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12 April 2000
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Commission on Human Rights
56th session
12 April 2000
Evening
The Commission on Human Rights completed its annual debate on the rights of children, hearing from an extensive list of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which contended, among other things, that children were suffering unacceptable abuses in numerous countries.
Violations of child rights were alleged in Brazil, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Gabon, Burma, India, Bahrain, Guatemala, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Argentina, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Brunei, Belgium, the Western Sahara, Colombia, China (Tibet), Afghanistan, Israeli-occupied Lebanon, the United States, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
Another frequent theme was that child rights should be implemented rather than merely talked about. A representative of the World Federation of Methodists and Uniting Church Women said that in 1995 Governments had committed themselves to the Beijing Platform of Action against any discrimination against the girl child, but there had been very little progress since. The Indian Council of Education said the Convention on the Rights of the Child had been taken lightly by the international community, as with other treaties on human rights which had been liberal in their intentions but lenient in their enforcement.
Addressing the meeting were representatives of Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Lithuania, Switzerland, Australia, Belarus, and the following NGOs: the World Organization against Torture; the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; the International Federation Terre des Hommes; the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women; World Vision International; the World Federation of United Nations Associations; the Minority Rights Group; Franciscans International; the Friends World Committee for Consultation; the Transnational Radical Party; Human Rights Advocates; the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty; the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples; the Human Rights Law Group; the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; New Human Rights; the International Union of Socialist Youth; the Centre for Youth Studies; the Arab Lawyers Union; Defense for Children International; the Muslim World League; the Federation of Cuban Women; the Women's International Democratic Federation; the Indian Council of Education; the Women's Federation for World Peace; Worldview International; the International Institute for Peace; the World Muslim Congress; the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization; the Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation; Christian Aid; the Islamic African Relief Agency; the Society for Threatened Peoples; the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the International Organization for the Development of Freedom of Education.
Nepal, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Ethiopia spoke in exercise of the right of reply.
The Commission will reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday, 13 April to start its consideration of its agenda item on specific groups and individuals including migrant workers, minorities, mass exoduses and displlaced persons, and other vulnerable groups and individuals. It is scheduled to hold extended meetings until midnight.
Statements
FAYZA ABOULNAGA (Egypt) said the Egyptian Government had promulgated legislation designed to ensure the protection of the rights of the child. Egypt had also played an important role in the negotiation of the optional protocol on the Convention of the Rights of the Child on children in armed conflict. Egypt called on all Members States to ratify the protocol.
Egypt shared the view that the level of protection offered by the protocol was below the ambitions set. Regrettably, national legislation was given a priority over international standards in the protocol. It was hoped, however, that the protocol would further contribute to the advancement of the universal realization of the rights of the child.
NABIK SHAMISH (the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) said the situation of children in many countries was still of concern, with serious crimes persisting, including child prostitution, child labour, and the sale of children. The draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the Working Group on children in armed conflicts had been acceptable to Libya. The provisions of the Convention had already been incorporated in the domestic legislation of the country.
Libya, however, continued to be concerned about grave situations in which children were found in the world, particularly in Africa and in the Middle East. In the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, children continued to suffer from the consequences of the occupation.
ISMAYIL ASADOV (Azerbaijan) said the Committee on the Rights of the Child had already examined the initial report of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The law of Azerbaijan had been elaborated in accordance with relevant international legal instruments, in particular, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Azerbaijan expressed concern over the fate of children missing as a result of the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan. There were 783 citizens, among them 19 children, on the list of missing persons. The Committee on the Rights of the Child was encouraged to pay more attention to the protection of children in armed conflicts while considering the reports of Governments under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Governmental bodies in Azerbaijan were taking urgent measures to mitigate the effects of the Armenian war and the crisis it had created in the lives of Azerbaijani citizens, particularly children. This included the opening of temporary schools and preschool establishments and the mandatory granting of compensation pensions. In spite of all firm efforts undertaken by the Government and other relevant international organizations, humanitarian aid was declining in all fields.
SAJA MAJALI (Jordan) said focus had been placed in Jordan on child development, upbringing and welfare, mainly through promoting and implementing international and regional instruments and by concretely translating into reality the priorities set in the Jordanian Plan of Action for Children for the years 1993-2000. Laws pertaining to children were being revised and a draft law for protecting the child had been formulated and was waiting to be adopted. In education, there had been notable increases in the percentages of children attending pre-school and primary school. With respect to health, there had been a decline in childbirth mortality.
While violence against children in all its forms should not be tolerated, nothing could be more deplorable that violating the dignity of a child physically or psychologically through sexual or commercial exploitation. Equally deplorable was the economic exploitation of the child. In this regard, a Jordanian law enacted in 1996 prohibited work for children under age 16. This was followed in 1998 with the establishment of a national plan for combating child labour. On the international front, it was essential to curb child soldiering by raising the age of recruitment and responding to the rehabilitation needs of ex-child soldiers.
AUDRIUS NAVIKAS (Lithuania) said that exceptional attention was accorded to children by the Government, which provided assistance to 90 per cent of children who had lost parental guardianship. Full-time care of orphans and children who had lost their family environments was organized by the State. At present, there was a great variety of child-care institutions run by different ministries. In addition, municipalities had joined the process of setting up child-care institutions. The agency 'All the Children of Lithuania' had been rendering help for many years to children who found themselves in difficult situations.
The aim of municipal foster homes was to provide custody for children in their native environments. Education was received by 75 per cent of children with small or medium degrees of mental disability. Although there were many various institutions where children received education and care, not all children with mental or physical disorders might avail themselves of such services.
SILVIA DANAILOV (Switzerland) said the universal nature of the Convention on the Rights of the Child was unfortunately not accompanied by respect for it. Switzerland had taken part in the preparation of the draft optional protocol on children in armed conflict. There were weaknesses in the protocol, particularly with regard to participation in hostilities and with regard to voluntary recruitment. The optional protocol did contain provisions for prevention of recruitment before the age of 18, and ratification by all States was encouraged . Any form of exploitation of children was inadmissable, as set out in the draft optional protocol on the sale, prostitution and pornography of children. It was regrettable that the protocol did not go as far as the Convention in the protection of children, particularly with regard to national law. It was essential that the two protocols be implemented. The United States and Somalia were urged to ratify the Convention.
The preventive detention of children in the former USSR and Pakistan was a cause for concern. In order to improve the implementation of the protection of children, article 3 of the Convention, under which the best interests of the child was termed paramount, should be clarified so that respect for the child was guaranteed.
ERIC VAN DER WAL (Australia) said there should be broad participation in the 2001 special session of the General Assembly to follow up on the goals of the 1990 World Summit for Children. Progress was being made towards some of the goals, such as immunization coverage, iodine-deficiency control, and the promotion of breast-feeding. However, there remained area s of serious concern, including inadequate nutrition, high mortality, lack of sanitation services, and discrimination against girls in education.
Trafficking in children was a repugnant practice which regrettably had been a significant problem in Australia's region of the world. Australia was pleased to have been a significant participant in a March workshop entitled the Asian Regional Initiative against Trafficking in Women and Children. The Prime Minister of Australia had announced last year a National Families Strategy. Poverty reduction and child-labour issues were major factors in Australia's development cooperation and assistance programmes. Australia also had set up a myriad of programmes domestically and internationally to involve children in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
IRINA ANANICH (Belarus) said the Government of Belarus had put in place legislative provisions designed to promote and protect child rights. It had also developed a structure of cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund and the United Nations Development Programme. It was also cooperating with non-governmental organizations. However, because of a decline in family conditions because of a sharp decline in economic conditions, children were in a difficult situation. The number of street children had been on the rise while the rate of suicide had increased because of the economic crisis.
The effects of the Chernobyl accident had also been felt by the Government and population because of a lack of resources to allocate to health promotion. More resources were not available to invest in education or health programmes. In addition, the country had been affected by the movement of people from other regions who used it as a transit point to the West. Despite the problems faced by the Government, measures had been taken to improve the condition of children in Belarus.
CLEMENCIA DEVIA, of the World Organization against Torture, said there were violations of the rights of the child despite the fact that only two States had yet to ratify the Convention. Bahrain, India, Guatemala, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh were among the places where there were violations, including cruel and inhuman treatment by security forces, imprisonment of minors, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, physical abuse, child labour, and minors obliged to work in the informal sector.
These violations were serious violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Members of the Commission were reminded that the awareness was there to take effective action to combat violations of the rights of the men and women of tomorrow.
MARIE-THERESE BELLAMY, of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, welcomed the adoption by the International Labour Office of the Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Given the international dimension of child labour, an international response was required. There were more than 250 million child workers around the world, half of whom had no access to education. The highest concentration of child workers was in the agricultural sector and in sectors where adults could not organize themselves in trade unions. Children worked in the carpet industry, made surgical instruments, worked in mines, worked in diamonds and other precious stones, were forcibly enrolled in the army or were exploited by organized crime and the mafia.
According to the ILO, Asia harboured the highest number of child workers. In India, the number of child slaves was estimated at 55 million. In Russia, millions of children risked dropping out of school and suffering poverty and criminal exploitation. In Burma, children were subjected to slavery and forced labour.
