenders separately from adults when taken to court. Ambasi also noted that courts had recently begun to provide pro bono support to all children in the region, with more judges and magistrates being recruited to help clear a backlog of pending juvenile cases. The safety of children in conflict with the law was also highlighted in October, when a police officer allegedly raped a 13-year-old in a police cell. The case raised many questions about the implementation of protection measures, with some noting that the girl should have been guarded by a female officer as detailed in Kenya’s Children Act 2001.
Violence against children
A Samoan Supreme Court Justice has criticised the corporal punishment of children in the same week that the government suggested that the practice could be reintroduced to schools. Justice Vui Clarence Nelson, who also acts as a vice chairperson for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, presented a paper to Youth and Family Violence Forum in Samoa’s capital explaining how corporal punishment continues the cycle of violence, and is leading to violence becoming an accepted norm in Samoa. However, the government has frequently raised the possibility of bringing back corporal punishment to counter violence involving school students, and Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi said legislation was currently being prepared on the issue.
A helpline for children in Fiji has received more than 3,600 calls reporting abuse, violence and neglect since it was established in 2015. Authorities reported that the service took 33,643 calls in total, with many of them believed to either be children testing the service or prank calling it. Medical Pacific Services Fiji director Jennifer Poole said that the sheer number of calls from young people demonstrated that the number was now well known and could be used to report abuse. However, Save The Children Fiji this week revealed that child sexual exploitation and trafficking is rife in the region, and young people often struggle to report abuse to the police as it is a cultural taboo to speak negatively against an elder.
Refugees and migration
The European Commission has said that it plans to take Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to the European Court of Justice over their failure to accept their quota of refugees. This decision comes six months after the Commission launched infringement procedures against the three countries for failing to comply with their legal obligation to accept refugees under the emergency relocation and resettlement scheme they agreed to two years ago. The plan required the three member States to help relocate asylum seekers in Italy and Greece, two countries which have seen a large influx of migrants and refugees escaping persecution and poverty. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were supposed to help resettle a combined total of 10,000 people but, so far, the Czech Republic is the only country out of three that has accepted refugees, despite not relocating anyone since August 2016 or making new pledges for more than a year. The Commission received unsatisfactory responses from the respective governments of the three member States when they asked them why they have not contributed to the relocation of refugees.
Young Rohingya girls who have fled Myanmar are reportedly being forced to marry when they reach Bangladesh to secure more food for themselves and their families. With UN World Food Programme rations allocated by household, girls as young as 12 are being pressured to marry by their families to reduce the number of mouths to feed and to create new households with food quotas of their own. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since the military launched its first round of “clearance operations” in October last year, while 600,000 have been displaced since the second wave in August, which the UN has condemned as “ethnic cleansing”. Medics in Bangladesh say young girls have been a particular target of sexual violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. While early marriage is practised in Rohingya communities in Myanmar, the girls said food rations were a major factor in the decision to get married in the camps.
The rights, protection and wellbeing of migrant and refugee children should be central commitments of global migration policies, UNICEF has said in a new report. The agency highlights best practices for the children’s care and protection, and includes examples of governments, civil society partners and host communities working to support and integrate them and their families. The report calls for the end of detention for children seeking refugee status or migrating by introducing a range of practical alternatives, and advocates for keeping families together as the best way to protect children and give children legal status. It also notes that all refugee and migrant children should have access to education, health care and other services, as well as emphasising the importance of combating xenophobia, discrimination and marginalisation in countries of transit and destination. The publication marks a step towards drafting a Global Compact for migration, which will be the first inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all aspects of international migration.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Call for projects: 49th Summer School on Human Rights Defenders
Organisation: The René Cassin Foundation
Submission deadline: 15 December 2017
Location: Global
Call for contributions: Examples of child-friendly information for children in migration
Organisation: Council of Europe
Submission deadline: 20 December 2017
Location: Global
Conference: The impact of children’s rights education and research on policy development
Organisation: CREAN
Registration deadline: 8 January 2018
Dates: 18-19 January 2018
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Call for papers: World Congress on Justice for Children
Organisation: Terres des hommes et al.
Submission deadline: 26 January 2018
Date: 28-30 May 2018
Location: Paris, France
Education: International Children’s Rights
Organisation: Leiden University
Application deadline: 1 April 2018 (non-EU) / 15 June 2018 (EU students)
Dates: September 2018 - Summer 2019
Location: Leiden, The Netherlands
EMPLOYMENT
THE LAST WORD
“The problem with adverts of this kind is that, by denying viewers any context as to who 'the victims' are, or the structural factors that have contributed to their situation, they give the impression that the suffering is inevitable. It is not.”
- Writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch on the ‘white saviour’ narrative in Christmas charity appeals.
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