Tag Archives: Children

U.N. Human Rights Chief urges alternatives for migrants

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Al Hussein arrives for the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights chief on Monday decried a “worrying rise” in detentions of migrants in Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to confining children while asylum requests are processed.

More than one million migrants, many fleeing Syria’s war, have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than 150,000 have come in 2016 so far – 38 percent of them children, according to United Nations refugee agency data. Italy has also set up mandatory detention centers.

“Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centers ringed with barbed wire. Detention is never in the best interests of the child – which must take primacy over immigration objectives,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“Alternatives to the detention of children must be developed,” he told the start of a three-week council session.

Zeid said it was possible for Europe to create “well-functioning migration governance systems”, with fair assessment of individual requests for international protection while removing what he called “hysteria and panic from the equation”.

Zeid deplored anti-migrant rhetoric “spanning the length and breadth of the European continent … This fosters a climate of divisiveness, xenophobia and even – as in Bulgaria – vigilante violence”.

In April, Bulgarian police arrested a local man who had posted video on social media showing how he tied up three migrants near the Turkish border.

The migrant influx has drawn a rising public backlash, in part because of strains it has imposed on housing and social services. Concerns have also been raised in some EU countries about their ability to integrate many mostly Muslim migrants.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles/Mark Heinrich)

Yemen government says to free 54 children captured in fighting

Marib's Governor Sultan al-Arada hands a gift to a young Houthi fighter who was released after his detention as a prisoner of war, in Marib

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has handed over to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government 54 child prisoners who were captured during fighting with the Iran-allied Houthi militia, Yemen’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi, who heads Hadi’s peace negotiating team, said the children were aged between 8 and 17 years and their release showed the government and its Saudi-led coalition ally “reject the Houthi crime of using children in war”.

The Houthis have not commented on such accusations. But Houthi fighters often bring in their sons to volunteer for service.

Human Rights Watch said this month that both sides in Yemen’s conflict had deployed child soldiers and UNICEF reported that 900 children were killed and 1,300 wounded during the conflict in 2015.

“They (child prisoners) will be freed in addition to those who had been freed in Marib,” Mekhlafi said on his Twitter account, referring to a previous prisoner release in a province east of the capital Sanaa.

A coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemen conflict in March 2015 when the Houthis advanced on the southern port city of Aden and forced Hadi and his government into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis, who hail from the Zaydi branch of Shi’ite Islam, and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government began U.N.-sponsored peace talks since April to try to end a war that has killed at least 6,200 people and caused a humanitarian crisis in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country.

The U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said earlier this week that the parties attending peace talks in Kuwait had agreed to unconditionally free all child prisoners they are holding.

It was not clear how many child prisoners are being held in all, but Yemeni political sources say that the Houthis and the government submitted in late May a list of nearly 7,000 names of prisoners they say are being held by the other side.

The U.N. has struggled to encourage a prisoner release in Yemen coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Monday, and over a month of negotiations have produced few concrete results.

There was no immediate comment from the Houthis on any planned release of Yemeni government prisoners.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. sounds alarm about Falluja children, food supply

A displaced Iraqi child, who fled from Islamic State violence from Saqlawiyah, near Falluja, is seen in the town of Khalidiya, north of Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Thousands of children are facing extreme violence in Falluja, which the Iraqi army is trying to retake from Islamic State, and food stocks in the besieged city are dwindling, the United Nations warned on Wednesday.

At least 20,000 children remain inside the Islamic State’s stronghold near Baghdad and face the risk of forced recruitment into fighting and separation from their families, the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF said.

The World Food Program, in a separate statement, said the humanitarian situation was worsening as family food stocks were running down, pushing up prices to a level few can afford.

“We are concerned over the protection of children in the face of extreme violence,” UNICEF Representative in Iraq Peter Hawkins said in a statement.

“Children face the risk of forced recruitment into the fighting” inside the besieged city, and “separation from their families” if they manage to leave, he added.