ETIENNE ROUGE, of the International Federation Terre des Hommes, said the organization supported 800 development projects in about 80 countries, including Brazil, where landless rural workers were subject to all sorts of violence. The action taken by the state Government of Parana in Brazil had affected a number of children following expulsion measures in the northwest of the region. On the night of 25 February, 1,000 policemen carried out the forced expulsion of a group of labourers. About 26 persons were wounded by the police action. Seven were children between 2 and 7 years of age.
Terre des Hommes had carried out a study in western Africa on child trafficking. According to the study, thousands of girls and boys had been victims of a network of traffickers who sold children. The victims suffered physically and psychologically. Many of them never returned home, while others died in the course of transfer to their destinations. Malian boys and girls had been sold to plantation owners in Cote d'Ivoire and to serve as maids, while girls from Benin and Togo had been sold to traders in Gabon.
RENATE BLOEM, of the World Federation of Methodists and Uniting Church Women, said that in 1995 Governments had committed themselves to the Beijing Platform of Action against any discrimination against the girl child. It had been revealed that there had been very little progress, with the exception of preschool for girls. Gender-based violence had increased. The psychological impact of child abuse could do irreparable harm. Young girls today were faced with armed conflicts where they were the target of systematic abuses, female genital mutilation, honour killings and rape. UNAIDS research showed that young girls were five times as likely to be infected by HIV/AIDS as boys. They were often unpaid, unvalued and lured into trafficking. The International Labour Office Convention confronted the most drastic forms of child labour. However, this was not enough to prevent young girls from being used and abused.
The plan of action of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on the elimination of harmful traditional practices was a blueprint for action to end such violations and eradicate discrimination against girls. The Commission should conduct a constructive dialogue on human rights and poverty, and follow up on the commitments of the Beijing Conference and Copenhagen Summit.
ERIC RAM, of World Vision, said the proposed optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was weaker than the Convention on the Rights of the Child, thus weakening international protection for children. It was essential to carry out a review of the proposed optional protocol which took into account the interpretation of the Convention by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international instruments, such as International Labour Office Convention 182.
There were five reasons to review the protocol: it offered inadequate protection for child victims, it ignored the principle of non-criminalization, it did not set an age limit for protection, it made repeated reference to national laws, and, finally, States could ratify the protocol without taking on the broad and inter-related range of obligations contained in the Convention itself.
HORACE PERERA, of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, speaking on behalf of three other organizations, said the Federation and the other NGOs had participated actively in the efforts made by other committed NGOs to put an end to the brutal abuse of the children through child labour and through their use in armed conflict and the brutal as well as bestial exploitation of children in various forms of sexual activity. In the developing countries, per 1,000 births, infant mortality was 64, and under five child mortality was 94 out of 1,000.
In education, the rates for primary school enrollment were 85.7 per cent in the developing countries and 60.4 in the least-developed. With an overall drop-out rate of 33 per cent before grade five, that meant that a third of all the children in those countries left school without completing primary education.
ANTONELLA ATTARDO, of the Minority Rights Group, said the right to education was denied to millions of children because they belonged to ethnic minorities. The situation of ethnic Chinese students in Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Viet Nam and Brunei was an example. Chinese children were discriminated against in the educational system of Malaysia, to the advantage of Malay students.
Brazilian children of African descent were often discriminated against, as a result of which more than half of the Afro-Brazilian population was illiterate. The Governments of South East Asia should take urgent measures to repeal and correct legislation and practices to bring them into line with international standards for the respect of child and minority rights. The Brazilian Government was called upon to devise and implement a programme of action to address the violation of Afro-Brazilian children's right to education.
ARLENE FLAHERTY, of Franciscans International, said children were most often the most vulnerable victims of war and conflict. Additionally, many reports now indicated how children and women suffered when sanctions were imposed on a country following conflicts. In this respect, grave concern was expressed about the UN-imposed sanctions and embargo against Iraq. According to a UN report on the current humanitarian situation in Iraq, the prevalence of malnutrition in Iraqi children under 5 had almost doubled since 1990.
Similarly, the World Food Programme estimated that since 1991, access to potable drinking water in Iraq had dropped to 50 per cent with even lower levels available in the rural areas of the country. Water-borne diseases and other diseases were devastating Iraq's children. The shortage of drugs, supplies and medical equipment, exacerbated by the import restrictions of the UN, had crippled Iraq's health-care system. It was estimated that as many as 5,000 died every month as a direct result of deprivations caused by the sanctions. The deaths and serious injuries among children as well as the trauma inflicted upon them by allied bombings over Iraq would have long-term consequences on the family, culture and society in Iraq.
RACHEL BRETT, of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, in a joint statement with International Save the Children Alliance, welcomed the completion of the draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed conflicts. It reflected the international recognition that no person under 18 years of age should participate in armed conflict nor be required to serve in any armed forces or armed groups.
However, it was regrettable that the draft protocol did not also prohibit all voluntary recruitment of children under 18. Those Governments which instead sought a lower minimum voluntary age should be challenged to demonstrate in practice that they were able to ensure that none of their children under 18 were used in conflict situations.
REGINA LOUF, of the Transnational Radical Party, said sex rings in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe left their child victims with no rights. The abusers could even be seen on TV denying their abuse of children in any way. It had been proved that sometimes even the police officers falsified the testimonies of children. The fact remained that one of eight girls and one of ten boys in Belgium was sexually abused.
The speaker had seen her pimp from age 12-16 admit his crimes to the police only to hear one justice officer put the blame on her for those offences. Her testimony was now used in Belgium to repress all other victims of organized child abuse.
SANDRINE VALENTINE, of Human Rights Advocates, welcomed the completion of the draft optional protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children under 18 in armed conflict. An estimated 300,000 former child soldiers under the age of 18 would be demobilized as a consequence of the protocol. After leaving the army, children usually returned to societies torn by years of civil war. In such circumstances their well-being depended very much on a secure family relationship. All possible efforts should therefore be made to reunify former child soldiers with their families and assist families in their child-rearing responsibilities.
Another consequence of past child recruitment into armed groups had been that the age of criminal responsibility had been reduced and/or that anti-terrorist or emergency legislation had not taken into account of the age of suspected war criminals. This raised questions about countries' compliance with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
WILFRED WONG, of the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty, said children in Burma were forced to work at construction or as porters by the Burmese Army. The troops made no distinction between adults and children in their atrocities. The Burmese Army was currently committing genocide against the country's ethnic minorities. Children, like adults, were used for forced labour by the military. The youngest children taken for road and railway building were usually aged 8 to 10, while the youngest taken for heavy porter duties, carrying supplies for the Burmese army, were usually 12-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls. The conditions for porters were brutal; and they were also used as human shields and minesweepers.
The murder of street children continued with impunity in countries like Brazil because of the authorities' lack of will to enforce the law.
GIANFRANCO FATTORINI, of the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples, said the behaviour of the Moroccan regime in the Western Sahara was a cause for concern. Young children had been arrested for tattooing their support of the Polisario. The suppression of free expression had to end. The organization recognized changes for the better within Morocco, but these changes needed to be implemented everywhere.
In Colombia, six and a half million children lived in poverty and two and half million worked in hazardous conditions. Indigenous children were invisible victims of the conflicts in Colombia. The conflicting parties were urged to refrain from involving children in the violence. In Burma the junta policy was to spend on military matters as opposed to children. There were no chances for future generations. The Commission was called upon to urge Burma to balance its military expenditure. The plight of the Kurdish people and children prevented from speaking their mother tongue was another source for concern. The Turkish Government was called upon to make the necessary changes in legislation to end these violations. The organization strongly denounced China's repressive policies against children in Tibet. The Commission was called upon to appoint independent observers to meet with children harmed by these repressive policies.
THIERRY NLANDU, of the Human Rights Law Group, said the children of Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and all other countries facing armed conflict called upon the Commission to move from fine words and give life to promises made to the children of the world. In Afghanistan, violence against young children had continued in various forms for 22 years. In that country boys received guns when they asked for bread or education. Afghan children were also arrested for flying kites or playing with pigeons, as both games had been declared un-Islamic. Young girls were denied the right to education and were not allowed to play outside their homes. The majority of children had no access to health care and hundreds of thousands had become disabled due to land mine explosions.
Children in Burundi had become the biggest casualty of the on-going armed conflict. Since 1993, tens of thousands of children had been massacred; thousands of others had been enlisted into armed groups while there were about 5,000 street children in Bujumbura. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the number of child soldiers had increased since the first war in 1996. Children were obliged to leave their education incomplete owing not only to the on-going war but also to the poor financial situations of their parents. Children also suffered from severe malnutrition. There were reports of young girls raped in prisons during military operations in the country.
HORACIO RAVENNA, of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, said that in Argentina the situation of minors was of serious concern because young law offenders were kept together with adults. Many of them were deprived of their rights provided in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In addition, children whose mothers were imprisoned awaiting trial were abandoned without any care. The Argentinean authorities were also urged to remove the remaining seven military judges still sitting on the benches of the Supreme Court.
Minors in a Paraguayan prison had held a hunger strike last March because of the unhygienic conditions in which they were detained. They also had protested the wounding of some inmates by fire; 72 of them were later transferred to another prison. The Government was urged to dismantle the original institution.
