Human Rights Nonsense (35): The Violence of a Name

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Now, I’m the first to criticize the gun culture in the U.S. and to warn against the dangers of a supposed “right to own a gun” (as you can see here and here), but it seems that our own side can also misunderstand what human rights are all about:

A deaf child named Hunter is not allowed to use his name sign because the sign for “Hunter” (a dictionary word) uses the thumb and first two fingers in a gun shape and suggests a shooting motion. Here’s the story.

These school officials have lost their ability to reason if they believe stripping a child of his name is necessary for safety … Apparently the idea that a pre-schooler’s fingers are as dangerous as a real gun is not beyond belief to some school bureaucrats. (source)

Although it is not stated in those terms, this is a case of human rights hysteria, and as such it has its rightful place in our series here, previously featuring people who claim that parents should be banned from play areas in order to protect children and others who zealously protect us against Sharia rule.

Child Labor, A Collection of Images (3)

(Previous collections here, here and here. More informative posts on child labor are here and here).

Protest by BBA – Bachpan Bachao Andolan – the pioneering child-friendly organisation of India working to end child labour, child trafficking, and provide free education for all children since 1980

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child labor in the U.S.

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Child miner in the 1900s, U.S.

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Child miners in the 1900s, U.S.

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John Howell, an Indianapolis newsboy, makes $.75 some days. Begins at 6 a.m., Sundays. 1908

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Interior of tobacco shed, Hawthorn Farm. Girls in foreground are 8, 9, and 10 years old. The 10 yr. old makes 50 cents a day. 1917

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Child Marriage, A Collection of Images

Some amazing photos by Stephanie Sinclair:

Tahani – in pink – married her husband Majed when she was 6 and he was 25; poses with her former classmate Ghada, also a child bride. Nearly half of all women in Yemen were married as children. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair

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Child marriage in Afghanistan. Ghulam Haider, 11, is to be married to Faiz Mohammed, 40. She had hoped to be a teacher but was forced to quit her classes when she became engaged. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair/The New York Times

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Roshan Qasem, 11, will join the household of Said Mohammed, 55; his first wife; their three sons; and their daughter, who is the same age as Roshan. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair

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Delhi, India. Kishore (13) and his new wife Maya (8), inside their home. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair

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More on child marriage here. Some data are here. And more here about the human rights implications.

Human Rights Ads (73): Child Abuse

Chinese anti-child abuse ad: "Only cowards beat their children"

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A similar one is here. One can question the wisdom of such campaigns, comparing violence to a healthy pastime. Even more dubious is the fact that these punching bags have been placed in the streets, not in order to “try them out” but some won’t be able to resist.

More human rights ads.

Children’s Rights (14): Children’s Rights Today

So, today is Universal Children’s Day, the day we remember the Declaration of the Rights of the Child signed on this day in 1959. Although I do hope we also remember it all other days. Usually I don’t like to write about such commemorative days. There seems to be a Day of Something almost every day, and I admit I find the whole idea of “Day of …” a bit artificial, a ploy to get journalists to publish something.

However, I make an exception today because of this fine infographic, sent to me by Sarah Fudin of the University of Southern California:

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More on children’s rights here.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (27): Do Babies Need Human Rights?

(source, source, graffiti by Dolk, more Dolk here)

It seems that babies, although they are obviously human beings, don’t have the same rights as adult human beings. Even compared to young children they have less rights. Young children normally have a right to expression. Babies don’t. Because they can’t express themselves (with language) they don’t need a right to expression. Such a right doesn’t even make sense in their case. For the same reason, namely their lack of certain abilities, they also don’t have a right to political participation and self-government (in this respect they are like young children, although there’s a push to lower the voting age or to at least grant children a say on political matters). The same is true for free movement, property and many other rights. Babies’ liberty and equal status are severely limited (they can be force fed, traded etc.).

Of course, you can’t go about and kill or maim babies, so they do have some rights. It’s just that the set of their rights is very small compared to the set that belongs to adult humans. Babies aren’t the only group of human treated in this way. I mentioned young children, but there are also categories of adult human beings whose rights are a subset of the standard set of rights: criminals, immigrants, foreigners etc.

an "enhanced" human being, or, if you want, a man with a camera in his eye

So, it looks like we’re not talking about human rights after all, but rather about different sets of privileges granted to different groups of people according to different sets of criteria. Some groups of human beings have more rights than others, and some may not even have any rights at all (e.g. fetuses, according to some, and to the extent that fetuses count as human beings). And then there’s the opposite case: why not grant certain categories of non-humans also some of the rights which we erroneously call “human” rights? Animals, perhaps, in an effort to avoid speciesism. Or maybe also future enhanced human beings who will no longer be biologically human (or at least not fully biologically human).