Backed by Shi’ite militias and air strikes from the U.S.-led coalition, the Iraqi armed forces launched an offensive on May 23 to recapture the city, 50 kms (32 miles) west of Baghdad. [nL8N18S1HF]

The assault on Falluja, the first Iraqi city to fall under control of the ultra-hardline Sunni militants in January 2014, is expected to be one of the biggest battles fought against Islamic State.

About 50,000 civilians remain there, according to the U.N.

Iraqi security forces operating in Falluja systematically separate men and boys over 12 from their families to check possible links with Islamic State.

“UNICEF calls on all parties to protect children inside Falluja, provide safe passage to those wishing to leave the city and grant safe and secure environment to civilians who fled Falluja,” Hawkins said.

The WFP statement said the city was inaccessible for assistance and market distribution systems remained offline.

“The only food available does not come from the markets, but from the stocks that some families still have in their homes,” it added.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Michael Perry and Richard Balmforth)

New Law in Philippines to protect children after disasters

A boy wades through a flooded street in Jaen, Nueva Ecija in northern Philippines October 20, 2015, after the province was hit by Typhoon Koppu.

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Child rights groups welcomed a new law in the Philippines requiring special emergency plans to protect children after disasters and said the legislation, the first of its kind in Asia, should send a message to other countries to follow suit.

President Benigno Aquino on Wednesday signed the Children’s Emergency Relief and Protection Act into law, mandating the government to draw up plans to ensure the welfare of children affected by natural disasters, accidents and other unforeseen events.

“We know for a fact that the children are at risk in these kinds of situations because they are helpless,” Aquino said at the signing ceremony at the presidential palace in Manila.

“We hope to make a strong foundation and basis to take care of Filipino children whoever is elected into office,” the outgoing Philippine leader said in a statement posted online.

The law clarifies the responsibilities of various government sectors, ensures children’s basic needs are met, and strengthens the government’s mandate to build evacuation centers and temporary shelters with facilities for children as well as pregnant women, he said.

Save the Children described the law as an “enormous victory for children.”

“We know from experience that when disasters strike, children are always the most vulnerable,” Ned Olney, Save the Children’s country director who was present at the signing, said in a statement.

“This legislation … ensures that children have targeted humanitarian intervention, and that government services and communities are better prepared for future disasters.”

With the law signed a few days before the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit opens in Istanbul, Olney said “the Philippines is sending a strong signal to world leaders that children caught in disasters must be better protected.”

Plan International also welcomed the law and urged the government to fully implement it.

“Children often feel voiceless in times of disasters. This victory proves that they do have a voice,” Plan said.

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, hit by an average of 20 typhoons a year.

(Reporting by Alisa Tang, additional reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila, editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

U.N. urges Greece to stop detaining migrant children

Refugee girl with umbrella

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – A top United Nations official urged Greece on Monday to stop detaining refugee and migrant children, some of whom are locked up in police cells for weeks, and to develop child protection services instead.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau, said he had met unaccompanied children held in police stations for more than two weeks without access to the outdoors, and “traumatised and distressed” by the experience.

Others were with their families in overcrowded detention centres, where inter-communal frictions and contradictory information created “an unacceptable level of confusion, frustration, violence and fear”, he said.

“Children should not be detained – period,” said Crepeau, on a fact-finding mission in Greece from May 12 to 16.

“Detention should only be ordered when people present a risk, a danger, a threat to the public and it has to be a documented threat, it cannot simply be a hunch.”

Crepeau said children and families should be offered alternatives to detention. He urged authorities to develop a “substantial and effective” guardianship system for unaccompanied minors and increase the shelter capacity for them.

More than a million migrants, many fleeing the Syrian war, have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than 150,000 have arrived in 2016 so far, 38 percent of them children, according to U.N. refugee agency data.

Greece, in its sixth year of economic crisis, has struggled to cope with the numbers.