GABRIELA ARIAS URIBURU, of New Human Rights, said her three sons had been taken from Guatemala by her former husband. He had renounced his former nationality of Jordan to take on Guatemalan nationality. He had taken the children from her and deprived her from legal access to her children. Since March 1998 she had only been able to see her children twice in Jordan. The children had the right to live normally with their mother. The Supreme Court of Guatemala had requested that the Supreme Court of Jordan ensure the return of her children. She had as yet heard nothing.
This was an obvious violation of the rights of the child, the observance of which was monitored by the Commission. Effective action was required from Guatemala and Jordan. Cultural identity was the result of the influence of two parents. All children should be allowed to be children and should be protected by the free and noble values of human rights.
LOBSANG NYANDAK, of the International Union of Socialist Youth, said the rights of the child were regularly violated in Tibet, leaving the majority of Tibetan children illiterate after more than four decades of China's rule. Tibetan children remained deprived of an education system that educated them about their culture, religion and national history. It was due to such violations that Tibetans inside Tibet sent their children into exile. In 1999 alone, 1,115 Tibetan children escaped from Tibet, according to a report published by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. The most recent case was that of 14-year-old Gyalwa Karmapa, a high Tibetan religious figure, who escaped to India earlier this year.
Some children died on the dangerous journey by foot over the Himalayas and if they did survive, there was a high risk they would never see their families again. Those children who were successful in their escape then began their life as refugees. Parents in Tibet whose children were being educated in India were coming under increasing pressure from the Chinese Government, which ordered parents to bring back their children or face consequences, including losing their jobs. Another alarming situation was the emergence of child prostitution in major Tibetan cities such as Lhasa. Finally, the world's youngest prisoner of conscience, Gedhum Choekyi Nyima, the XI Panchen Lama of Tibet, was still being held under detention in an unknown location in China.
NATIVIDAD GUERRERO, of the Centre for Youth Studies, said keeping the Cuban child Elian Gonzalez in the United States was unacceptable. On 25 November 1999 a Cuban child 5 years old, Elian Gonzalez, had landed in Miami after the boat he was riding in capsized, killing his mother and others accompanying him. The boat was illegally sailing to reach the United States. The Cuban Government had used all channels, including diplomatic, to recuperate the child and reunite him with his father in Cuba. The child was supposed to have been returned to Cuba by the middle of last January, but because of the claim of parental power by some relatives in Miami, the measure had not yet been implemented. The return was further obstructed by the act of a terrorist organization called the National Foundation of American Cubans.
These efforts to keep the child from his father constituted a violation of the elementary humanitarian norms of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the United States had not yet ratified.
ALI ABDULLA, of the Arab Lawyers Union, said in Lebanon, childhood was a state of suffering and fear since the 1978 occupation by Israel. The Israeli occupation, shelling and detention of children was a policy to destroy the infrastructure, to terrorize the population and to subject Lebanon to Israel's will. The Israeli shelling adversely affected the personalities of the children and was a stark violation of human-rights treaties and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There were many examples which portrayed Israeli State terrorism against Lebanese people, including children. The Commission must press Israel to stop its aggression against the Lebanese people and children and to withdraw from Lebanon completely and unconditionally.
MAURICE GRABER, of Defense of Children International, said that despite increasing attention given to children's rights by the international community, police abuse and violence against children persisted, arbitrary detention was frequent, legal and other assistance disregarded and deprivation of liberty was not used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible length of time. In some cases, States were even introducing policies and laws providing for more repressive measures such as lowering the age of criminal responsibility, prosecuting minors as if they were adults, creating special prisons for the very young, implementing legislation providing for mandatory sentencing and imposing the death penalty for crimes committed by children.
The administration of juvenile justice was of serious concern in all regions of the world and in relation to all legal systems. Awareness-raising and assistance were crucial to improve national juvenile justice systems, respect for children and young people in conflict with the law, and the implementation of international standards.
SAEEDA SHAH, of the Muslim World League, said that in the valley of Kashmir, children were living with unethical and grave violations of their rights. Instead of schooling, they got detention in the torture cells of Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. Child torture, killings and disappearances were common occurrences. Amnesty International, in a report, had expressed particular concern about the disappearance of children and juveniles in Jammu and Kashmir and about the effect on children of the disappearance of family members.
While it was frightening for any detainee to be cut off from the outside world and from the support that family members and lawyers could provide, that situation was particularly threatening for vulnerable children and youths. The Government of India was urged to take urgent measures to halt the practice of violating the rights of children and affording the perpetrators impunity.
RITA PEREIRA, of the Federation of Cuban Women, said Cuban women had been pursing a just cause in working for the safe return of Elian Gonzalez to his father. The 6-year-old had been illegally trafficked to the United States, as his mother had been forced to leave an abusive relationship in Cuba behind. The boy had been found alone in the sea, having watched his own mother drown. The boy clearly needed to be with his father after such traumatic experiences. The right of the father to care for his child had been recognized in human-rights instruments and in the immigration laws of the United States.
The constant political manipulation over this boy had to end. Cuba lacked perhaps great wealth, but was rich in ideas and experiences. The Commission was called upon to ensure an end to this gross violation of human rights, to press for the end of the special law on Cuba which encouraged such behaviour, and to end the aggressive policy of the United States' blockade against Cuba.
DORA CARCAÑO, of Derechos del nino, said that fifty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a decade after the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the situation of children continued to challenge humanity. The situation of children was closely linked to neo-liberalism and globalization. Children were vulnerable to diseases caused by extreme poverty, lack of social security and political will by most countries to implement the objectives set by the UN Charter in favour of children. Sixty per cent of Latin American children suffered poverty. The growth in GDP of the region was not sufficient to alleviate the phenomenon. Declining health spending, the economic crisis, and structural-adjustment measures adversely impacted the life of children.
In Cuba, children enjoyed privileged rights despite the embargo which had been imposed on the country for the last 40 years. Since 1959, special attention had been paid to women's health care, sex-education programmes and special education for mentally retarded and disabled children. In Cuba, the mortality rate was 6.4 per 1000 births, the lowest in the region and in line with developed countries.
ASHOK BHAN, of the Indian Council of Education, said that although the Convention on the Rights of the Child had been ratified by 191 States, real concerns about the rights of the child remained unfulfilled. The Convention had been taken lightly by the international community, as with other treaties on human rights which had been liberal in their intentions but lenient in their enforcement. The best available estimates suggested that approximately 250 million children were deficient in vitamin A, over 800 million people suffered from iodine deficiency, and up to 2 billion people were affected by iron deficiency and anaemia.
Despite the world community's agreed commitments and legal obligations and general progress in improving the health, nutrition and education of children, the situation of girls continued to be disadvantaged compared to that of boys in many countries. Prevailing cultural and social attitudes about girls' roles and division of labour in everyday life had negatively influenced the status of girls.
CAROLYN HANDCHIN, of the Women's Federation for World Peace International, said one tragic situation after another was heard about at the Commission, and 'generic' solutions were sought. Experience, meanwhile, led to the conclusion that programmes intended to strengthen the family brought the most far-reaching results. Governments and policy makers were urged to not underestimate the importance of Government programmes that supported families. It was better to invest in a family at risk than to pick up the pieces of a broken family. Families needed help through crises not only in developing countries but everywhere.
At the age of 6 or 10, children were becoming numb to scenes of torture and abuse through the incredible proliferation of violence in the media. The importance of the role of the family should be highlighted.
BY VAN CEU, of Worldview International, said she wanted to tell the Commission what was happening to children in Burma, but five minutes were not enough. Therefore she chose to relate a recent incident in Shan State. In early October 1992, two schoolgirls were arrested, detained and raped by an army commander in the military base in Lai Kha and money was extorted for their release.
On 8 October 1999, the school had a meeting of all teachers and students. The teachers asked the students if they had any questions. Two schoolgirls asked why the Burmese soldiers who claimed to be Government troops oppressed the people so much and why they closed down the main marketplace in Lai-Kha town. Two of the soldiers who were on security duty at the school called out the two girls and said they should go to the military base and ask the commander, if they really wanted to know, and actually took them to the base. As soon as the two soldiers finished reporting about the incident and what the two children had asked, the commander ordered them to lock up the girls. At night the soldiers took one girl to the commander for interrogation. The commander then took her into his bedroom, forcibly pulled off her clothes and raped her all night. In the morning she was sent back to the lock up and he raped the other girl. After raping the girls for four days and four nights, the commander ordered the girls' parents to pay 15,000 Kyat for the release of each of them. This was but one story, but there were many such incidents.
TATIANA SHAUMIAN, of the International Institute for Peace, said every year the Commission discussed the rights of children, but the suffering of children continued. The ILO estimated the number of working children around the world at a staggering 250 million, of which at least 120 million between the ages of 5 and 14 were working full-time. Asia had the largest population of working children, at some 40 million. Children worked because of a lack of alternatives, lack of knowledge, or socio-cultural traditions. Most who did were from disadvantaged families - poverty was the main reason parents sent their children to work.