Hence, it seems that we should ditch the qualifier “human” from the concept of human rights. Doing so, however, means according too much credibility to the somewhat confused narrative set out thus far (a good example of this confusion is this). The case of babies is different from the cases of criminals and foreigners, which in turn are entirely different from each other. Let’s remember that human rights are tools for the realization of cherished human goals and values (such as peace, prosperity, identity, belonging and knowledge). Categories of persons who don’t – as yet – have those goals or who have decided to abandon them should not be accorded human rights or can, if they want, waive them. Babies obviously belong to this group: they can’t waive their rights, but they clearly don’t need them. Migrants and criminals are different. They usually don’t waive their rights and neither are they in a position in which they objectively don’t need them. The case for limiting their set of rights is therefore a lot harder to make.

(image source)

Human Rights Maps (151): Child Poverty in the U.K.

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Manchester and the London borough of Tower Hamlets have the highest proportion, with 27%. More than 20% of children also experienced severe poverty in Birmingham and Liverpool. There are a total of 1.6 million severely poor children in the UK. Severe poverty in the UK means an income less than half the average income (a relative measure therefore). More about poverty in the UK here.

More maps on child poverty are here. More maps on poverty in general are here. And more human rights maps are here

Human Rights Ads (67): Child Marriage

Unicef's child marriage awareness advert

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More on child marriage here. More human rights ads here.

Racism (19): Racial Inequality in U.S. Incarceration Rates

Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption

The boom in incarceration rates in the U.S., following the War on Drugs and other sentencing reforms inspired by the “tough on crime” ideology, has had devastating effects on the rights of the incarcerated – many of whom are in prison for deeds that resulted in little or no harm to anyone – but also on the rights of their family members, none of whom did anything wrong. These rights violations have fallen disproportionally on an already disadvantaged group of American society, namely African-Americans. And it’s their children who suffer along:

Timeline of total number of inmates in U.S. prisons and jails (click image to enlarge)

• 1 in 40 white children born in 1978 and 1 in 25 white children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned;
• 1 in 7 black children born in 1978 and 1 in 4 black children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned;
• inequality in the risk of parental imprisonment between white children of college-educated parents and all other children is growing; and
• by age 14, 50.5% of black children born in 1990 to high school dropouts had a father imprisoned. (source, source)

parental incarceration by parents' education and race

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Children especially are placed at considerable risk by policies of incarceration. Incarcerated men are less likely to contribute financially or otherwise to their families and their children’s education. The same is true even in the case of formerly incarcerated men, because of their inferior earnings. Hence, the effects of incarceration place children at a significant economic disadvantage, which is punishment without a crime, worthy only of a dictatorship.

More data on incarceration are here. More human rights facts are here.

Human Rights Ads (58): Child Soldiers

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More on child soldiers here. More human rights ads here.

Human Rights Ads (57): Child Labor

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More on child labor here. A counter-intuitive take is here. More human rights ads are here.

Related Articles

• Child Labor, A Collection of Images (2) (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• European Parliament Supports Forced Child Labor (humantrafficking.change.org)
• Child workers in Yemen given back their childhood (cnn.com)

Human Rights Maps (108): The World’s Ten Most Dangerous Countries For Children

(source, where you can find something about the methodology of this ranking)

More on children’s rights is here. More human rights maps here.

Child Labor, A Collection of Images (2)

(An older collection of images about child labor is here).

According to Time, Kazakhstan tobacco farms contracted by Philip Morris have allowed children to work alongside their parents. This practice is outlawed because of the hard nature of the labor, the harmful pesticides used to protect the tobacco, and the fact that nicotine is absorbed through the skin. Last year Human Rights Watch completed 68 interviews with workers, documenting 72 cases of child labor. (source)

Many of the people working in the tobacco farms are migrant laborers from neighboring Kyrgyzstan. They are accompanied by their children, who help their parents harvest the crops. Below a few pictures taken by Moises Saman/Magnum for Human Rights Watch:

child labor in Kazakhstan's tobacco fields, photo by Moises Saman / Magnum for Human Rights Watch

child labor in Kazakhstan's tobacco fields, photo by Moises Saman / Magnum for Human Rights Watch

child labor in Kazakhstan's tobacco fields, photo by Moises Saman / Magnum for Human Rights Watch

child labor in Kazakhstan's tobacco fields, photo by Moises Saman / Magnum for Human Rights Watch

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A more detailed discussion about the pros and cons of child labor is here. More collections of human rights images are here.

