The week in children's rights - 1590

In this issue:

LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Migration

Advocates in the United States have resoundingly condemned the Trump administration's plan to conduct DNA tests on detained migrant children and their parents to reunite them after they were separated as a result of its "zero tolerance" immigration policy. Nearly 3,000 children have been separated from their parents when they crossed the US border. The government will be conducting DNA tests for every detained child and seeing if the DNA matches that of detained adults. Advocates have criticised the plan for its invasiveness and for concerns over consent, and what authorities might do with the biological data. While DNA tests have sometimes been used in the past to help determine biological relationships when identifying documents are not available, applying them to such a large number of families is new, noted César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an associate professor at the University of Denver. Meanwhile, migrant children as young as three years old are being ordered into court unaccompanied for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys. One lawyer commented on the “absurdity of what we’re doing with these kids”, reflecting on how a three-year-old client “in the middle of the hearing, started climbing up on the table”.

The United Kingdom’s Home Office faces a legal challenge over the fees it charges for registering a child as a British citizen, with critics saying they “destroy the futures of children who’ve grown up British for profit”. Thousands of children living in the UK, who were born in the country or came at a young age, are obliged by law to pay £1,012 to register as British citizens. Amnesty International UK and the Project for Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) are seeking a judicial review to challenge these fees. Campaigners say the extortionate charges are forcing families into destitution, with one mother forced to choose between buying food and saving money for her child’s application. They say profits made from children’s applications are used to offset unrelated immigration costs even though many children affected were born in the UK and have never left. There are an estimated 120,000 children in the UK who have grown up British who are being charged the unaffordable fees. “Such barefaced profiteering from children by the Home Office is utterly shameful,” said Solange Valdez-Symonds, director of PRCBC.

Detention

Authorities in China are sending Uyghur children, whose parents have been detained in “political re-education camps”, to live in orphanages. Since April 2017, ethnic Muslim Uyghurs, accused of having “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views, have been detained in so-called re-education camps throughout the country’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). “Children left without parents have been sent to orphanages temporarily until their parents are released,” said a local police officer. In the village of Yengisheher, sources say around 40 percent of residents have been sent to the camps. Between 50 and 60 children from Yengisheher are thought to have been taken to an orphanage. A worker at one orphanage said children between the ages of six months and 12 years were living in overcrowded conditions, and authorities “are moving children to mainland China”. Uyghur people in the region have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and linguistic and cultural suppression under Chinese rule. While China’s central government has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the camps, between 500,000 to one million people are believed to have been detained, with commentators calling it ”the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” 

In Brazil, at least ten teenagers held in a juvenile detention centre, who allegedly set fire to a mattress in protest over poor conditions, died after flames spread to the cell they were in. Serious deficiencies were found back in 2012 in the facility in the state of Goiás, which is part of Brazil’s criminal justice system’s National System of Socio-Educational Assistance (SINASE, by its Portuguese acronym), and it was ordered closed. However, the centre continued to house teenagers. When the fire happened, there were a total of 80 teenagers at the centre, which reportedly only had a capacity for 52. The cell where the fire started allegedly held 11 teenagers, although the cells are only designed for four. The story repeats itself in juvenile detention centres across Brazil, where overcrowding, tensions among detainees, and unhygienic conditions are rife. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly expressed its dismay over the systemic violence, riots, overcrowding, unhygienic facilities and lack of socio-educational programmes at such detention centres in Brazil. The Commission lamented that when teenagers enter the socio-educational assistance system they are exposed to human rights violations rather than receiving a constructive and positive opportunity to rejoin society and prevent reoffending.

Child marriage

Malaysia’s national medical association has called for an end to child marriage, citing concern over the mental and physical health of child brides who become pregnant. The country’s latest maternal mortality report showed that adolescent deaths from pregnancies nearly tripled from 3.1 per 100,000 live births in 2009 to 8.6 per 100,000 live births in 2012. Child marriage is currently in the spotlight in Malaysia after a 41-year-old national recently married an 11-year-old Thai girl as his third wife. Despite Malaysian police ruling out any criminal element in the marriage, the head of the Malaysian Medical Association, Dr Mohamed Namazie Ibrahim, stressed that child marriage or marriage without the consent of both spouses is a human rights violation and that the Malaysian Penal Code says sexual intercourse with a child below 16 years old, with or without consent, is illegal. Dr Namazie said child marriage and adolescent pregnancies are a manifestation of inequality, often occurring in marginalised, poor, rural communities. Child rights groups are urging the Pakatan Harapan government to implement its election pledge to set the legal minimum age for marriage at 18 and outlaw child marriages. 

Back in May, Norway approved a law banning all child marriage, with the new measures expected to receive final approval and come into force soon. Norway currently has a minimum age of 18, but allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent and permission from the county governor. A government spokeswoman said very few under-18s had sought to wed in recent years, but the reform, which comes a year after Denmark passed a similar law, would give Norway one of the strictest laws on child marriage in Europe. The law will also ban Norwegians from marrying abroad if either party is under 18 years old, with the maximum penalty for child marriage set at three years’ imprisonment.

Education and information  

Campaigners have condemned Burundi’s ban on pregnant girls and expectant teen fathers attending school as a violation of children’s right to education and gender discrimination. Two weeks ago, the country’s ministry of education issued a directive to provincial authorities saying these children no longer had the right to be part of the formal education system. Instead, these students would be allowed to attend vocational or professional training courses. Equality Now lawyer Naitore Nyamu-Mathenge explained that the ban “is definitely skewed towards violating the rights of girls accessing education,” as it would be easy to notice pregnant girls, but more difficult to identify the boys involved. Commenting on the absurdity of the directive, she said: "How does the government intend on proving that Boy A impregnated Girl B? How about cases where the perpetrators are teachers, adults in the community, will the government go after them too?" According to the UN Population Fund, seven percent of girls aged 15-19 in Burundi have at least one child, and four in 10 survivors of violence are teenage girls aged 15 to 19. Campaigners also warn that girls living in poverty are at risk of being exploited for sex in exchange for basics such as clothes, sanitary products, school fees or food. Similar bans exist in other countries across Africa. In Tanzania, secondary schools even routinely carry out forced pregnancy testing.

In June, two States approved laws to protect children from "harmful" information. Azerbaijan's Parliament passed a bill in the first reading that prohibits children from accessing information that is seen to promote violence and cruelty, antisocial and illegal actions, affects the family institution or contains unethical language or pornographic content. Meanwhile lawmakers in Kazakhstan have approved a similar law banning “information harmful to their [children’s] health and development". According to local media, the law seeks to reduce the impact on children of “traumatic information”, which is thought to increase aggression, cruelty and lead to antisocial behaviour. Read more about children’s access to information and protection from censorship.

UPCOMING EVENTS

EMPLOYMENT

United Nations: High Commissioner for Human Rights
Application deadline: 11 July 2018
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

The Fund for Global Human Rights: Consultant for the Children’s Rights Program  
Application deadline: 15 August 2018
Location: Bujumbura, Burundi

LEAK OF THE WEEK