Girls were especially discriminated against. Girl child workers were paid less and were at risk of being sexually exploited by their employers or of being trafficked. The sale of girls by starving parents to such traffickers or their abduction were quite common occurrences not only in Asia but in Europe and America. United States Government sources estimated that between 45,000 and 50,000 women were trafficked into the US in 1999. It also was estimated that some 300,000 children were serving in Government forces or armed groups in various parts of the world, another wholly unacceptable practice.
ASHRAF SARAF, of the World Muslim Congress, said it was ironic that while India had accepted that exploitation of child labour should be abolished and had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it had at the same time made a declaration about Article 32 in which it expressed its interpretation and concluded that the Government had undertaken to progressively implement the provisions of that article.
The argument given, such as poverty, lack of resources and the practical problems associated with prescribing a minimum age for employment flew in the face of India's consistent increase in its defense budget. As recently as March of this year, the Indian Government had made a 28 per cent increase in its defense budget. India, instead of investing resources in eliminating child labour, alleviating poverty and improving the quality of education, was diverting those precious resources to create atomic bombs and missiles.
MASOOMA ALI, of the Afro Asian People's Solidarity Organization, said that in many parts of the world children grew up deprived of the guarantee of their human rights, sometimes due to the mere lack of political will or political pressures. The provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child were essential but constantly violated. Pakistan was an example of a country where there was no federal law for compulsory education and the country's education system was in total disarray with only 70 per cent of children under the age of 12 enrolled in schools, and only half of them actually completing primary school.
The Commission was warned not to be satisfied that a large number of States had ratified the Convention, but on the contrary to be concerned and careful about the causes which ultimately led to children growing as fundamentalists, mercenaries and terrorists. The Commission was called upon to take note of such situations and to intervene both in the interests of the rights of the child and the creation of an environment for the meaningful realization of human rights in general.
NUR AMALIA, of the Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation, said the prolonged economic crisis had had an enormous impact on children's lives in Indonesia. Indonesia had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child but only through a presidential decree, not through law. In practice, and despite the establishment of a National Commission for Rights of the Child, the implementation of the Convention was still invisible on the ground.
As a result of the economic crisis, many children had dropped out of school because their families could not afford the fees any more, and many of them had to start working to sustain themselves and contribute to the family income. The crisis also minimized the availability of public facilities. Marginalized children were subjected to economic exploitation, physical as well as mental violence, indiscriminate arrests and other forms of discrimination. Children in Indonesia's conflict areas experienced other problems and hardships. Indeed, it seemed often ignored that it was mostly children and women who became victims of incidents of political violence. In the Moluccas, children had even been used as living shields for the militia.
MARIANA DEL AGUILA, of Christian Aid, said that since 1979, a law existed in Guatemala through which the Government directed its repression and control of a segment of the population, particularly minors under 18 years, under the pretext of coping with an 'irregular situation'. In addition, the juvenile justice administration code did not protect the rights of children, particularly those in vulnerable conditions.
The consensus reached by civil society during the peace process had deteriorated since the President took power. The conservative attitude of the Government had had a negative impact on the achievements already attained to realize peace and reconciliation. The Government of Guatemala should implement the code on children and youth in order to strengthen the protection and promotion of child rights.
ABDULLA ELRAHMAN, of the Islamic African Relief Agency, said the relations between the southern and northern tribes of Sudan had always been characterized by peaceful migration and coexistence. After 1983 there was friction concerning access to water and crops, leading to tribal conflict. Fortunately the detention of children and abduction of children had come to an end with the rule of law and peaceful reconciliation. Unfortunately, the pressure to end children's involvement in armed conflict had not seen such positive results, in spite of the concern of local society.
It was important to emphasize that allegations of slavery in Sudan ware false. International voluntary organizations insisted on portraying the matter as a form of slavery. Irrespective of the naivety of these campaigns, the international community had fallen for the propaganda of a prejudiced, monopolistic media. There was a Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children, a group of leading Sudanese NGOs which in close collaboration with the Advisory Council of Human Rights was genuinely committed to ending the phenomenon of abduction in Sudan.
BARBARA SERIS, of the Society for Threatened Peoples, said that since the Ethiopian-Eritrean war began in May 1998, 70,000 ethnic Eritreans had been expelled from Ethiopia. The most inhuman aspect of the mass expulsion was the break up of families and the forcible separation of children from their parents. The number of children left behind by the expelled parents was approximately 2,600. Many children were thrown out of school and persecuted after the expulsion of their parents. Some were imprisoned and treated as prisoners of war.
There were many infants who were born under atrocious conditions during the expulsion process. Mothers who were in very advanced stages of pregnancy were forced to walk 4 to 11 km across the no-man's land between the Ethiopian and Eritrean trenches. Some gave birth in the detention camps without the help of midwives; some gave birth on the way across no-man's land in the Danakil desert, where some of the highest temperatures on earth had been recorded; and some gave birth in the Eritrean trenches.
RAVINDER KOUL, of the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, said that the most barbaric example of heinous crimes being committed against children could be found in Kashmir, where Islamist mercenaries with the aim of Islamizing the secular Kashmir society were using children as pawns to accomplish their sinister designs. Abduction, killing, kidnaping, rape, and sodomy were some of the crimes that these children were being subjected to with the aim of either forcing them to follow the Islamists' dictate or else browbeating their parents into submission.
In addition, children were regularly being used as gun runners and in various acts of terrorist violence in order to escape the attention of the law-enforcement agencies. Hundreds of innocent children had been thus used to keep the embers of terrorism alive. Further, school going children and school teachers were directly facing the brunt of the atrocities of those terrorists who wanted to deprive children of the benefits of modern scientific education; they wanted to impose medieval, extremist Islamic education on them.
LOURDES CERVANTES, of the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, speaking in a joint statement with the Indian Movement 'Tupaj Amaru' and Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, said 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez was being used for obscure political aims and ends. From a legal standpoint, the United States had trampled on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The child had the right to preserve his nationality, not to be separated from his parents, and not to be subjected to physical or mental abuse.
This child was being held illegally in a foreign country, by the United States, one of only two countries not to have ratified the Convention. This policy was supported by distant relatives who were acting like terrorists. The real reasons for this kidnaping was that Elian was Cuban; he belonged to a dignified people who had not bent to the will of the United States. The people struggling for Elian to remain in America had not lost any sleep over the future of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans living in abject poverty, nor over the suffering of Iraqi children or Yugoslavian children. It was not possible to remain silent in the face of such a human-rights violation, which was absolutely unjustifiable from every angle.
ROMAN SCHIBLI, of the International Organization for the Development of Freedom of Education, said religion greatly impacted on the lives of children. However, issues related to children's religious rights had received so far little attention from the UN mechanisms and from the children's rights community. The Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly recognized the child as subject to the right to freedom of religion, while affirming at the same time the rights and duties of parents and the limitations to the exercise of the right as prescribed by law.
However, it must be emphasized that the evolving capacities of the child were of fundamental importance when considering the child's ability to make his or her own decisions. In this respect, the best interest of the child and the prohibition of discrimination on any grounds should remain the overriding principles guiding children's policies and education. Religion, often combined with ethnic and nationalist intolerance presented today an enormous challenge, as it led to gross violations of the human rights of children. A number of initiatives had been taken during the past decade to foster a dialogue between cultures and religions. However, increased efforts and resources were required to bridge the gap between human rights and religion.
Rights of reply
The representative of Nepal, speaking in right of reply, said the country appreciated the work of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The delegation of Nepal was, however, surprised to find that Nepal was listed as having problems in this regard. There seemed to be no clear evidence of instances of such offences and hence the report did not reflect the situation in the country. If there had been such instances, the people responsible would have been punished. Nepal had been one of the first countries to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Trafficking in any way, shape or form was prohibited in Nepal with prison terms of up to 20 years for related crimes. Nepal was doing its best to protect the rights of the child with limited resources. If there was evidence for specific instances of isolated crimes, the delegation of Nepal would want to be informed by the Special Rapporteur so action could be taken in accordance with the national commitment to the rights of children.
The representative of Pakistan, speaking in right of reply, said it was unfortunate that while the Swiss statement targeted whole regions for violence inflicted on children during detention, Switzerland had only chosen to name Pakistan in a selective and almost prejudicial manner. The delegation of Pakistan had, in earlier statements, informed the Commission of the many positive steps being taken by the Government to deal with the situation of children. Special mention had been made of the recently approved ordinance on juvenile justice administration which increased the minimum age for the application of death sentence to 18 years, among other things.
The representative of Bahrain, speaking in right of reply, said that one of the NGOs had claimed there was torture and ill-treatment of children in Bahrain. The delegation wanted to take the opportunity to refute these accusations and lies. Clearly this information had been recruited from circles hostile to the Government of Bahrain. The NGO had looked for information without ensuring the truth of the accusations. The people of Bahrain were a civilized people and cooperated with everyone. Hence this claim could not be accepted. The Government of Bahrain was working tirelessly to ensure the fulfillment of children's potential.
The representative of Ethiopia, speaking in right of reply in reference to the statement made by the Society for Threatened Peoples, said Ethiopia refuted the allegations made against the country. The reference made to the deportation of Eritreans from Ethiopia was a distorted misrepresentation. Although some Eritreans were expelled on the basis of national security and because of their individual activities which were incompatible with their status, their family members were given the choice to stay or to join their relatives on the other side of the border. There were at present many Eritreans legally living with dignity in Ethiopia.