International charity Save the Children says an estimated 2,000 unaccompanied children who travelled alone to Europe or lost their families on the way are stranded in Greece and only 477 shelter spaces are available across the country.

(Unaccompanied minors) are put in … protective custody and the only place there is space (for them) is the cell in police stations and that’s where we find them quite often,” Crepeau said.

“Spending 16 days (in a police cell) is way too long. What is needed is specialised body of competent professionals who can take care of unaccompanied minors.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by Andrew Roche)

Aleppo Death toll mounts; rescue workers killed

Residents and civil defence members inspect a damaged building after an airstrike on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers – first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down – were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

“The targeting was very precise,” Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

“They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.” Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would “respond firmly” against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighborhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

“Civilian areas were shelled at random,” the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Scarred Yazidi boys escape ISIS combat training camp

The Wider Image: Yazidi boys escape Islamic State training

QADIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – When nine-year-old Murad got the chance to flee from Islamic State – the group that repeatedly raped his mother and slaughtered or enslaved thousands from his Yazidi minority – he hesitated.

So powerful was the indoctrination during his 20-month captivity in Iraq and Syria that the boy told his mother he wanted to stay at the camp where Islamic State had trained him to kill “infidels”, including his own people.

Now in the relative safety of Kurdish-controlled territory, Murad’s mother told Reuters how she had struggled to persuade her son – like other Yazidi boys being prepared for battle – to escape earlier this month with her and his little brother.

“My son’s brain was changed and most of the kids were saying to their families ‘Go, we will stay’,” she said, declining to give her name. “Until the last moment before we left, my son was saying ‘I will not come with you’.”

Yazidi boys appear to be part of broader efforts by Islamic State to create a new generation of fighters loyal to the group’s ideology and inured to its extreme violence. The training often leaves them scarred, even after returning home.

Islamic State, known by its opponents in Arabic as Daesh, captured Murad, his mother and brother in August 2014 at their village near the Iraqi town of Sinjar. During that offensive, the radical Sunni Muslim group massacred, enslaved and raped thousands of Yazidis, whom they consider to be devil-worshippers.

The United States launched air strikes against the militants partly to save the survivors and last month said the attacks on Yazidis, whose faith combines elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, and other groups amounted to genocide.

More than a third of the 5,000 Yazidis captured in 2014 have escaped or been smuggled out, but activists say hundreds of boys are still held.

Dressed in a long brown skirt and matching headscarf, the mother described how Murad had finally agreed to escape, allowing people smugglers to spirit the family by a convoluted route to a refugee camp near the northern Iraqi city of Duhok where they are living now.

Murad, wearing a jersey of the Spanish football club Real Madrid, sat with his mother on the floor of a spartan trailer in al-Qadiya camp, twiddling his thumbs and resisting answering questions.

BATTLING THE INFIDELS

Most of the time Murad’s mother managed to stay with her two sons as Islamic State shuffled them around cities and towns in its “caliphate” spanning the borders of Iraq and Syria. These included its de-facto capitals Mosul and Raqqa, as well as the ancient city of Palmyra which has since fallen to Syrian government forces.

“They were teaching the children how to fight and go to war to battle the infidels,” the mother said, adding that those to be killed included Shi’ite Muslims, the peshmerga forces of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Islamic State dressed the boys in the same long robes they wore, and trained them how to use guns and knives. “They were assessing them for how well they had learned to fight. Daesh then showed the families videos of killing. Among them they saw their sons also taking part.”

Islamic State also forced Murad to pray, study the Koran and sit through extremist religious lessons, according to his mother, who said she had been beaten as well as raped by at least 14 men.

TAUGHT TO HATE

A 16-year-old boy taken from the same village south of Sinjar recounted similar treatment. He spent two months in a religious school where Islamic State taught its ultra-hardline ideology which labels most outsiders as infidels and has been denounced by senior Muslim authorities.

