The week in children's rights - 1592

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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Orphanages and trafficking

India’s government has ordered an investigation into all childcare homes run by the Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic congregation established by Mother Teresa, after employees at one shelter were accused of selling babies for adoption. The move, announced by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, follows the closure of a Missionaries of Charity home in Jharkhand state, which provides shelter for pregnant, unmarried women. In that incident, two employees, a nun and a social worker, were arrested, accused of having sold three babies from the home. The two are accused of trying to sell a fourth baby in March for about £1,325. The prospective parents, a couple from Uttar Pradesh state, were told the proposed adoption was legitimate and that the money was for hospital expenses. India has more than 230,000 children in official and unofficial shelters, according to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, but the number of orphans in the country is estimated to be as high as 30 million. Commentators say India’s notoriously slow adoption process, which requires clearance from a court that can take up to four years, has led to a thriving and lucrative hidden trade in babies.

Children living in orphanages in Guatemala suffer an array of physical abuses, including trafficking, according to new research by Disability Rights International (DRI). “Serious and pervasive abuses” were found in 13 private and government-run orphanages across the country visited by DRI. In one centre, many children were tied to wheelchairs despite not needing one, while others were held in cages. Sexual abuse and trafficking by staff has also been recorded previously in other orphanages. According to UNICEF, placing a child in an orphanage quadruples their risk of becoming a victim of sexual violence, including rape. Nearly 5,000 children live in about 40 state and privately-run orphanages in the country, with many placed there by living families who are simply too poor to feed them. DRI Associate Director, Priscila Rodriquez, said the government “has failed to protect children from family separation and has neglected to provide the support needed for families to keep their children”. According to DRI’s Executive Director, Eric Rosenthal, the main driver for breaking apart families in developing countries is foreign funding and voluntourism from US-based faith groups and international NGOs that run orphanage tours.
 

Education, conflict and discrimination

Tens of thousands of school children are out of school in Ethiopia's Oromia region owing to paramilitary violence and suspected extrajudicial executions. In the past two years, violence against mostly ethnic Oromo communities has forced 159 schools in five regions to close, said Tola Bariso, head of the Oromia Education Bureau. Around 65,000 school-aged children have been displaced, along with their families, Bariso reported. In the eastern Oromia town of Chinaksen, 27 schools have closed, with the acting mayor estimating that 22,000 children have missed classes for at least six months. Fear of violence is keeping some students out of school, with locals hearing gunshots and seeing people fleeing the area on a daily basis. Since 2012, “inter-communal violence” along the border between Oromia and eastern Somali state region has displaced more than one million people, according to a report by Ethiopia’s government and the UN. Oromia officials primarily blame the violence on the Liyu police unit, a paramilitary force from the country’s Somali region, which was created in 2007 by Abdi Mohamud Omar, the state’s then security chief and now president. They say the Liyu police are seeking territorial expansion and economic advantage on behalf of the Somalian government.

In Serbia, parents in the southern town of Bujanovac whose children are due to enrol in its only Serbian-language school have sent a petition to the Ministry of Education, asking it to make the school create separate classes for Roma children, which local rights groups have called “classic segregation”. The parents allege that Roma students, who make up the majority of the school’s pupils, lack discipline and are often absent from school. In a bid to ensure fair distribution, the headteacher announced that, when the school term starts in September, 25 new Serbian students and 100 new Roma pupils would be split into five classes, each with five Serbs and around 20 Roma. But the parents’ disagree and want the school to form two all-Roma classes so more Serbian children will be in the other three. Local rights groups have called the parents’ demands damaging and discriminatory. Kenan Rasitovic, head of the Youth Forum for Roma Education, said all children should have an equal start in life, which is being hindered from the get-go if they attend school classes on ethnic lines, “which is a basis for creating prejudice, and, in the end, hate.”  

Mental health

In Jamaica, a shortage of mental health specialists in the public sector may be leading to a mental health crisis for the country’s children. Speaking at a policy forum, chief executive officer of Jamaica’s Child Protection and Family Services Agency, Rosalee Gage-Grey, highlighted how the mental health of children aged 14 to 17 has become “a critical issue” in the country. Gage-Grey noted that mental health care for children in state care was of particular concern, with stretched resources meaning that there were rarely enough clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers on hand to meet children’s needs. Gage-Grey cited a study conducted by UNICEF, which surveyed 400 children in residential care in Jamaica, that revealed that more than half of the children in state care have mental health issues. She added that a significant number of the children in care exhibit behavioural issues resulting from traumatic experiences, some of which may have remained untreated for years before cascading into psycho-social and mental health problems.

A young girl will be allowed to leave an offshore detention centre on Nauru to seek medical care in Australia. The girl has serious mental health issues and is likely to leave for Australia on Friday. The girl is at least the seventh seriously ill child to be brought to Australia for health reasons following legal pressure on the government since the Nauru centre reopened in 2012. The seven children include at least two others who were considered to be at risk of killing themselves. Under current Australian immigration rules, asylum-seekers and refugees who reach Australia by boat are forbidden to enter and are instead sent for processing on Nauru and Manus Island, which are part of Papua New Guinea. Inpatient mental health care for children detained on Nauru has been described as “nonexistent” by rights groups, with children reported to be living in despair that they will never be set free.

In the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched a case demanding that the government provide counselling for around 2,000 migrant children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border. The organisation has asked a federal judge to order the government to pay for the care of traumatised children, many of whom have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown. The suit also comes on the heels of immigration officials’ failure to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite all separated children under the age of five with their families. While the government claims it has now complied with the judge’s order, the ACLU’s court filings reveal that 46 of the 103 children under five remain separated because of alleged safety concerns, the deportation of their parents, and other issues. In addition to mental health counselling, the rights group also asked the judge to order the government to provide detailed information about all children not yet reunited with their families. The government must now reunite all parents and the roughly 2,000 remaining children by 26 July.

Sexual abuse

A report from a law firm in the United States has listed the names of 58 men associated with the Diocese of Honolulu, Hawaii, who have been accused of sexually abusing children. The report, compiled by law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates PA and the Law Office of Mark Gallagher, also includes a letter written by a priest which labels Hawaii as a "dumping ground" for troubled clerics from the US mainland, the Philippines and Guam. A new law was also recently passed in Hawaii, giving survivors of child sexual abuse more time to file claims against their abuser, which many see as a catalyst for the latest wave of accusations. Attorney Mark Gallagher has said that dozens of survivors have come forward in recent years, with communities and organisations only now realising the extent of abuse Hawaiian children have endured.

Chile’s national prosecutor has now investigated 158 members of the country’s Roman Catholic church for committing or covering up sexual abuse against children and adults. The investigations relate to reports of abuse by bishops, clerics and lay workers filed since 2000, though some of the incidents involved allegedly happened as long ago as the 1960s. The total number of alleged victims now stands at 266, including 178 children and 57 cases in which the victim’s age is unclear. These figures follow a wave of sex abuse and cover-up cases in recent years, even seeing Pope Francis publicly denouncing a “culture of abuse and cover-up” and apologising for not listening to victims. Prosecutors have claimed that the vast majority of the sexual abuse crimes were committed by parish priests connected to an educational establishment. There are at least five cases where the heads of congregations or bishops in charge of a diocese are accused of covering up abuse or obstructing an investigation.

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