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56th session
12 April 2000
Evening
The Commission on Human Rights completed its annual debate on the rights of children, hearing from an extensive list of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which contended, among other things, that children were suffering unacceptable abuses in numerous countries.
Violations of child rights were alleged in Brazil, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Gabon, Burma, India, Bahrain, Guatemala, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Argentina, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Brunei, Belgium, the Western Sahara, Colombia, China (Tibet), Afghanistan, Israeli-occupied Lebanon, the United States, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
Another frequent theme was that child rights should be implemented rather than merely talked about. A representative of the World Federation of Methodists and Uniting Church Women said that in 1995 Governments had committed themselves to the Beijing Platform of Action against any discrimination against the girl child, but there had been very little progress since. The Indian Council of Education said the Convention on the Rights of the Child had been taken lightly by the international community, as with other treaties on human rights which had been liberal in their intentions but lenient in their enforcement.
Addressing the meeting were representatives of Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Lithuania, Switzerland, Australia, Belarus, and the following NGOs: the World Organization against Torture; the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; the International Federation Terre des Hommes; the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women; World Vision International; the World Federation of United Nations Associations; the Minority Rights Group; Franciscans International; the Friends World Committee for Consultation; the Transnational Radical Party; Human Rights Advocates; the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty; the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples; the Human Rights Law Group; the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; New Human Rights; the International Union of Socialist Youth; the Centre for Youth Studies; the Arab Lawyers Union; Defense for Children International; the Muslim World League; the Federation of Cuban Women; the Women's International Democratic Federation; the Indian Council of Education; the Women's Federation for World Peace; Worldview International; the International Institute for Peace; the World Muslim Congress; the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization; the Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation; Christian Aid; the Islamic African Relief Agency; the Society for Threatened Peoples; the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the International Organization for the Development of Freedom of Education.
Nepal, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Ethiopia spoke in exercise of the right of reply.
The Commission will reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday, 13 April to start its consideration of its agenda item on specific groups and individuals including migrant workers, minorities, mass exoduses and displlaced persons, and other vulnerable groups and individuals. It is scheduled to hold extended meetings until midnight.
Statements
FAYZA ABOULNAGA (Egypt) said the Egyptian Government had promulgated legislation designed to ensure the protection of the rights of the child. Egypt had also played an important role in the negotiation of the optional protocol on the Convention of the Rights of the Child on children in armed conflict. Egypt called on all Members States to ratify the protocol.
Egypt shared the view that the level of protection offered by the protocol was below the ambitions set. Regrettably, national legislation was given a priority over international standards in the protocol. It was hoped, however, that the protocol would further contribute to the advancement of the universal realization of the rights of the child.
NABIK SHAMISH (the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) said the situation of children in many countries was still of concern, with serious crimes persisting, including child prostitution, child labour, and the sale of children. The draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the Working Group on children in armed conflicts had been acceptable to Libya. The provisions of the Convention had already been incorporated in the domestic legislation of the country.
Libya, however, continued to be concerned about grave situations in which children were found in the world, particularly in Africa and in the Middle East. In the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, children continued to suffer from the consequences of the occupation.
ISMAYIL ASADOV (Azerbaijan) said the Committee on the Rights of the Child had already examined the initial report of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The law of Azerbaijan had been elaborated in accordance with relevant international legal instruments, in particular, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Azerbaijan expressed concern over the fate of children missing as a result of the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan. There were 783 citizens, among them 19 children, on the list of missing persons. The Committee on the Rights of the Child was encouraged to pay more attention to the protection of children in armed conflicts while considering the reports of Governments under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Governmental bodies in Azerbaijan were taking urgent measures to mitigate the effects of the Armenian war and the crisis it had created in the lives of Azerbaijani citizens, particularly children. This included the opening of temporary schools and preschool establishments and the mandatory granting of compensation pensions. In spite of all firm efforts undertaken by the Government and other relevant international organizations, humanitarian aid was declining in all fields.
SAJA MAJALI (Jordan) said focus had been placed in Jordan on child development, upbringing and welfare, mainly through promoting and implementing international and regional instruments and by concretely translating into reality the priorities set in the Jordanian Plan of Action for Children for the years 1993-2000. Laws pertaining to children were being revised and a draft law for protecting the child had been formulated and was waiting to be adopted. In education, there had been notable increases in the percentages of children attending pre-school and primary school. With respect to health, there had been a decline in childbirth mortality.
While violence against children in all its forms should not be tolerated, nothing could be more deplorable that violating the dignity of a child physically or psychologically through sexual or commercial exploitation. Equally deplorable was the economic exploitation of the child. In this regard, a Jordanian law enacted in 1996 prohibited work for children under age 16. This was followed in 1998 with the establishment of a national plan for combating child labour. On the international front, it was essential to curb child soldiering by raising the age of recruitment and responding to the rehabilitation needs of ex-child soldiers.
AUDRIUS NAVIKAS (Lithuania) said that exceptional attention was accorded to children by the Government, which provided assistance to 90 per cent of children who had lost parental guardianship. Full-time care of orphans and children who had lost their family environments was organized by the State. At present, there was a great variety of child-care institutions run by different ministries. In addition, municipalities had joined the process of setting up child-care institutions. The agency 'All the Children of Lithuania' had been rendering help for many years to children who found themselves in difficult situations.
The aim of municipal foster homes was to provide custody for children in their native environments. Education was received by 75 per cent of children with small or medium degrees of mental disability. Although there were many various institutions where children received education and care, not all children with mental or physical disorders might avail themselves of such services.
SILVIA DANAILOV (Switzerland) said the universal nature of the Convention on the Rights of the Child was unfortunately not accompanied by respect for it. Switzerland had taken part in the preparation of the draft optional protocol on children in armed conflict. There were weaknesses in the protocol, particularly with regard to participation in hostilities and with regard to voluntary recruitment. The optional protocol did contain provisions for prevention of recruitment before the age of 18, and ratification by all States was encouraged . Any form of exploitation of children was inadmissable, as set out in the draft optional protocol on the sale, prostitution and pornography of children. It was regrettable that the protocol did not go as far as the Convention in the protection of children, particularly with regard to national law. It was essential that the two protocols be implemented. The United States and Somalia were urged to ratify the Convention.
The preventive detention of children in the former USSR and Pakistan was a cause for concern. In order to improve the implementation of the protection of children, article 3 of the Convention, under which the best interests of the child was termed paramount, should be clarified so that respect for the child was guaranteed.
ERIC VAN DER WAL (Australia) said there should be broad participation in the 2001 special session of the General Assembly to follow up on the goals of the 1990 World Summit for Children. Progress was being made towards some of the goals, such as immunization coverage, iodine-deficiency control, and the promotion of breast-feeding. However, there remained area s of serious concern, including inadequate nutrition, high mortality, lack of sanitation services, and discrimination against girls in education.
Trafficking in children was a repugnant practice which regrettably had been a significant problem in Australia's region of the world. Australia was pleased to have been a significant participant in a March workshop entitled the Asian Regional Initiative against Trafficking in Women and Children. The Prime Minister of Australia had announced last year a National Families Strategy. Poverty reduction and child-labour issues were major factors in Australia's development cooperation and assistance programmes. Australia also had set up a myriad of programmes domestically and internationally to involve children in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
IRINA ANANICH (Belarus) said the Government of Belarus had put in place legislative provisions designed to promote and protect child rights. It had also developed a structure of cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund and the United Nations Development Programme. It was also cooperating with non-governmental organizations. However, because of a decline in family conditions because of a sharp decline in economic conditions, children were in a difficult situation. The number of street children had been on the rise while the rate of suicide had increased because of the economic crisis.
The effects of the Chernobyl accident had also been felt by the Government and population because of a lack of resources to allocate to health promotion. More resources were not available to invest in education or health programmes. In addition, the country had been affected by the movement of people from other regions who used it as a transit point to the West. Despite the problems faced by the Government, measures had been taken to improve the condition of children in Belarus.
CLEMENCIA DEVIA, of the World Organization against Torture, said there were violations of the rights of the child despite the fact that only two States had yet to ratify the Convention. Bahrain, India, Guatemala, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh were among the places where there were violations, including cruel and inhuman treatment by security forces, imprisonment of minors, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, physical abuse, child labour, and minors obliged to work in the informal sector.
These violations were serious violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Members of the Commission were reminded that the awareness was there to take effective action to combat violations of the rights of the men and women of tomorrow.
MARIE-THERESE BELLAMY, of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, welcomed the adoption by the International Labour Office of the Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Given the international dimension of child labour, an international response was required. There were more than 250 million child workers around the world, half of whom had no access to education. The highest concentration of child workers was in the agricultural sector and in sectors where adults could not organize themselves in trade unions. Children worked in the carpet industry, made surgical instruments, worked in mines, worked in diamonds and other precious stones, were forcibly enrolled in the army or were exploited by organized crime and the mafia.
According to the ILO, Asia harboured the highest number of child workers. In India, the number of child slaves was estimated at 55 million. In Russia, millions of children risked dropping out of school and suffering poverty and criminal exploitation. In Burma, children were subjected to slavery and forced labour.