“They told us, ‘You are Yazidis and you are infidels. We want to convert you to the true religion so you can go to heaven’,” said the teenager, who withheld his name and wrapped his head in a scarf, fearing retribution against his brother and father still under Islamic State rule.

The teenager said he was made to work in a sweatshop with other boys, sewing military clothes for the fighters.

Around 750 other children have escaped in recent months but a few thousand more remain missing, according to Yazidi activists Khairy Ali Ibrahim and Fasel Kate Hasoo, who document crimes against their community.

Twenty-five children who escaped from Islamic State training camps have since passed through Qadiya, 10 km (6 miles) south of the Turkish border, but only six remain, they said. The rest have sought refuge in Europe, joining the wave of migrants fleeing conflict across the region.

READJUSTING

Murad’s family escaped when the fighter who had “purchased” his mother left the house where she and the boys were staying to get food. Put in contact with the people smugglers by a friend, they spent the night at a safe house before a nine-hour journey by motorbike to territory held by Syrian Kurds.

After three nights in the town of Kobani on the Turkish border, they made their way to Iraqi Kurdistan.

For boys who have reached relative safety, new burdens await them and their families. Most Yazidis have had to spend small fortunes on smugglers’ costs to rescue loved ones – Murad’s family raised $24,000 to get the three home.

Many families take small loans from relatives and neighbors, who later demand repayment. Promises from charities and government agencies to help cover those costs have fallen through, they say.

There are also psychological costs.

Murad’s mother said she could tell her boys had been traumatized by the ordeal.

Her younger son, five-year-old Emad, speaks little but plays peek-a-boo and trots in and out of the room. Murad is clearly more affected: he rarely smiles, struggles to maintain eye contact, and fidgets constantly.

The teenager who was put to work in the sweatshop says he was mature enough to brush off Islamic State’s brutality.

“I was dealing with them only because I was afraid, but now that I’m back, I’m just like I was before,” he said. A cousin, though, later admitted his reintegration had not been easy, declining to go into details.

Children introduced to Islamic State’s ideology are likely to consider it normal and defend its practices, according to Quilliam, a London-based anti-extremism think tank.

“They are unable to contribute constructively to their societies because they do not develop the ability to socialize,” it said in a report last month.

The Yazidi children at Qadiya need regular psychological treatment which remains out of reach, said the activist Hasoo.

“Most of the boys after fleeing tried to implement Daesh’s ideas,” he said. “There were cases of children wanting to kill one of their friends in the camp. Others would play out the actions they had been trained on.”

(Additional reporting by Mahdi Talat and Emily Wither; Writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by David Stamp)

India working to curb trafficking of women and children

India’s Women and Child Welfare minister Maneka Gandhi, works on a computer before an interview with Reuters at her office in New Delhi, India, October 19, 2015.

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India is working to find ways to curb the widespread trafficking of women and children in the country, including those from neighboring Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, said Maneka Gandhi, India’s minister for women and children.

South Asia, with India at its center, is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world, after East Asia, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Speaking at a conference on child adoption in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya, Gandhi told delegates that the government was in the process of putting in place a series of policies to prevent human trafficking.

“We have discussed this issue in the cabinet. We had called a meeting with these countries last month in which all NGOs working on this and others in Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh came,” she said on Monday.

“We will have another meeting next week in India. We are telling each other what we can do. This month, we are going to see that specific solutions come into being.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 5,466 cases of human trafficking registered in 2014, an increase of 90 percent over the past five years.

Activists say this is a gross under-estimation of the scale of the problem, as much of the illicit organized crime is underground.

They claim thousands of people – largely poor, rural women and children – are lured to India’s towns and cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs but sell them into domestic work or sex work or to industries such as textile workshops.

In many cases, they are not paid or are held in debt bondage. Some go missing, and their families cannot trace them.

Gandhi said India’s remote northeastern states, which include Assam, Sikkim, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, were a key source area for trafficking and called for the appointment of a special female police officer in each village to keep a check on crimes against women and children.