Related Articles

• Does the Marlboro Man Use Child Labor? (motherjones.com)
• Philip Morris Said to Benefit from Child Labor (nytimes.com)
• Lawmakers Seek Overseas Labor Data From Tobacco Company (prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Reports of Child Labor Rise in Namibia (humantrafficking.change.org)
• “Human Rights Watch: Kazakhstan: Migrant Tobacco Workers Cheated, Exploited” and related posts (huffingtonpost.com)

Human Rights Ads (53): Child Labor and Child Trafficking

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More on child labor, sweatshops, human trafficking and child marriage. More on children’s rights in general. More human rights ads.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (16): You Always Hurt The Ones You Love

Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni (c. 1616)

Inflicting suffering on people is wrong. This simple and basic moral rule is a large part of the justification of human rights (although there are many other justifications). And yet, the parents among us – the large majority of human beings – simply by bringing children into existence, guarantee that those children will suffer. No life is without suffering. And they do so wittingly and willingly. So ignorance or impotence do not excuse this imposition of suffering. These children don’t get born because they have a right to be born. Non-existent people don’t have a right to come into existence. The opposite sentence would have some really scary and dizzying consequences. They are born because of parents’ choices. And those are informed choices. We all know that no life, not even the best one, is without suffering. Hence, the parents are, to some extent, responsible for this suffering (read more about the chain of causation here).

The fact that people keep reproducing without so much as an ounce of remorse, indicates that the willful infliction of suffering is an acceptable part of life, even if it is an infliction upon those closest to you. Perhaps we can explain this strange fact by the generally rational belief that the good that comes out of life compensates for the suffering we inflict on our children. Life’s suffering is just the price to pay for a greater good. Overall, most people do indeed find life worth living, notwithstanding the occasional suffering. Otherwise suicide would be much more common, I guess. But that kind of cost-benefit analysis is something we usually find repugnant. Many of us shudder at the decision to incinerate thousands of Japanese in order to end WWII.

But perhaps this cost-benefit analysis is much more acceptable when the cost for one persons isn’t intended to benefit another person. In our topic, the costs and benefits that are weighed against each other are for one and the same person. And yet, it’s not this person that does the weighing; it’s her parents. This is a case of literal paternalism: we decide for another person that some harm we do to her is necessary for a greater good. Like we decide that people can’t smoke cannabis (doing so is imposing a harm) because we believe that it’s in their interest and for their benefit. And paternalism is generally only acceptable when dealing with children, and with children as long as they are children. When reproducing we of course also inflict suffering on our children when they are grown up.

If you think all this is just a load of pretentious pseudo-philosophical BS, then maybe you’ll like this instead:

More on the rights of future generations, on children’s rights, and on suffering.

Human Rights Maps (88): Legal Voting Age

(source, voting age is a minimum age established by law that a person must attain to be eligible to vote in a public election)

More on democracy as a human right. It goes without saying that the legal voting age isn’t a good indicator of the quality of democracy in a country. So you can’t use this information to judge whether a country respects the right to democracy. A very high legal voting age – which apparently doesn’t exist anywhere – would exclude large numbers of people from democratic participation. (There are other ways in which countries exclude large numbers of people; see here). On the other hand, there can be countries with a very low voting age but a seriously dysfunctional democracy. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Poem (77): Once in Awhile a Protest Poem (Famine)

Once in Awhile a Protest Poem, by David Axelrod

Over and over again the papers print
the dried out tit of an African woman
holding her starving child. Over
and over, cropping it each time to one
prominent, withered tit, the feeble
infant face. Over and over to toughen
us, teach us to ignore the foam turned
dusty powder on the infant’s lips,
the mother’s sunken face (is cropped)
and filthy dress. The tit remains;
the tit held out for everyone to see,
reminding us only that we are not so hungry
ogling the tit, admiring it and in our
living rooms, making it a symbol of starving
millions; our sympathy as real as silicone.

More on famine and on disaster pornography. More human rights poems.

Human Rights Ads (46): Child Soldiers

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More on child soldiers. More on children’s rights in general.