ETIENNE ROUGE, of the International Federation Terre des Hommes, said the organization supported 800 development projects in about 80 countries, including Brazil, where landless rural workers were subject to all sorts of violence. The action taken by the state Government of Parana in Brazil had affected a number of children following expulsion measures in the northwest of the region. On the night of 25 February, 1,000 policemen carried out the forced expulsion of a group of labourers. About 26 persons were wounded by the police action. Seven were children between 2 and 7 years of age.
Terre des Hommes had carried out a study in western Africa on child trafficking. According to the study, thousands of girls and boys had been victims of a network of traffickers who sold children. The victims suffered physically and psychologically. Many of them never returned home, while others died in the course of transfer to their destinations. Malian boys and girls had been sold to plantation owners in Cote d'Ivoire and to serve as maids, while girls from Benin and Togo had been sold to traders in Gabon.
RENATE BLOEM, of the World Federation of Methodists and Uniting Church Women, said that in 1995 Governments had committed themselves to the Beijing Platform of Action against any discrimination against the girl child. It had been revealed that there had been very little progress, with the exception of preschool for girls. Gender-based violence had increased. The psychological impact of child abuse could do irreparable harm. Young girls today were faced with armed conflicts where they were the target of systematic abuses, female genital mutilation, honour killings and rape. UNAIDS research showed that young girls were five times as likely to be infected by HIV/AIDS as boys. They were often unpaid, unvalued and lured into trafficking. The International Labour Office Convention confronted the most drastic forms of child labour. However, this was not enough to prevent young girls from being used and abused.
The plan of action of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on the elimination of harmful traditional practices was a blueprint for action to end such violations and eradicate discrimination against girls. The Commission should conduct a constructive dialogue on human rights and poverty, and follow up on the commitments of the Beijing Conference and Copenhagen Summit.
ERIC RAM, of World Vision, said the proposed optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was weaker than the Convention on the Rights of the Child, thus weakening international protection for children. It was essential to carry out a review of the proposed optional protocol which took into account the interpretation of the Convention by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international instruments, such as International Labour Office Convention 182.
There were five reasons to review the protocol: it offered inadequate protection for child victims, it ignored the principle of non-criminalization, it did not set an age limit for protection, it made repeated reference to national laws, and, finally, States could ratify the protocol without taking on the broad and inter-related range of obligations contained in the Convention itself.
HORACE PERERA, of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, speaking on behalf of three other organizations, said the Federation and the other NGOs had participated actively in the efforts made by other committed NGOs to put an end to the brutal abuse of the children through child labour and through their use in armed conflict and the brutal as well as bestial exploitation of children in various forms of sexual activity. In the developing countries, per 1,000 births, infant mortality was 64, and under five child mortality was 94 out of 1,000.
In education, the rates for primary school enrollment were 85.7 per cent in the developing countries and 60.4 in the least-developed. With an overall drop-out rate of 33 per cent before grade five, that meant that a third of all the children in those countries left school without completing primary education.
ANTONELLA ATTARDO, of the Minority Rights Group, said the right to education was denied to millions of children because they belonged to ethnic minorities. The situation of ethnic Chinese students in Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Viet Nam and Brunei was an example. Chinese children were discriminated against in the educational system of Malaysia, to the advantage of Malay students.
Brazilian children of African descent were often discriminated against, as a result of which more than half of the Afro-Brazilian population was illiterate. The Governments of South East Asia should take urgent measures to repeal and correct legislation and practices to bring them into line with international standards for the respect of child and minority rights. The Brazilian Government was called upon to devise and implement a programme of action to address the violation of Afro-Brazilian children's right to education.
ARLENE FLAHERTY, of Franciscans International, said children were most often the most vulnerable victims of war and conflict. Additionally, many reports now indicated how children and women suffered when sanctions were imposed on a country following conflicts. In this respect, grave concern was expressed about the UN-imposed sanctions and embargo against Iraq. According to a UN report on the current humanitarian situation in Iraq, the prevalence of malnutrition in Iraqi children under 5 had almost doubled since 1990.
Similarly, the World Food Programme estimated that since 1991, access to potable drinking water in Iraq had dropped to 50 per cent with even lower levels available in the rural areas of the country. Water-borne diseases and other diseases were devastating Iraq's children. The shortage of drugs, supplies and medical equipment, exacerbated by the import restrictions of the UN, had crippled Iraq's health-care system. It was estimated that as many as 5,000 died every month as a direct result of deprivations caused by the sanctions. The deaths and serious injuries among children as well as the trauma inflicted upon them by allied bombings over Iraq would have long-term consequences on the family, culture and society in Iraq.
RACHEL BRETT, of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, in a joint statement with International Save the Children Alliance, welcomed the completion of the draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed conflicts. It reflected the international recognition that no person under 18 years of age should participate in armed conflict nor be required to serve in any armed forces or armed groups.
However, it was regrettable that the draft protocol did not also prohibit all voluntary recruitment of children under 18. Those Governments which instead sought a lower minimum voluntary age should be challenged to demonstrate in practice that they were able to ensure that none of their children under 18 were used in conflict situations.
REGINA LOUF, of the Transnational Radical Party, said sex rings in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe left their child victims with no rights. The abusers could even be seen on TV denying their abuse of children in any way. It had been proved that sometimes even the police officers falsified the testimonies of children. The fact remained that one of eight girls and one of ten boys in Belgium was sexually abused.
The speaker had seen her pimp from age 12-16 admit his crimes to the police only to hear one justice officer put the blame on her for those offences. Her testimony was now used in Belgium to repress all other victims of organized child abuse.
SANDRINE VALENTINE, of Human Rights Advocates, welcomed the completion of the draft optional protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children under 18 in armed conflict. An estimated 300,000 former child soldiers under the age of 18 would be demobilized as a consequence of the protocol. After leaving the army, children usually returned to societies torn by years of civil war. In such circumstances their well-being depended very much on a secure family relationship. All possible efforts should therefore be made to reunify former child soldiers with their families and assist families in their child-rearing responsibilities.
Another consequence of past child recruitment into armed groups had been that the age of criminal responsibility had been reduced and/or that anti-terrorist or emergency legislation had not taken into account of the age of suspected war criminals. This raised questions about countries' compliance with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
WILFRED WONG, of the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty, said children in Burma were forced to work at construction or as porters by the Burmese Army. The troops made no distinction between adults and children in their atrocities. The Burmese Army was currently committing genocide against the country's ethnic minorities. Children, like adults, were used for forced labour by the military. The youngest children taken for road and railway building were usually aged 8 to 10, while the youngest taken for heavy porter duties, carrying supplies for the Burmese army, were usually 12-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls. The conditions for porters were brutal; and they were also used as human shields and minesweepers.
The murder of street children continued with impunity in countries like Brazil because of the authorities' lack of will to enforce the law.
GIANFRANCO FATTORINI, of the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples, said the behaviour of the Moroccan regime in the Western Sahara was a cause for concern. Young children had been arrested for tattooing their support of the Polisario. The suppression of free expression had to end. The organization recognized changes for the better within Morocco, but these changes needed to be implemented everywhere.
In Colombia, six and a half million children lived in poverty and two and half million worked in hazardous conditions. Indigenous children were invisible victims of the conflicts in Colombia. The conflicting parties were urged to refrain from involving children in the violence. In Burma the junta policy was to spend on military matters as opposed to children. There were no chances for future generations. The Commission was called upon to urge Burma to balance its military expenditure. The plight of the Kurdish people and children prevented from speaking their mother tongue was another source for concern. The Turkish Government was called upon to make the necessary changes in legislation to end these violations. The organization strongly denounced China's repressive policies against children in Tibet. The Commission was called upon to appoint independent observers to meet with children harmed by these repressive policies.
THIERRY NLANDU, of the Human Rights Law Group, said the children of Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and all other countries facing armed conflict called upon the Commission to move from fine words and give life to promises made to the children of the world. In Afghanistan, violence against young children had continued in various forms for 22 years. In that country boys received guns when they asked for bread or education. Afghan children were also arrested for flying kites or playing with pigeons, as both games had been declared un-Islamic. Young girls were denied the right to education and were not allowed to play outside their homes. The majority of children had no access to health care and hundreds of thousands had become disabled due to land mine explosions.
Children in Burundi had become the biggest casualty of the on-going armed conflict. Since 1993, tens of thousands of children had been massacred; thousands of others had been enlisted into armed groups while there were about 5,000 street children in Bujumbura. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the number of child soldiers had increased since the first war in 1996. Children were obliged to leave their education incomplete owing not only to the on-going war but also to the poor financial situations of their parents. Children also suffered from severe malnutrition. There were reports of young girls raped in prisons during military operations in the country.
HORACIO RAVENNA, of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, said that in Argentina the situation of minors was of serious concern because young law offenders were kept together with adults. Many of them were deprived of their rights provided in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In addition, children whose mothers were imprisoned awaiting trial were abandoned without any care. The Argentinean authorities were also urged to remove the remaining seven military judges still sitting on the benches of the Supreme Court.
Minors in a Paraguayan prison had held a hunger strike last March because of the unhygienic conditions in which they were detained. They also had protested the wounding of some inmates by fire; 72 of them were later transferred to another prison. The Government was urged to dismantle the original institution.
