The week in children's rights - 1576

In this issue:

LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Best interests

Migrant and refugee children in Europe are not being adequately informed about why their biometric data is collected by authorities, and some countries may be using force to obtain it. New research from the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency has shown that little effort is taken to inform children in a child-friendly manner, in accordance with their age and maturity, about why they are being fingerprinted. The research also notes that some authorities have resorted to using force against children, with certain EU Member States detaining people who refuse to provide fingerprints. The report also describes how recording young children’s fingerprints and facial photos affects the quality and reliability of future matches to those fingerprints and faces, noting that the risk of a wrong match increases when they are compared more than five years after they were taken. Some asylum seekers are so mistrustful of the EU’s efforts to collect fingerprints, possibly believing they will be shared with their country of origin, that they are believed to have injured their own fingertips to avoid the collection of biometric data.

The children of migrant construction workers in Thailand are exposed to violence and abuse in hazardous living conditions, according to a new study from UNICEF. Besides physical abuse and limited access to healthcare and education, the 60,000 or more migrant children living in construction site camps in the country are particularly vulnerable to child labour. Nearly a third of the children surveyed by UNICEF said they had started working before the legal minimum age of 15, while nine out of ten children reported that they have either witnessed adults fighting or have experienced some form of physical violence from their parents or guardians. The construction industry is the top employer of migrant workers in Thailand, with women from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos making up about 40 percent of the nearly 600,000 documented migrants in the sector, according to the International Labour Organization.

Health and education

Ireland’s education chief has ordered a review of sex education in schools to assess how issues such as consent, contraception, and LGBT issues are addressed. Education minister Richard Bruton said that Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE), which is compulsory for both primary and secondary students, should be fit for purpose, explaining that some elements of the curriculum are decades old and sometimes not taught properly. To this end, Bruton wrote to the National Council on Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) asking it to consider certain areas in particular in its review. Bruton has asked that the assessment also look at healthy and positive sexual expression and relationships, safe use of the internet, and social media and its effects on relationships and self-esteem. Bruton said: “Every student has a right to access information about sexual health, relationships and sexuality, and this must be delivered in a factual manner in every school.”

Twenty-three children from the same school were hospitalised in Russia two weeks ago with signs of poisoning linked to toxic fumes from a nearby landfill. City officials from Volokolamsk, outside Moscow, confirmed that the children were suffering the effects of inhaling hydrogen sulfide and chlorine released into the air by the Yadrovo landfill. Their symptoms included nausea, dizziness, vomiting, nosebleeds, fainting, and difficulty breathing. Despite the apparent health risk, schools across Volokolamsk have remained open. Yadrovo was built in 1979 to process waste from Volokolamsk, but it was privatised in the early 2010s and expanded to process rubbish from neighbouring regions and Moscow. Residents claim authorities are hiding the extent of the pollution, while local media have dubbed the town a "mini-Chernobyl". The press secretary for the owners of Yadrovo said the volume of rubbish going into the dump is currently three times higher than its capacity following the closure of another landfill site east of Moscow. Protests were also held in March against landfills and trash incineration plants in the Moscow suburbs of Sergiev Posad, Balashikha and Troitsk, all complaining about toxic fumes and air pollution.

Latvia’s president has approved amendments to the country’s education legislation which will make Latvian the official language of instruction in all schools. According to 2016 government data, 811 Latvian schools are state-funded, including 94 schools where the teaching is in Russian or is bilingual. Despite the country’s official language being Latvian, most of the country’s ethnic Russians — almost a quarter of the country’s population — are taught in Russian for the bulk of their teaching in ethnic minority schools. Under the new amendments, all state-run schools will start the gradual transition to Latvian-only secondary education from 2019. The aim is that 50 percent of general education subjects be taught in Latvian in grades 1-6, 80 percent in grades 7-9, and 100 percent in grades 10-12. Children of ethnic minorities will still be able to study their native language, literature and subjects related to culture and history in their respective minority language. President Raimonds Vējonis said the changes aim to “provide equal opportunities for all young people to obtain quality education and build their lives in Latvia in order to study and work here”.   

Slavery and exploitation

A court in Mauritania has sentenced two people to prison for holding several people, including children, in slavery. They received sentences of ten years and 20 years in prison respectively - thought to be the toughest for the crime in the country to-date, though slavery was outlawed in 1981 and only criminalised in 2015. A court in the north-western town of Nouadhibou gave a 20-year prison sentence to Hamoudi Ould Saleck who, along with his now-deceased father, was accused of "reducing to slavery" a family, two of whom were children. A woman, Revea Mint Mohamed, was also jailed for ten years for keeping three slaves — one of whom was a 29-year-old who had been enslaved since she was a small girl. Both cases had been brought by former slaves. Rights groups claim that as many as 43,000 people are still living in slavery in Mauritania and note that more anti-slavery activists have been jailed than slave owners. Those who have been freed can also face other challenges as a result of their birth never having been registered and some struggle to access education because of a lack of official documentation.

Long droughts and unpredictable weather are destroying crops across Mali and leading more and more girls to enter domestic work to help support their families. Families are increasingly sending their daughters to earn money in cities during the lean season, often as maids, while sons leave for seasonal jobs as street vendors or gold miners. In Mali’s capital, Bamako, the majority of migrant girls work as housekeepers from December to June before returning to their parents’ farm, but a particularly poor harvest season last year meant many left home as early as September. Local organisations have claimed that, as well as a longer season of domestic work, the number of children travelling to cities has increased, with some estimating that tens of thousands of migrant girls are leaving the countryside for domestic work in cities. While these jobs allow Malian girls to send money to their families, they lead to family separation, disruption of education, and often trap the girls in abusive working conditions, with bosses potentially abusing children or docking their pay when they claim to be unsatisfied with their work.

Sexual abuse and accountability

Thousands of people in Mongolia have protested in front of the country’s parliament demanding action from the government to prevent child abuse, following the widely-reported rape of a baby boy. According to figures from the state prosecutor’s office, there were 298 reported incidents of children being raped in 2015 and 2016, though experts believe the actual number of cases may be much higher, as a pervasive cultural stigma over the topic discourages reporting. “The fear of being blamed and shamed means victims and their families keep quiet and don’t report to the police,” said Ganbayasgakh Geleg, founder of the Gender Equality Centre. The protest organisers are demanding the enactment of stricter laws regarding child abuse, better government services for survivors and more public awareness of the issue. 

A video of a girl in Morocco being sexually assaulted has lead to widespread anger that the government is failing to tackle sexual violence. A video of the assault was posted online by the attackers in an attempt to blackmail the young victim, a tactic that has become increasingly common in the country. Though the government recently passed a law that can extend prison sentences and impose large fines for a range of sexual offences, some civil society organisations argue that this falls short, failing to offer women sufficient protection during trials and failing to tackle domestic violence. Moroccan activists have claimed that the government has taken action recently only to quell public anger, pushing for harsher sentences for perpetrators rather than attempting to address the issue in society at large through education.

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