The week in children's rights - 1580

In this issue:

New discussion paper: A children’s rights approach to assisted reproduction

The rapid advance and use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has an ever-increasing range of implications for children and their human rights. CRIN’s new discussion paper on the issue offers an initial look at ARTs from a children’s rights perspective.  

States have yet to settle the complex ethical questions involved in assisted reproduction and have tended towards a singular focus on the rights of adults to found a family, overlooking the rights of children. In recent years, some courts have begun to recognise the best interests of children as the most vulnerable party, but national approaches vary widely.

This paper explores three groups of ARTs, each of which has a bearing on the rights of children between birth and the age of 18:

• Prenatal screening for genetic health (including the testing of embryos carried out as part of in-vitro fertilisation, IVF);
• Third-party reproduction (surrogacy and gamete donation); and
• Cryopreservation (freezing gametes for later use).

With this paper, CRIN wants to encourage discussion on the impact of assisted reproduction on the rights of children. With jurisprudence and legislation on the issue still underdeveloped, it offers an opportunity to ensure that children’s rights are built into standards from the outset, avoiding legal advocacy later, in a field that is set to grow and develop rapidly as the 21st century progresses.

This paper is an initial contribution and feedback is welcomed. Please send your comments to [email protected]
 

LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Armed conflict and child recruitment

Air strikes by the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition have killed at least 20 people and injured 46, including 30 children, who were attending a wedding in a village in northwestern Yemen. Residents of a village called Taiba elsewhere in the province told Reuters that a separate air strike killed a family of four in their house on the same night. The Western-backed coalition has been fighting a war for three years against the armed Houthi movement which controls the area and much of northern Yemen, launching thousands of air strikes against the group. Errant strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in or near schools, hospitals and markets. The war in Yemen has now killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than two million and driven the country to the verge of famine, according to the UN.

More than 200 child soldiers, some as young as 14, have been freed at a special 'laying down of arms ceremony' in South Sudan. UNICEF has said it hopes to release a further 1,000 child soldiers in the coming months. Thousands of children have been forced to join the military and other armed groups in South Sudan since a civil war broke out in the oil-rich country in 2013. It is estimated that around 19,000 children are serving in the armed forces and other groups in the country. UNICEF representative in South Sudan Mahimbo Mdoe added: “Many are happy when these children are released, but they forget about them when they are reunited with their families. This is the time they can be vulnerable and they may go back". Armed forces and opposition groups in the country continue to recruit children despite numerous commitments to stop. According to the UN, more than one million children have fled South Sudan to neighbouring countries because of escalating conflicts.

The armed forces of Myanmar, known as the Tatmadaw, have disciplinedforty-seven military officers for their role in the recruitment of child soldiers. The Tatmadaw has been taking steps to prevent the recruitment of children following the signing of an agreement with the UN in 2012. To date, 877 children have been sent back to their guardians in cooperation with the UN agreement. The Tatmadaw claims that examinations are now being carried out to ensure that new recruits are at least 18 years old and that almost 30,000 military personnel have been informed of the prohibition against recruiting child soldiers. However, there have been cases of the government punishing former child soldiers who have criticised the armed forces. Former child soldier Aung Ko Htwe was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and manual labour for sharing his experiences on a local radio station after a judge claimed he had damaged the image of the army.  

Sale and trafficking of children

In Nigeria more than 160 children have been rescued from a "baby factory" and two unregistered orphanages in the country’s largest city, Lagos. In some cases, so-called “baby factories” lure pregnant women with the promise of healthcare, only for their babies to be taken away. In others, women are raped to make them pregnant. The babies are known to have been sold for adoption, used for child labour, trafficked to Europe for prostitution or killed for ritual purposes. In the latest raid, in which 100 girls and 62 boys were rescued, some of the babies and children had been sexually abused, according to one official. It is not uncommon for police to raid “baby factories” in Nigeria. In a 2013 case, 11 babies and 17 pregnant teenagers who had been raped by one man were rescued from a house in south-eastern Imo state. In 2012, a UK judge raised concerns about "desperate childless parents" being caught up in baby-selling scams in Nigeria, with parents being sold ‘unwanted’ babies.

Child brides are being trafficked into domestic servitude or sex slaveryafter their parents illegally marry them off, according to officials in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where researchers are conducting the state's first survey into links between child marriage and slavery. Even though the legal age of marriage in India is 18 for women and 21 for men, discrimination against girls remains widespread, particularly in rural and poor communities, where parents often view daughters as financial burdens and marry them off early. Around 27 percent of all brides in India are below the age of 18, according to UNICEF. Vijaya Rahatkar, chairperson of Maharashtra's women's commission, said the decision to carry out the research followed reports of child brides enslaved in households and sold into brothels. In one case, authorities rescued a girl who had been married off and then forced to work without wages on a farm, where she was abused and tied up to stop her running away.

Refugees and migrants

The Council of Europe has criticised Hungary for its treatment of migrant and refugee children, accusing the State of mistreating children aged between 14 and 18 who were attempting to cross the Hungarian border. Delegations that visited the border area in July and December last year found scores of unaccompanied teenagers from countries including Afghanistan and Syria in confined container camps, surrounded by barbed wire and overseen by armed guards. The Council alleged that the situation had not been sufficiently improved, despite repeated directions to the government to uphold Europe's Convention against Trafficking in Human Beings. The group of experts monitoring the implementation of the convention reported that asylum-seeking children were also at risk of sexual exploitation by immigration authorities. They also criticised the government for passing a law which overrides international child protection safeguards in cases of "crises", classing children as adults who can be required to be held at border transit zones. The Hungarian Interior Ministry rejected the criticism, saying transit zones were not closed but open in the direction of Serbia.

Rights groups have expressed concern at Greek plans to continue an "abusive" policy of containing asylum-seekers on its islands. Authorities in Greece are trying to pass new legislation to curb migrants' movements, in an effort to cancel out a court ruling which held that individuals landing on Greek islands should no longer be held there. A group of 21 human rights organisations said government plans to keep migrants and refugees on the islands “cannot be justified for migration control purposes”, echoing the findings of Greece's top administrative court. In response to the court ruling that there was no overriding reason of public interest to justify a travel ban on asylum seekers, Greece introduced a temporary ban on such movement as a stop-gap until legislation on the matter is approved by lawmakers. More than 15,000 people are believed to be currently held on the islands, most in severely overcrowded camps holding at least double their capacity. Newcomers, including children, are held in inappropriate police detention facilities where access to interpreters and other services are severely restricted

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