GABRIELA ARIAS URIBURU, of New Human Rights, said her three sons had been taken from Guatemala by her former husband. He had renounced his former nationality of Jordan to take on Guatemalan nationality. He had taken the children from her and deprived her from legal access to her children. Since March 1998 she had only been able to see her children twice in Jordan. The children had the right to live normally with their mother. The Supreme Court of Guatemala had requested that the Supreme Court of Jordan ensure the return of her children. She had as yet heard nothing.
This was an obvious violation of the rights of the child, the observance of which was monitored by the Commission. Effective action was required from Guatemala and Jordan. Cultural identity was the result of the influence of two parents. All children should be allowed to be children and should be protected by the free and noble values of human rights.
LOBSANG NYANDAK, of the International Union of Socialist Youth, said the rights of the child were regularly violated in Tibet, leaving the majority of Tibetan children illiterate after more than four decades of China's rule. Tibetan children remained deprived of an education system that educated them about their culture, religion and national history. It was due to such violations that Tibetans inside Tibet sent their children into exile. In 1999 alone, 1,115 Tibetan children escaped from Tibet, according to a report published by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. The most recent case was that of 14-year-old Gyalwa Karmapa, a high Tibetan religious figure, who escaped to India earlier this year.
Some children died on the dangerous journey by foot over the Himalayas and if they did survive, there was a high risk they would never see their families again. Those children who were successful in their escape then began their life as refugees. Parents in Tibet whose children were being educated in India were coming under increasing pressure from the Chinese Government, which ordered parents to bring back their children or face consequences, including losing their jobs. Another alarming situation was the emergence of child prostitution in major Tibetan cities such as Lhasa. Finally, the world's youngest prisoner of conscience, Gedhum Choekyi Nyima, the XI Panchen Lama of Tibet, was still being held under detention in an unknown location in China.
NATIVIDAD GUERRERO, of the Centre for Youth Studies, said keeping the Cuban child Elian Gonzalez in the United States was unacceptable. On 25 November 1999 a Cuban child 5 years old, Elian Gonzalez, had landed in Miami after the boat he was riding in capsized, killing his mother and others accompanying him. The boat was illegally sailing to reach the United States. The Cuban Government had used all channels, including diplomatic, to recuperate the child and reunite him with his father in Cuba. The child was supposed to have been returned to Cuba by the middle of last January, but because of the claim of parental power by some relatives in Miami, the measure had not yet been implemented. The return was further obstructed by the act of a terrorist organization called the National Foundation of American Cubans.
These efforts to keep the child from his father constituted a violation of the elementary humanitarian norms of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the United States had not yet ratified.
ALI ABDULLA, of the Arab Lawyers Union, said in Lebanon, childhood was a state of suffering and fear since the 1978 occupation by Israel. The Israeli occupation, shelling and detention of children was a policy to destroy the infrastructure, to terrorize the population and to subject Lebanon to Israel's will. The Israeli shelling adversely affected the personalities of the children and was a stark violation of human-rights treaties and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There were many examples which portrayed Israeli State terrorism against Lebanese people, including children. The Commission must press Israel to stop its aggression against the Lebanese people and children and to withdraw from Lebanon completely and unconditionally.
MAURICE GRABER, of Defense of Children International, said that despite increasing attention given to children's rights by the international community, police abuse and violence against children persisted, arbitrary detention was frequent, legal and other assistance disregarded and deprivation of liberty was not used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible length of time. In some cases, States were even introducing policies and laws providing for more repressive measures such as lowering the age of criminal responsibility, prosecuting minors as if they were adults, creating special prisons for the very young, implementing legislation providing for mandatory sentencing and imposing the death penalty for crimes committed by children.
The administration of juvenile justice was of serious concern in all regions of the world and in relation to all legal systems. Awareness-raising and assistance were crucial to improve national juvenile justice systems, respect for children and young people in conflict with the law, and the implementation of international standards.
SAEEDA SHAH, of the Muslim World League, said that in the valley of Kashmir, children were living with unethical and grave violations of their rights. Instead of schooling, they got detention in the torture cells of Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. Child torture, killings and disappearances were common occurrences. Amnesty International, in a report, had expressed particular concern about the disappearance of children and juveniles in Jammu and Kashmir and about the effect on children of the disappearance of family members.
While it was frightening for any detainee to be cut off from the outside world and from the support that family members and lawyers could provide, that situation was particularly threatening for vulnerable children and youths. The Government of India was urged to take urgent measures to halt the practice of violating the rights of children and affording the perpetrators impunity.
RITA PEREIRA, of the Federation of Cuban Women, said Cuban women had been pursing a just cause in working for the safe return of Elian Gonzalez to his father. The 6-year-old had been illegally trafficked to the United States, as his mother had been forced to leave an abusive relationship in Cuba behind. The boy had been found alone in the sea, having watched his own mother drown. The boy clearly needed to be with his father after such traumatic experiences. The right of the father to care for his child had been recognized in human-rights instruments and in the immigration laws of the United States.
The constant political manipulation over this boy had to end. Cuba lacked perhaps great wealth, but was rich in ideas and experiences. The Commission was called upon to ensure an end to this gross violation of human rights, to press for the end of the special law on Cuba which encouraged such behaviour, and to end the aggressive policy of the United States' blockade against Cuba.
DORA CARCAÑO, of Derechos del nino, said that fifty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a decade after the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the situation of children continued to challenge humanity. The situation of children was closely linked to neo-liberalism and globalization. Children were vulnerable to diseases caused by extreme poverty, lack of social security and political will by most countries to implement the objectives set by the UN Charter in favour of children. Sixty per cent of Latin American children suffered poverty. The growth in GDP of the region was not sufficient to alleviate the phenomenon. Declining health spending, the economic crisis, and structural-adjustment measures adversely impacted the life of children.
In Cuba, children enjoyed privileged rights despite the embargo which had been imposed on the country for the last 40 years. Since 1959, special attention had been paid to women's health care, sex-education programmes and special education for mentally retarded and disabled children. In Cuba, the mortality rate was 6.4 per 1000 births, the lowest in the region and in line with developed countries.
ASHOK BHAN, of the Indian Council of Education, said that although the Convention on the Rights of the Child had been ratified by 191 States, real concerns about the rights of the child remained unfulfilled. The Convention had been taken lightly by the international community, as with other treaties on human rights which had been liberal in their intentions but lenient in their enforcement. The best available estimates suggested that approximately 250 million children were deficient in vitamin A, over 800 million people suffered from iodine deficiency, and up to 2 billion people were affected by iron deficiency and anaemia.
Despite the world community's agreed commitments and legal obligations and general progress in improving the health, nutrition and education of children, the situation of girls continued to be disadvantaged compared to that of boys in many countries. Prevailing cultural and social attitudes about girls' roles and division of labour in everyday life had negatively influenced the status of girls.
CAROLYN HANDCHIN, of the Women's Federation for World Peace International, said one tragic situation after another was heard about at the Commission, and 'generic' solutions were sought. Experience, meanwhile, led to the conclusion that programmes intended to strengthen the family brought the most far-reaching results. Governments and policy makers were urged to not underestimate the importance of Government programmes that supported families. It was better to invest in a family at risk than to pick up the pieces of a broken family. Families needed help through crises not only in developing countries but everywhere.
At the age of 6 or 10, children were becoming numb to scenes of torture and abuse through the incredible proliferation of violence in the media. The importance of the role of the family should be highlighted.
BY VAN CEU, of Worldview International, said she wanted to tell the Commission what was happening to children in Burma, but five minutes were not enough. Therefore she chose to relate a recent incident in Shan State. In early October 1992, two schoolgirls were arrested, detained and raped by an army commander in the military base in Lai Kha and money was extorted for their release.
On 8 October 1999, the school had a meeting of all teachers and students. The teachers asked the students if they had any questions. Two schoolgirls asked why the Burmese soldiers who claimed to be Government troops oppressed the people so much and why they closed down the main marketplace in Lai-Kha town. Two of the soldiers who were on security duty at the school called out the two girls and said they should go to the military base and ask the commander, if they really wanted to know, and actually took them to the base. As soon as the two soldiers finished reporting about the incident and what the two children had asked, the commander ordered them to lock up the girls. At night the soldiers took one girl to the commander for interrogation. The commander then took her into his bedroom, forcibly pulled off her clothes and raped her all night. In the morning she was sent back to the lock up and he raped the other girl. After raping the girls for four days and four nights, the commander ordered the girls' parents to pay 15,000 Kyat for the release of each of them. This was but one story, but there were many such incidents.
TATIANA SHAUMIAN, of the International Institute for Peace, said every year the Commission discussed the rights of children, but the suffering of children continued. The ILO estimated the number of working children around the world at a staggering 250 million, of which at least 120 million between the ages of 5 and 14 were working full-time. Asia had the largest population of working children, at some 40 million. Children worked because of a lack of alternatives, lack of knowledge, or socio-cultural traditions. Most who did were from disadvantaged families - poverty was the main reason parents sent their children to work.
Girls were especially discriminated against. Girl child workers were paid less and were at risk of being sexually exploited by their employers or of being trafficked. The sale of girls by starving parents to such traffickers or their abduction were quite common occurrences not only in Asia but in Europe and America. United States Government sources estimated that between 45,000 and 50,000 women were trafficked into the US in 1999. It also was estimated that some 300,000 children were serving in Government forces or armed groups in various parts of the world, another wholly unacceptable practice.
