The week in children's rights - 1574

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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Right to vote

New Zealand must discuss lowering the voting age to 16, according to the country’s Children’s Commissioner. Giving evidence to a parliamentary committee, Andrew Becroft said his biggest concern was that children’s voices are not being heard, describing them as ”the only group without a voice,” and made the case for allowing children to vote. Tackling arguments that young people are among the least engaged in the country’s political process, Becroft said a lower voting age should go hand in hand with better civics education to teach young people about their rights and democratic responsibilities. “Children, by which I mean under 18-year-olds, are 23 percent of our population and they have no other way of influencing policy,” he said. “If they voted and had a lobby I’m quite convinced our policy for under-18-year-olds would significantly improve.” Lowering the voting age has been on the political agenda in New Zealand for more than a decade. Green MP, Sue Bradford, put forward a bill to reduce the age of voting in 2007, but the idea has yet to achieve mainstream support.

A legislator in Ontario, Canada has proposed a bill that would lower the voting age in the province to 16. Putting forward the proposal, Arthur Potts, a Liberal member of Ontario’s legislative assembly, argued that young people need to be more engaged in the political process and that allowing them to vote when they are still in school would help ensure high registration, interest and participation. However, the bill is unlikely to find the necessary parliamentary time to be passed, as Ontario’s legislature has elections scheduled for June, but Potts has said he sees the bill as “an important first step”.

Globally, 23 countries currently allow some children aged 16 or older to vote in local or national elections. For more information on the debate around children’s right to vote, see CRIN’s latest report, What Lies Beneath.

Public health

In an effort to contain Brazil’s largest yellow fever outbreak in more than three decades, the health ministry has said it is considering extending routine vaccination to all citizens, announcing it will offer the vaccination to all children in the country starting later this year. Yellow fever vaccinations were previously only routine in certain parts of the country where the disease is endemic. But the virus has been advancing in recent years, and this is the second outbreak in two years in places where vaccinations were not routine. Less than a decade ago, there were fewer than ten recorded cases each year, but during the 2016-2017 outbreak more than 770 people were infected, and in the current outbreak there have already been 846 confirmed cases, of which 260 have died. Nearly six weeks into the vaccination campaign, only 76 percent of the target population has been vaccinated - far off the health ministry’s goal of 95 percent. The government is also working to increase the public’s trust in the vaccine amid rumours about its effectiveness and stories of people getting sick after being vaccinated. But health experts say that in the face of a possible epidemic, the vaccine is the best defence.

Around 90 percent of toys sold in Armenia have not been subject to safety tests, a government official has reported. According to Artur Mkrtchyan, the deputy head of the State Market Surveillance Inspectorate, the presence of a certificate means that toys have undergone laboratory tests and are safe for children to play with. In 2016, out of 59 companies importing toys to Armenia, only four had appropriate certificates, while in 2017 it was 14 out of 76 companies, Mkrtchyan pointed out. According to a 2017 survey, 11 percent of business representatives said they did not know that the consumer has the right to demand toy safety certificates, 43 percent said they were not aware that each lot of toys should be subject to certification, and 86 percent considered certification a burden. Authorities have given the bodies which provide toy safety certificates until April 2018 to address the problem.

Violence

Teenage Rohingya girls living in refugee camps in Bangladesh are being trafficked into sexal exploitation, according to a BBC investigation. The news agency, alongside the NGO Foundation Sentinel which trains the police on combating child exploitation, found there is a network of traffickers, pimps, brokers and transporters operating between the camps and the nearest city, Cox’s Bazar, and further afield. Tales of trafficking in the refugee camps are rife, with women and children lured with the promise of better opportunities. Children and parents told the BBC they were offered jobs abroad and in the capital Dhaka as maids, hotel staff and kitchen workers. In actual fact, many of the girls live with pimps' families, and when they are not with a client they act as domestic servants. "We don't keep the girls for long,” one pimp said. “Mostly Bangladeshi men come for them. They get bored after a while. Younger girls cause more of a fuss, so we get rid of them," he said. The BBC also found examples of Rohingya children taken further north to Chittagong and Dhaka, and even as far as Kathmandu in Nepal and Kolkata in India. In Kolkata's sex industry, the BBC says the girls are given Indian identity cards.

In the United Kingdom, the national public inquiry into child sexual abuse is considering whether to conduct a separate investigation into the Jehovah’s Witnesses national branch after receiving a “considerable number” of complaints about the religious organisation. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which is examining whether institutions in England and Wales failed to protect children from sexual violence, has so far focused on the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, but not other religious organisations. Victims’ representatives and campaigners claim that practices within the Jehovah’s Witnesses UK compromised child safety, including alleged victims apparently requiring two witnesses to report the abuse internally, as well as being told not to approach the police. Fear of being shunned if one reports alleged abuse is also a concern, with those who are excluded from the faith being cut off from their family and friends, making coming forward too great a risk to consider.

The French government has announced plans to set the age of sexual consent at 15, following public outcry over high profile cases in which men were acquitted or did not face rape charges for engaging in sexual intercourse with girls as young as 11. Currently, adults who commit sexual acts with a child under the age of 15 in France can be charged with a number of sexual offences, but prosecutors in rape cases must prove that the sex was forced, which can be a barrier to prosecuting people for raping children. Announcing the reform, equality minister Marlene Schiappa said that the law will mean that “below a certain age there can be no debate, ever, on the sexual consent of a child, and that any child below a certain age would automatically be considered as raped or sexually assaulted.” The new age limit is part of a series of law reforms aimed at combating sexual violence and sexism and is due to be approved by the government in the coming weeks.

Censorship in schools

In Azerbaijan, a school principal has admitted firing a teacher for promoting peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia in front of his pupils. Rovshan Azizov, an English teacher since 2005, had been a prominent voice in calling for peace between the two countries, often experiencing harassment by nationalist groups. His dismissal came after he made a film with his pupils openly calling for friendship between children from the two countries. An official statement provided by the Baku City Board of Education attempted to justify the dismissal by saying the film was “inappropriate for the education and moral and psychological development of students”. Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a stalemate over the future of the contested Nagorno Karabakh region, and the conflict has seen discrimination in the Azerbaijani education system, including textbooks referring to Armenians as terrorists, fascists, bandits, separatists, enemies and villains.

In the United States, a teacher who sought to improve how a school supported LGBTQ students has been placed on administrative leave after asking education officials to update the district's anti-discrimination policy to address anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The three-paragraph letter sent to the teacher did not disclose a reason for the disciplinary action or the basis for an investigation. She was, however, instructed to "make no contact with students, parents or other staff members," or to discuss her "administrative leave situation with others." She was also told not to access any school technology, her office or department, the letter said. The suspension of the teacher angered many current and former students and their parents, resulting in 40 people attending a recent school board meeting to voice support of the teacher. “She brings diversity to this classroom that is lacking in so many schools and in so many districts today,” one parent told the board.

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