The week in children's rights - 1565

The militant group al-Shabaab has intensified its campaign of child recruitment in Somalia by threatening violence against communities which refuse to hand over their children. Since late September of last year the group has reportedly been ordering elders, teachers in Islamic schools and rural communities to send them children as young as eight years old or face violent attacks. Since then hundreds of children, many unaccompanied, have fled their homes to escape forced recruitment. Some communities have claimed that their only option for protecting their children is to send them to areas outside of al-Shabaab control, often exposing them to difficult journeys, unaccompanied by adults, and through areas where they could be abducted by militants. UNICEF’s research has estimated that there were 1,740 cases of child recruitment in Somalia in the first ten months of 2017.

More than 30 children have been killed in the besieged Syrian enclave of East Ghouta since the start of the year. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children have been trapped in the area since 2013, with some now seeking shelter underground due to the ongoing threat of airstrikes targeting civilian structures. Most health centres have closed in East Ghouta and schools have been operating at a reduced level or not at all for some time. Syrian and Russian forces are alleged to have killed eight children and destroyed or damaged four schools between late October and and early November 2017. In one community where a school was attacked, residents reportedly opened an “alternative” school in the basement of a residential building for greater safety, but an airstrike destroyed the building in December.

Germany’s defence ministry has admitted that it has been recruiting increasing numbers of children into its military. The country’s government disclosed the details in a response to an official request for information. It revealed that the armed forces had been recruiting more under-18s than ever as they continue the transition from a conscription-based to a volunteer military, initiated in 2011. The Defence Ministry said that some 2,128 under-18s had been recruited as volunteers into the military in 2017, including 448 girls, and that 90 of the recruits were still underage at the end of their six-month trial period. The total number of children recruited in 2017 represented a tripling of child recruits since 2011, when the armed forces recruited 689 children. A ministry spokesman explained that young military cadets must be at least 17 years old, and must have permission from their parents or guardians to be enlisted.

A new policy in Malaysia requiring stateless children to have a passport before they can attend school has been challenged by human rights groups which have argued that the policy is depriving stateless children of the right to education. The Society for the Promotion of Human Rights (Proham) challenged the government after reports that a seven-year-old in Seremban had been barred from attending school due to her citizenship application not yet being approved. Proham said international law clearly provides that in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child should always be a primary consideration. “Therefore, to impose a requirement of a passport on a stateless child before a child is allowed to attend school is a preposterous condition and an outright violation of the convention,” it added.

Turkey's main opposition party has called for a parliamentary inquiry after the directorate of religious affairs said that, under Islamic law, girls as young as nine could legally marry. Turkey's legal age of marriage is 18, but the practice of underage weddings in religious ceremonies is widespread. Turkish law also allows 17-year-olds to marry with the consent of their parents or guardian, and 16-year-olds in exceptional circumstances with court approval. The current outcry followed a statement by the state body which said that according to Islamic law, the beginning of adolescence for boys was the age of 12 and for girls the age of nine. The directorate has said on its website that whoever reached the age of adolescence had the right to marry. Though the directorate for religious affairs said it was only defining Islamic law and that it did not approve of early marriages, distrust of the religious affairs body still remains among secular groups. In recent years, Turkey has seen increasing tension between supporters of its secular constitution and those who favour religious conservatism.

A French far-right mayor's decision to scrap substitute meals for students who do not eat pork has been branded “anti-Muslim”. Julien Sanchez, the National Front mayor of Beaucaire, ditched the scheme on the first day of the new school term, resulting in around 150 mainly Muslim pupils losing their “substitution meals”. Marlene Schiappa, France’s minister for sexual equality said the move was a “typical example of someone brandishing secularism as an anti-Muslim political weapon, or anti-Jewish for that matter”. Sanchez insisted the introduction of pork-free meals was “anti-Republican” and a “provocation” because it introduced “religion into school”. The opposition leader in Beaucaire, Laure Cordelet, said the Front National’s decision was "an attack on the rights of the child", which "stigmatises the Maghreb [north African] community and can in no way be justified in the name of secularism”. The controversy follows a similar case in 2015, when the mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône, south of Dijon, scrapped the pork substitute menu in the town’s school canteens.
 

Judges in France investigating alleged sexual abuse of 15 children by French peacekeeping troops in Central African Republic (CAR) have reportedly dismissed the case. The reasons for closing the inquiry have not been made public, but local news reports say investigators did not have enough evidence to bring charges. The accusations emerged in April 2015 after the leak of an internal UN document containing the testimony of six children who claimed they were sexually abused by French soldiers in exchange for rations while at a camp for displaced people near M'Poko airport in the country’s capital, Bangui, in 2014. The decision was met with frustration in CAR where there have been numerous allegations of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers. Meanwhile ECPAT, an organisation that campaigns against the sexual exploitation of children, has said it does not rule out the possibility of appealing the magistrates’ decision.

Thirty-three confidential documents detailing how Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States deal with child abuse allegations appeared online at the start of the month apparently leaked from the organisation’s archives. The documents, which span the late 1990s and 2000s, were published by FaithLeaks, a group pushing for more transparency in religious organisations. Most of the documents are letters between local leaders and the religion’s global headquarters in New York, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. In one case, the documents show that an alleged perpetrator was able to attend a congregation with one of his alleged victims, in violation of a restraining order, while leaders rebuked a member of the congregation for reporting the incident to the police. The new letters provide insight into the organisation’s internal policies, including that accusers require two witnesses or a confession by the abuser for elders (the term used for leaders of a congregation) to look into the allegations. In 2015 the Center for Investigative Reporting found that the Watchtower’s written policies direct leaders to keep sexual abuse allegations away from authorities and to handle them internally.  

The recent rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Pakistan has sparked protests against authorities’ failure to hold perpetrators of child sexual abuse to account. Zainab Ansari, who was kidnapped on her way to her aunt’s house after Quranic studies class, was found dead in a pile of rubbish near her home. She was the eighth child to have been found raped and murdered in the eastern city of Kasur over the past year. The city has been in the spotlight because of high profile sexual abuse cases before, including the 2015 extortion scandal involving some 280 children who were filmed being sexually abused by a gang of men. These men then blackmailed the children's parents by threatening to release the videos. However, activists say that child sexual abuse occurs in all parts of Pakistan, pointing out that much of the abuse occurs in the home, but that the subject is considered taboo. They also condemned the low priority the authorities tend to give crimes of this nature.
 

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