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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Overruling discriminatory laws and policies
Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court has banned the practice of child marriage after two former child brides took the government to court with the aid of a human rights NGO. Under section 22 of the Marriages Act, the minimum age for marriage was 18 for boys, yet 16 for girls. According to advocates, early marriage disproportionately affects girls. But in its ruling, the Constitutional Court said the Marriage Act was unconstitutional, and that “no person, girl or boy should be married before the age of 18”. It based its decision on provisions in the 2013 Constitution guaranteeing the right to marry and special protections for the rights of the child, judges concluding that children under the age of 18 have a right not to be subjected to any form of marriage whether civil, customary or religious, in line with international law. Following the ruling, Zimbabwean NGO Veritas, which supported the legal challenge, said: “[t]his is a great day for gender equality, women’s rights and children’s rights.”
The Canadian government is discriminating against First Nation children living on reserves by providing up to 38 percent fewer welfare services than those available elsewhere, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled. The Tribunal’s ruling decried how discriminatory funding policies of the Indigenous Affairs department have led to chronic underfunding and are damaging the lives of thousands of First Nations children. This includes the disproportionate placement of indigenous children in foster care because of a lack of family support which would mean families can better provide for their children. Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said she agrees with the decision - despite the government trying eight times to have the case thrown out on technicalities and spending an estimated $5.3 million in legal fees. Advocates are now pressing the federal government to make concrete financial commitments in the upcoming budget. The Tribunal is now considering a call for the government to pay compensation for every child who was taken from a family living on reserves after 2006.
Corporal punishment reforms urged
South Africa’s Human Rights Commission has asked the government to ban corporal punishment of children in the home, the only setting where it is still legal for adults to use force against children in the name of discipline. The move comes after a complaint was brought to the Commission against the religious group the Joshua Generation Church for advocating the view that children should be beaten with a rod. The complainants objected to a parenting manual published by the church which used four of its 39 pages to describe the length and thickness of the rod which parents should use in “training up” children as young as one-year-old. The church accused the Commission of infringing upon the rights of the Christian community by forcing them to conform to beliefs that they did not hold. But commissioners found that corporal punishment in any form was inconsistent with constitutional values and violated human rights standards.
The President of Guyana has spoken out about the use of corporal punishment against children as “backwards”, instead supporting non-violence approaches to discipline. The President’s call for a ban in the home and in schools followed on from comments from the Minister of Education who said he would strive to abolish corporal punishment with amendments to existing laws. It is still currently legal in the country to use force against children in penal institutions, care settings, the home, and as a sentence for crime. No Caribbean State has yet banned corporal punishment in all settings.
Meanwhile lawmakers in Greenland - a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark - have approved legislation prohibiting all corporal punishment of children. The law in question prohibits physical punishment of children by all those with parental authority, stating that: “Children have the right to care and security. Children must be treated with respect for their person and must not be exposed to corporal punishment or other humiliating treatment.” The move means that violent punishment of children is now unlawful throughout the Kingdom of Denmark.
States rebuked over housing, refugees & disability
Slovakian authorities must develop inclusive housing policies that ensure vulnerable citizens have adequate shelter and safe living conditions, Roma rights advocates have said in response to the recent “preventable” deaths of five Roma children living in marginalised camps. In separate incidents since the start of the year, four children were burnt to death when a wooden shack caught fire in Roma settlements, while another froze to death. Roma families in Slovakia are often forced to live in unsafe, hazardous and unhealthy housing conditions, according to the European Roma Rights Centre. The recent deaths are the “fatal casualties of more than two decades of discriminatory neglect in housing policies for marginalised Roma communities,” said the ERRC.
Denmark’s parliament has approved drastic measures to confiscate refugees’ valuables and delay family reunions, in a move strongly criticised by the international community. While outrage has focused on a proposal allowing police to seize cash and valuables from refugees to help pay for their stay in asylum centres, advocates have blasted a proposed three-year delay for family reunifications which they say breaches international law. Before the measures were approved, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Nils Muiznieks, warned that the proposal on family reunifications could "infringe on the rights of children to live within their family environment”. Limiting family reunification rights risks separating children from their parents after they had survived perilous journeys, said the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children, which claimed “European countries are in a contest to win the title of 'least willing to accept asylum seekers'".
In Australia, children with disabilities are routinely denied enrolment in schools, a national inquiry has found. The federal senate inquiry into how children with a disability fare at school received almost 300 submissions from families of children with a disability, education experts and disability advocates, outlining a culture of low expectations for children with a disability. The inquiry heard evidence that a large number of public schools were ignoring a legal requirement to accept children in their local catchment on the basis that they could not provide for a child with a disability. It also identified shortfalls in staff training to help them support children with disabilities. "They are refused enrolment, they are only going a few days a week or not going at all. If they do attend school, bullying and exclusion are the norm. It is disgraceful,” said Sue Lines, chairwoman of the Education and Employment References Committee, which oversaw the inquiry. The Committee also called for the re-instatement of a dedicated Disability Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Consent in health and information matters
The Czech Republic’s Constitutional Court has ruled that parents may reject a vaccination for their children if they think it conflicts with their religious beliefs or their freedom of conscience, in the broadest sense. The decision follows a case in which parents were recently fined for refusing the hexa vaccine for their child. The Court stated that “It is always necessary to assess the constitutional dimension and urgency of the reasons, the strength and determination of the parents' belief as well as the social impact of their decision”, adding that in exceptional cases, the State may “forgive” the financial penalty incurred - up to 10,000 crowns under legislation. Such ‘penalty pardons’, it has been stressed, must remain the exception to the rule, and parents cannot refuse vaccines due to mere doubt as to their necessity or effectiveness. This marks a shift in a series of top court decisions finding that public health concerns and children’s best interest take precedence over parental preferences.