“There is an enormous amount of trafficking of children going on from the northeast. We find them in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and many going to Malaysia and Thailand. It is not fair,” she said.

“The job of special women police is to be vigilant in the village and see that children do not go missing, women are not beaten by husbands, girls are sent to school.”

A comprehensive new anti-trafficking law is also being drafted, say government officials. This will not only unify several existing laws, but also raise penalties for offenders and provide victims with rehabilitation and compensation.

The law, which is expected to be ready by the end of the year, will also provide for the establishment of a central investigative anti-trafficking agency to coordinate and work between states and special courts to hear such cases.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, editing by Alex Whiting. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Giving Or Getting? Do These Kids Have the Answer?

In Atlanta, 83% of the children that go to the boys and girls club come from low income families. Many of these children live where most homes cannot even afford a Christmas tree. Many of these kids were asked one of the most difficult questions when UPtv decided to talk to them about their Christmas wishes.

As each child spoke of the thing they wanted the most, their eyes sparkled with the magic that children feel this time of year. They described the dream of that most special gift that they just might, despite all odds, receive.

There were many children that UPtv spoke to. Beautiful kids such as Destiny, Miracle, Austin and Brooke. Each made their wish. For example:a computer, a barbie doll house, an Xbox system. And then they were asked about their families. What would their Mom like as a present? Or their Dad? Or the whole family? A new television, a ring for my Mom, a watch for my Dad, a christmas tree and a necklace were some of the wonderful presents these children imagined.

Two days later UPtv sat these children down again and set before them the gift they had wanted so badly. They also presented the gift that they would want to give to their family, Mom or Dad. As their eyes grew wide, they were offered the chance to take home one of the gifts. Either the one for themselves or the one for their parent or family.

Their young faces told the story of how very difficult this choice was. Yet within mere moments, without hesitation, they each picked the gift that they would love to give. When asked why they picked to give a present instead of get one, Miracle told UPtv. “If I get a laptop, then my mom will lose something. She’s my Mom and she’s special!” In each case, the children picked a gift for giving saying that toys are not important, but making those they love happy, giving back to them for all they have done, means the most of all.

After unselfishly giving up their gifts, UPtv decided to give up a few too and happily gave the children the present that was intended for them as well. The thankfulness, the joy and the smiles of these wonderful kids is what makes the magic of Christmastime.

In a world so full of negativity and injustice. At a time where we despair over the future. It is the children who see our sacrifice and know…truly, how to give.

You can see for yourself this wonderful presentation on UPtv: “The Other Christmas Gift,” by watching the video below:

3-Year-Old Starts Movement to Help Homeless Community

Compassion is not an emotion reserved for adults and three year old Patrick McClung from Anchorage, Alaska is the perfect example.  

According to local news station KTVA,  Patrick broke down in tears back in October when his mother, Destinee McClung, explained to him what being homeless means.

“Everyone he knows has a house and has food and has toys,” McClung said. “And so it really genuinely hurt his heart to kind of realize that there are people that go without.”

He even cried over the matter, saying through tears in an emotional video McClung posted to her Facebook page that, “I don’t want them to sleep on a piece of cardboard.”

ABC News reported that Patrick was so affected by what he had learned that he put his hurt into action. The 3-year-old and his mother have set up donation boxes around town, collecting clothing and toiletries for homeless people.  

People have been eagerly donating to Patrick’s project with blankets, socks and other cold-weather apparel, to hygiene-related items like shampoo, conditioner, soap and diapers.  The toddler himself has gone to great lengths to donate, selling his beloved trains so he could buy items for those in need.

So far Patrick is proud to show others that he has collected 10 large bags of donations for those that have so little.

“It’s for all the people, and they don’t have homes,” Patrick explained to KTVA, showing off the items. “And they’re very cold.”

In addition to collecting goods for the homeless, the 3-year-old has also started volunteering at a soup kitchen handing out desserts and chatting with people.