In this issue:
Latest news and reports
- Inhuman sentencing
- Access to justice
- Deprivation of liberty
- Child trafficking
- Health
Upcoming events
Employment
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Inhuman sentencing
The Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions are making an urgent appeal to Iran to halt the execution of Mohammad Kalhori, who was sentenced to death as a 15-year-old for killing his teacher. Reports suggest that Kalhori will be executed, even though international standards forbid the imposition of the death sentence on anyone under the age of 18 at the time of the offence. “Iran has committed itself to prohibiting the use of the death penalty for all those under 18 by its ratification of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” explained the experts, “As such, this execution is unlawful and arbitrary”. In 2013, Iran amended its Islamic Penal Code to allow judges to pronounce alternative sentences for juvenile offenders if there is any uncertainty about their “mental development” at the time of the crime. Despite a ruling that Kalhori was not mentally mature at the time of the crime, an appeal was made and Kalhori was subsequently sentenced to death during a retrial.
Access to justice
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has declared the statute of limitations for sexual offences unconstitutional after eight adults who were allegedly abused as children challenged the country’s 20-year time limit on prosecutions. The Constitutional Court’s ruling confirmed an earlier decision by the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, agreeing that Section 18 of the Criminal Procedure Act was "irrational and arbitrary and therefore unconstitutional", as it did not afford survivors of sexual assault, other than rape or compelled rape, the right to pursue a charge more than 20 years after the time the offence was committed. The eight complainants alleged that they were sexually assaulted by the billionaire Sidney Frankel as long ago as 30 years before his death. They laid criminal charges in 2015, but the case never went ahead due to the statute of limitations and Frankel died of cancer in his Johannesburg home on 13 April this year.
South Korea’s Human Rights Commission has released a report detailing decades of state violence against so-called “vagrant children” or orphans. According to the report as many as 4,691 children were kidnapped, abused and coerced into harsh labour between 1942 and 1982 in a facility in the north of the country. Although the facility was characterised as a shelter or welfare institution for orphans, the report reveals that many of the children in fact had parents and family. The Commission also claimed that many of the victims were kidnapped by police officers or civil servants. The children were forcibly placed at the institution for reasons as trivial as not having memorised their home address or not having dressed properly, according to the report. The victims are asking for acknowledgement of the abuse they suffered, an official apology, and have asked lawmakers to pass a special law to initiate an investigation into the case and to punish those who were responsible.
Deprivation of liberty
Iraq has conducted as many as 500 trials of children accused of affiliation with the so-called Islamic State group, including dozens of cases of foreign children. Human Rights Watch attended the trials of two children from Azerbaijan, aged 13 and 14, who were sentenced to six months in jail for entering the country illegally even though they were respectively 10 and 11 when their parents brought them to Iraq and they had no choice in the matter. Foreign children under the age of three were found to be routinely confined to their mother’s cell in overcrowded jails, while those between three and nine were separated from their mothers and put into foster institutions run by the state. Children aged between nine and 18 are held in juvenile detention facilities. In September 2017 Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, stated in an interview that most of the women and children were not guilty of a crime, and that his government was “in full communication” with their home countries to “find a way to hand them over”. However, his government seems to have changed its approach, as it began prosecuting women and children in January of this year.
In the Netherlands a record 2,710 children were detained in secure institutions last year, a rise of eight percent on 2016. The number of children detained in the country was revealed by a new report by UNICEF and Defence for Children. The organisations said the decision to lock up children was often “too drastic” and claimed the help given to vulnerable children fell short in far too many cases. The report found children often ended up institutionalised because of growing waiting lists for youth social services, a consequence of care being devolved to the local level, and due to children with behavioral problems, or who have parents unable to care for them being placed in secure institutions. It was also found that when children left these institutions, there was a lack of guidance to support their reintegration into society, and as a result, they often end up staying in institutions longer than necessary.
Child trafficking
A retired gynaecologist has become the first person to go on trial in Spain over a scandal said to have involved thousands of babies being taken from their parents over several decades. Eduardo Vela, 85, is accused of abducting Inés Madrigal from her mother in 1969 and giving her to another woman, in the final years of the Franco dictatorship. Vela denies signing Madrigal’s birth certificate, but if convicted could face 11 years in jail for illegal adoption and falsifying documents. From the late 1930s children are believed to have been taken from families identified by the ruling fascists as Republicans, and given to couples with links to the regime. Investigating judge Baltasar Garzón estimated in 2008 that some 30,000 children had been stolen in the period after the Spanish civil war, but campaigners fear the true number may never be known. Although activists claim as many as 2,000 cases have been brought to the courts, none have made it to trial before now, and Spain's main political parties have only recently promised to work together to improve victims' access to archives and to promote a more proactive judicial response.
Moldova plans to launch a pilot programme this year which will use a new digital identity system to combat child trafficking. Children make up around one in five of the recorded instances of trafficking from Moldova, with some forced to work abroad, some sexually exploited and others reportedly having their organs sold on the black market. In partnership with a tech company, Moldova plans to create a secure, digital identity on a blockchain — a decentralised digital ledger shared by a network of computers — for Moldovan children, linking their personal identities with other family members. Children attempting to cross the border would be asked to scan their eyes or fingerprints and a phone alert would be sent to their legal guardians to verify the crossing. Any attempt to take a child abroad without their guardians’ permission would be permanently recorded on the database, which would help catch traffickers and could be used as evidence in court. Corruption and official complicity in trafficking are recognised as significant problems in Moldova, and experts hope this new approach could limit the role bribes play in the trafficking of children.
Health
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has updated its International Classification of Diseases, removing references to gender dysphoria as a mental illness and adding “gaming disorder” as a newly recognised condition. The move of gender dysphoria (or gender incongruence) from the "mental health" chapter to a newly created "sexual health" chapter means that trans people who have gender dysphoria will be able to more easily access the healthcare they need to feel more comfortable in their bodies, without being stigmatised as mentally ill. While this move has been welcomed by campaigners, WHO has been attacked by others for the inclusion of “gaming disorder”, with some citing a lack of evidence around the new classification. Dr Pete Etchells, reader in psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University noted: “The best evidence we currently have suggests that some screen time, some video game playing per day, is better than none at all, particularly for childhood wellbeing — to my mind that is not the message that has been sent out this week with the new classification”.
Several children have died in South Africa, allegedly after undergoing botched traditional circumcisions, within the first week of the traditional initiation season. A provincial spokesman reported that two 15-year-olds were among those who had died while several more had been taken to “rescue centres”. Rules in the country require that all who undergo ritual circumcision be over the age of 18, and community representatives have requested an urgent meeting with specially trained police to ensure the speedy arrest of all those involved in the deaths. Several men were recently arrested for allegedly performing illegal circumcisions, with one believed to have illegally circumcised five boys under the age of 13. Cooperative governance and traditional affairs provincial spokesman, Mankeli Ngam, called on parents to report any cases of illegal initiation and pleaded with traditional leaders to help close illegal initiation schools.
UPCOMING EVENTS
THE LAST WORD
“Notwithstanding the clear prohibition of the application of the death penalty for those under the age of 18, this case demonstrates flagrant disregard for the amendment to the Penal Code itself and raises concerns about possible interference in the independence of the judiciary,”
— Excerpt from the joint statement by Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and Renate Winter, Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the scheduled execution of Mohammad Kalhori.
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