In the United States, the Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI) at the University of San Diego is urging a federal appellate court to reconsider a recent ruling upholding a $20 million “ sponsored stories” settlement by Facebook. The CAI, acting on behalf of a parent of two underage children, is arguing that this settlement - permitting Facebook to “capture, rearrange and republish” posts by children, without prior consent or notice to either child or parent - will have an effect on the right to privacy of over 10 million teens in the US. The criticised settlement in question is said to allow Facebook to violate a number of states’ laws that prohibit companies from using minors’ names and their photos in advertisements without parental consent. The CAI is calling for the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case ‘ en banc’, involving at least 11 of the court’s judges in its determination.
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CASE STUDY: FREE EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN IN COLOMBIA
Part of a law which allowed the Colombian government to charge for primary education was deemed unconstitutional after a pair of Colombian lawyers, collaborating with the law faculty at New York’s Cornell University and a coalition of civil society organisations, brought a direct challenge against its discriminatory provisions.
Read the full case study here.
CRIN’s collection of case studies illustrates different approaches to using the law in children’s rights advocacy. Throughout the world advocates are changing legislation and societies for the better through what is known asstrategic litigation - when a case seeks broader impact than simply bringing justice in a case at hand. Looking at how these efforts work in practice, CRIN is interviewing those involved in cases and looking at their outcomes and the impact they have had. We will highlight both successful cases and less successful ones - which have still had an impact - to allow advocates to learn from previous efforts to challenge children’s rights abuses.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Training: Online course in child rights situation analysis
Organisation: Human Rights Education Associates
Dates: 3-15 February 2016
Location: Online
Armed conflict: Int'l conference on the impact of armed conflict on children and youth
Organisation: ANPPCAN and ISPCAN
Dates: 7-10 February 2016
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Funding opportunity: NGOs and social enterprises with a focus on children and youth
Organisation: Epic Foundation
Application deadline: 10 February 2016
Location: Global
Juvenile justice: Human rights of children deprived of liberty - Improving monitoring mechanisms
Organisation: Defence for Children International
Date: 15 February 2016
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Digital rights: Call for papers - Children & young people's rights in the digital age pre-conference
Organisation: Int’l Association for Media & Communication Research
Submission deadline: 15 February 2016
Event date: 26-27 July 2016
Location: London, United Kingdom
Violence: Child abuse linked to a belief in witchcraft and juju
Organisation: AFRUCA
Date: 10 March 2015
Location: London, United Kingdom
Advocacy: International Children's Peace Prize 2016
Organisation: KidsRights
Nomination deadline: 14 March 2016
Location: N/A
Alternative care: Improving standards of care - systems, policies & practices
Organisation: Udayan Care
Date: 18-19 March 2016
Location: Noida, India
Americas: Requests for hearings & working meetings at the IACHR 157th session
Organisation: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Dates: 2-15 April 2016
Location: Washington DC, United States
Leadership: Future Leaders Programme
Organisation: The Resource Alliance
Event date: 4-8 April 2016
Location: Oxford, United Kingdom
Disability: 32nd Pacific Rim international conference on disability and diversity
Organisation: Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Event date: 25-26 April 2016
Location: Honolulu, United States
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EMPLOYMENT
CRIN: Middle East and North Africa Intern
Application deadline: Rolling deadline
Location: Bethlehem, Palestine
Open Society Foundation: Programme Officer - Early Childhood Programme
Application deadline: 30 January 2016
Location: London, United Kingdom
Save the Children Sweden: Programme Development Manager
Application deadline: 7 February 2016
Location: Khartoum, Sudan
LEAK OF THE WEEK
Take a tourism advertisement campaign, swap the attractive feature of the destination with a depressing feature of the same place, and you might get something like this: “Follow your spirit and find...the highest childhood poverty rate in the nation”.
This is what St Joseph's Children, an education and health advocacy NGO in New Mexico, US, did as it parodied the state’s tourism department campaign “New Mexico True”, with its own sobering version “New Mexico Truth”.
By reworking a tourism advertisement in order to spotlight the less tourist-friendly facts and figures - like “Touch the sky and uncover…the third highest child hunger rate in the nation” - it "highlights the irony that we live in such a beautiful state and yet we have such dire social problems,” said Allen Sanchez, head of St Joseph’s Children.
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