ASHRAF SARAF, of the World Muslim Congress, said it was ironic that while India had accepted that exploitation of child labour should be abolished and had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it had at the same time made a declaration about Article 32 in which it expressed its interpretation and concluded that the Government had undertaken to progressively implement the provisions of that article.
The argument given, such as poverty, lack of resources and the practical problems associated with prescribing a minimum age for employment flew in the face of India's consistent increase in its defense budget. As recently as March of this year, the Indian Government had made a 28 per cent increase in its defense budget. India, instead of investing resources in eliminating child labour, alleviating poverty and improving the quality of education, was diverting those precious resources to create atomic bombs and missiles.
MASOOMA ALI, of the Afro Asian People's Solidarity Organization, said that in many parts of the world children grew up deprived of the guarantee of their human rights, sometimes due to the mere lack of political will or political pressures. The provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child were essential but constantly violated. Pakistan was an example of a country where there was no federal law for compulsory education and the country's education system was in total disarray with only 70 per cent of children under the age of 12 enrolled in schools, and only half of them actually completing primary school.
The Commission was warned not to be satisfied that a large number of States had ratified the Convention, but on the contrary to be concerned and careful about the causes which ultimately led to children growing as fundamentalists, mercenaries and terrorists. The Commission was called upon to take note of such situations and to intervene both in the interests of the rights of the child and the creation of an environment for the meaningful realization of human rights in general.
NUR AMALIA, of the Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation, said the prolonged economic crisis had had an enormous impact on children's lives in Indonesia. Indonesia had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child but only through a presidential decree, not through law. In practice, and despite the establishment of a National Commission for Rights of the Child, the implementation of the Convention was still invisible on the ground.
As a result of the economic crisis, many children had dropped out of school because their families could not afford the fees any more, and many of them had to start working to sustain themselves and contribute to the family income. The crisis also minimized the availability of public facilities. Marginalized children were subjected to economic exploitation, physical as well as mental violence, indiscriminate arrests and other forms of discrimination. Children in Indonesia's conflict areas experienced other problems and hardships. Indeed, it seemed often ignored that it was mostly children and women who became victims of incidents of political violence. In the Moluccas, children had even been used as living shields for the militia.
MARIANA DEL AGUILA, of Christian Aid, said that since 1979, a law existed in Guatemala through which the Government directed its repression and control of a segment of the population, particularly minors under 18 years, under the pretext of coping with an 'irregular situation'. In addition, the juvenile justice administration code did not protect the rights of children, particularly those in vulnerable conditions.
The consensus reached by civil society during the peace process had deteriorated since the President took power. The conservative attitude of the Government had had a negative impact on the achievements already attained to realize peace and reconciliation. The Government of Guatemala should implement the code on children and youth in order to strengthen the protection and promotion of child rights.
ABDULLA ELRAHMAN, of the Islamic African Relief Agency, said the relations between the southern and northern tribes of Sudan had always been characterized by peaceful migration and coexistence. After 1983 there was friction concerning access to water and crops, leading to tribal conflict. Fortunately the detention of children and abduction of children had come to an end with the rule of law and peaceful reconciliation. Unfortunately, the pressure to end children's involvement in armed conflict had not seen such positive results, in spite of the concern of local society.
It was important to emphasize that allegations of slavery in Sudan ware false. International voluntary organizations insisted on portraying the matter as a form of slavery. Irrespective of the naivety of these campaigns, the international community had fallen for the propaganda of a prejudiced, monopolistic media. There was a Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children, a group of leading Sudanese NGOs which in close collaboration with the Advisory Council of Human Rights was genuinely committed to ending the phenomenon of abduction in Sudan.
BARBARA SERIS, of the Society for Threatened Peoples, said that since the Ethiopian-Eritrean war began in May 1998, 70,000 ethnic Eritreans had been expelled from Ethiopia. The most inhuman aspect of the mass expulsion was the break up of families and the forcible separation of children from their parents. The number of children left behind by the expelled parents was approximately 2,600. Many children were thrown out of school and persecuted after the expulsion of their parents. Some were imprisoned and treated as prisoners of war.
There were many infants who were born under atrocious conditions during the expulsion process. Mothers who were in very advanced stages of pregnancy were forced to walk 4 to 11 km across the no-man's land between the Ethiopian and Eritrean trenches. Some gave birth in the detention camps without the help of midwives; some gave birth on the way across no-man's land in the Danakil desert, where some of the highest temperatures on earth had been recorded; and some gave birth in the Eritrean trenches.
RAVINDER KOUL, of the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, said that the most barbaric example of heinous crimes being committed against children could be found in Kashmir, where Islamist mercenaries with the aim of Islamizing the secular Kashmir society were using children as pawns to accomplish their sinister designs. Abduction, killing, kidnaping, rape, and sodomy were some of the crimes that these children were being subjected to with the aim of either forcing them to follow the Islamists' dictate or else browbeating their parents into submission.
In addition, children were regularly being used as gun runners and in various acts of terrorist violence in order to escape the attention of the law-enforcement agencies. Hundreds of innocent children had been thus used to keep the embers of terrorism alive. Further, school going children and school teachers were directly facing the brunt of the atrocities of those terrorists who wanted to deprive children of the benefits of modern scientific education; they wanted to impose medieval, extremist Islamic education on them.
LOURDES CERVANTES, of the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, speaking in a joint statement with the Indian Movement 'Tupaj Amaru' and Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, said 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez was being used for obscure political aims and ends. From a legal standpoint, the United States had trampled on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The child had the right to preserve his nationality, not to be separated from his parents, and not to be subjected to physical or mental abuse.
This child was being held illegally in a foreign country, by the United States, one of only two countries not to have ratified the Convention. This policy was supported by distant relatives who were acting like terrorists. The real reasons for this kidnaping was that Elian was Cuban; he belonged to a dignified people who had not bent to the will of the United States. The people struggling for Elian to remain in America had not lost any sleep over the future of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans living in abject poverty, nor over the suffering of Iraqi children or Yugoslavian children. It was not possible to remain silent in the face of such a human-rights violation, which was absolutely unjustifiable from every angle.
ROMAN SCHIBLI, of the International Organization for the Development of Freedom of Education, said religion greatly impacted on the lives of children. However, issues related to children's religious rights had received so far little attention from the UN mechanisms and from the children's rights community. The Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly recognized the child as subject to the right to freedom of religion, while affirming at the same time the rights and duties of parents and the limitations to the exercise of the right as prescribed by law.
However, it must be emphasized that the evolving capacities of the child were of fundamental importance when considering the child's ability to make his or her own decisions. In this respect, the best interest of the child and the prohibition of discrimination on any grounds should remain the overriding principles guiding children's policies and education. Religion, often combined with ethnic and nationalist intolerance presented today an enormous challenge, as it led to gross violations of the human rights of children. A number of initiatives had been taken during the past decade to foster a dialogue between cultures and religions. However, increased efforts and resources were required to bridge the gap between human rights and religion.
Rights of reply
The representative of Nepal, speaking in right of reply, said the country appreciated the work of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The delegation of Nepal was, however, surprised to find that Nepal was listed as having problems in this regard. There seemed to be no clear evidence of instances of such offences and hence the report did not reflect the situation in the country. If there had been such instances, the people responsible would have been punished. Nepal had been one of the first countries to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Trafficking in any way, shape or form was prohibited in Nepal with prison terms of up to 20 years for related crimes. Nepal was doing its best to protect the rights of the child with limited resources. If there was evidence for specific instances of isolated crimes, the delegation of Nepal would want to be informed by the Special Rapporteur so action could be taken in accordance with the national commitment to the rights of children.
The representative of Pakistan, speaking in right of reply, said it was unfortunate that while the Swiss statement targeted whole regions for violence inflicted on children during detention, Switzerland had only chosen to name Pakistan in a selective and almost prejudicial manner. The delegation of Pakistan had, in earlier statements, informed the Commission of the many positive steps being taken by the Government to deal with the situation of children. Special mention had been made of the recently approved ordinance on juvenile justice administration which increased the minimum age for the application of death sentence to 18 years, among other things.
The representative of Bahrain, speaking in right of reply, said that one of the NGOs had claimed there was torture and ill-treatment of children in Bahrain. The delegation wanted to take the opportunity to refute these accusations and lies. Clearly this information had been recruited from circles hostile to the Government of Bahrain. The NGO had looked for information without ensuring the truth of the accusations. The people of Bahrain were a civilized people and cooperated with everyone. Hence this claim could not be accepted. The Government of Bahrain was working tirelessly to ensure the fulfillment of children's potential.
The representative of Ethiopia, speaking in right of reply in reference to the statement made by the Society for Threatened Peoples, said Ethiopia refuted the allegations made against the country. The reference made to the deportation of Eritreans from Ethiopia was a distorted misrepresentation. Although some Eritreans were expelled on the basis of national security and because of their individual activities which were incompatible with their status, their family members were given the choice to stay or to join their relatives on the other side of the border. There were at present many Eritreans legally living with dignity in Ethiopia.
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