In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Refugees and migrants
- Privacy and digital rights
- Violence and armed conflict
- Sexual abuse and accountability
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Refugees and migrants
The German Medical Association (GMA) has spoken out against proposals to implement compulsory medical examinations for asylum seekers to determine their age, labelling the practice ethically wrong and unreliable. The statement comes in response to a call from the Christian Social Union, a conservative political party in Germany, to carry out compulsory medical procedures including X-rays and dental exams on any asylum seeker who claims to be a child. The GMA has undermined the claim that these tests will help to identify children, highlighting the wide margin of error of age assessments. X-ray tests have been widely criticised for exposing children to unnecessary radiation and do not take into account social, nutritional and environmental differences in development, while dental exams may have a margin of error as wide as five years. The Council of Europe published a report in September last year reviewing age assessment practices across 37 European countries and calling for procedures that respect children’s rights, including ensuring children can refuse medical examinations.
The family of an Afghan girl who was killed by a train after Croatian border police officers forced them to leave the country along a railway track in the dark has filed criminal charges against the officers, alleging that they are responsible for the girl’s death. The lawyer acting for the family alleges that they crossed the border into Croatia where they claimed asylum, but police forced them to return to Serbia along the dangerous route. The officers are accused of negligent homicide as well as abuse of their office and authority. Tajana Tadić, of the NGO Are you Syrious, claims that Croatian authorities have systematically denied protection to refugees that have entered the country and figures from the UN Refugee Agency record 3,000 cases of illegal expulsions from Croatia in 2017. “There is often violence involved, and there are reports of police telling refugees to follow the railway tracks towards Šid, which is the way to Serbia”, commented Tadić.
As many as 36,000 migrant children are in need of assistance in Libya including more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, according to figures released by the International Organization for Migration and UNICEF. During 2017, nearly 15,000 unaccompanied children reached Italy by sea along the perilous central Mediterranean route from Libya to to Europe – their journeys typically facilitated by smugglers and traffickers. UNICEF estimates that more than 400 children died trying to make this trip in 2017, while thousands have suffered abuse, exploitation, enslavement and detention while transiting through Libya.
Privacy and digital rights
Millions of people in northwest China, including children as young as 12, could be entered into a government database which stores DNA samples, fingerprints and eye scans. Authorities in the country’s Xinjiang province claimed that the data collection was an effort to accurately assess the region’s population, but advocates say it is the latest of a series of initiatives to increase surveillance and tracking of the region’s ethnic Uyghur people. The biometric data collected in this scheme will also be linked to a person’s government registration number, which limits where people can access education, medical and housing benefits. While part of the scheme is allegedly designed to improve access to healthcare; DNA and blood type data is to be provided to the police "for profiling”. A report on the situation in early 2017 claimed that in many parts of the country, police officers compelled people neither convicted nor even suspected of a crime to have their blood drawn and DNA taken with virtually no safeguards to protect citizens’ privacy.
The privacy of vulnerable children who leave mainstream education in the United Kingdom could be put at risk by a plan to store more of their data, a coalition of charities, academics and teachers has warned. Sensitive reasons why a child may have left a school including physical or mental health issues, pregnancy or having committed a criminal offence would be recorded under plans to expand a survey of those educated outside the mainstream school system. The planned expansion of the so-called “alternative provision” census could lead to sensitive details being collected without the knowledge of parents and pupils. So far, more than 20 organisations have put their names to the Defend Digital Me campaign demanding a rethink, claiming that there are not enough safeguards to ensure that sensitive data does not end up being passed on to third parties.
Violence and armed conflict
Eleven members of an armed militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were convicted in mid-December of crimes against humanity for the systematic rape of dozens of children in the village of Kavumu in the east of the country, five years after the attacks took place. Around 40 girls aged between eight months and 12 years old were abducted at night and raped by men from the Djeshi ya Yesu (Army of Jesus) militia between 2013 and 2016. Their hymenal blood was collected, as the men were reported to believe that the blood of virgins would grant them supernatural protection. The men were also convicted of murder, being members of a rebel movement, and for illegal weapons possession. The case marks the first time a sitting government official in the Congo, MP Frederic Batumike, whose immunity was waived to stand trial, was found responsible for crimes that he and his militia, whom he controlled and financed, committed. After more than 20 years of conflict, much of eastern DRC is under the control of various militias.
The number of child casualties in the first six years of Syria’s civil war more than doubled over the course of the conflict as a result of increased air bombings in urban areas, according to a study published in the Lancet Global Health. The figures, based on conflict-related deaths recorded by the Violations Documentation Center, show that the proportion of child civilian casualties increased from nine percent of all 4,354 civilian deaths in 2011 to 23 percent of all 11,444 civilian deaths in 2016. Showing how indiscriminate aerial attacks are, the study found that airstrikes and shelling were the cause of 10 percent of targeted opposition fighter deaths compared with 57 percent of civilian deaths. And while male civilian deaths were caused equally by airstrikes, shells, shootings and executions, women and children were mostly killed by shelling and airstrikes. The findings “underscore the highly limited efficacy of shelling and aerial bombing” against intended targets and the “disproportionate lethal impact on civilians, particularly children,” said the study’s lead author. The study follows calls by UN member States in November for an urgent review of military rules of engagement following a record number of civilians killed by explosive weapons in 2016. According to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, the Syrian conflict has reduced life expectancy by up to 20 years.
Landmines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive remnants are the leading cause of conflict-related child casualties in eastern Ukraine along a 500-kilometre strip of land dividing government and non-government controlled areas. All parties to the conflict have used “these gruesome weapons that have contaminated communities and put children in constant danger of injury and death,” said Giovanna Barberis, the head of UNICEF operations in the country. UNICEF says these devices threaten the lives of over 220,000 children in eastern Ukraine, noting that there was one related child casualty every week, on average, between January and November last year. In most cases the casualties occurred when children picked up explosives such as hand grenades and fuses, while many more children have been left with lifelong disabilities. UNICEF is calling on all parties to the conflict to immediately end the use of the lethal weapons and allow mine clearance activities to begin.
Sexual abuse and accountability
Ten Haitian women who say they had children with United Nations peacekeepers have filed legal actions against the UN and individual peacekeepers for child support and paternity claims. The lawsuits, filed by the Haiti-based human rights group Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, are part of a legal battle by Haitian women to force peacekeepers who they say fathered their children to contribute to their upbringing. One of the mothers was 17 when she gave birth, which amounts to statutory rape under Haitian law. UN staff have claimed that responsibility rests solely with the individuals, and not with the UN itself. The UN mission left Haiti in October 2017 after being sent in to stabilise a country plagued by political turmoil more than a decade ago. The mission also introduced a cholera epidemic that killed some 10,000 people and has been dogged by accusations of sexual assault by UN personnel.
A Vatican commission on the sexual abuse of children by priests has effectively lapsed when the last of its members’ terms expired last month. The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was headed by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who claimed that new appointments would be made, but delays have raised concerns that the panel might be disbanded. Just before the final appointment lapsed, panel member and sexual abuse survivor Peter Saunders resigned, citing concerns that the commission had not managed to achieve its stated objectives. Saunders was given “leave of absence” from the commission in February 2016 but refused to resign unless told to do so by the Pope himself. The only other sexual abuse survivor on the panel, Marie Collins resigned in 2016, meaning that Saunders’ resignation left the panel with no abuse survivors in its last few days of 2017.
UPCOMING EVENTS
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
EMPLOYMENT
THE LAST WORD
“This trial demonstrated that justice can be served in the Congo, when an investigation is effectively carried out and evidence is methodically collected – even when the accused wield significant power and are highly organised. It is now the responsibility of Congolese authorities to ensure that such exemplary investigative and prosecutorial measures are adopted nationally to rigorously pursue other cases of sexual violence,”
- Karen Naimer, director of the Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones at Physicians for Human Rights, on the efforts to get redress for victims of sexual violence in Kavumu.
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