Human Rights Ads (43): Neglected Children

(source, they used mannequins for this campaign, in case you’re wondering…)

More on children’s rights. More human rights ads.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (45): Child Labor in the U.S.

Young girl working in a cotton mill, by Lewis Hine

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I don’t know whether this is the same girl or not:

According to Lewis Hine in 1908, the overseer said apologetically, “She just happened in.” She was working steadily. The mills seem full of youngsters who “just happened in” or “are helping sister.” Newberry, South Carolina.

Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. Here’s another one:

Addie Card, 11 years old, North Pownal, Vermont, August 1910

More images of child labor. More information on child labor. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Human Rights and International Law (19): Child Soldiers and the Rights of the Child

[This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen].

In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child became the first legally binding international convention to affirm human rights for all children. (Although the other, older human rights treaties and declarations of course didn’t exclude children). The Convention has the highest ratification rates of all major Human Rights Treaties with signatures from 193 States. Only the US and Somalia have yet to give their backing.

The ratification of the CRC was a monumental moment in the fight for children’s rights. With the adoption of the Convention, these rights were no longer an option–they became an obligation under international law. Two Optional Protocols, seeking to strengthen the rights set out in the Convention, were adopted in 2000.

The importance of the rights of children is obvious: our solidarity should be first and foremost with the most vulnerable. Children are more likely to be victims and therefore deserve and require our special care and concern. Their capacities and voices need strengthening. They don’t have the power, education and knowledge to fight for their rights themselves.

Child soldiers

This posts examines a particularly horrendous type of violation of children’s rights: the phenomenon of child soldiers. Here’s an overview of the participation of children and adolescents in armed conflict:

Countries with Child Soldiers fighting in current and recent conflicts (g = government forces, p = paramilitaries, o = armed opposition groups) Africa: Algeria (p,o), Angola (g,o), Burundi (g,o), Chad (g), Congo-Brazzaville (g,o), Congo-Kinshasa (g,o), Eritrea (g,o), Ethiopia (g), Liberia (g,o), Rwanda (g,o), Sierra Leone (g,p,o), Somalia (g,p,o), Sudan (g,p,o), Uganda (g,o) Asia: Afghanistan (g,p,o), India (p,o), Indonesia (p,o), Myanmar (g,o), Nepal (o), Pakistan (o), Philippines (o), Solomon Islands (o), Sri Lanka (o), East Timor (p,o), Tajikistan (o), Papua New Guinea (o), Uzbekistan (o) Middle East: Iran (g,o), Iraq (g,o), Israel/Palestine (g,o), Lebanon (o) Latin America: Colombia (p,o), Mexico (p,o), Peru (o) Europe: Russian Federation (o), Turkey (o), Yugoslavia (p,o). From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

In spite of the universal condemnation and prohibition on the use of children as soldiers (see for example articles 6 and 19 of the CRC), children as young as 8 continue to be enrolled in many armed forces and militant groups around the world. (There’s a map here).

Why are there child soldiers?

What drives this? Why are children recruited for warfare? First of all, the proliferation of inexpensive, lightweight weapons has made it easier to use children as soldiers. These small arms are lethal and easy to hide, transport and use with little training. (More data on the arms trade here).

Children are also relatively easy to abduct, subjugate, and manipulate. They are more impressionable and vulnerable to indoctrination, they learn skills and tasks quickly, are fast and agile on a battlefield, more willing than adults to take risks and are seen as more loyal and less threatening to adult leadership. Moreover, it is easier for children to slip through enemy lines unnoticed, making them effective spies and bomb carriers. Children are typically viewed as cheap and expendable labor; they require less food and no payment. In addition, using child soldiers can present a moral dilemma to enemies: should they kill children?

Consequences

Child soldiers are separated from their families, forced to flee their homes and schools, and in many cases, killed, maimed, sexually abused or otherwise exploited. Needless to say this has a devastating impact on their physical and mental wellbeing for the rest of their lives. They are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare or education. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or desertion are often very severe. They are forced to engage in hazardous activities such as laying and clearing mines or explosives, using weapons, playing the role of spies, bomb carriers, sentries and human shields.

Girl soldiers are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment, abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. They may give birth during their time with combatants and their children are exposed to the same dangers.

Child soldiers suffer enormous emotional, physical, developmental, social and spiritual harm.

Recruitment methods

Patterns of recruitment of children vary according to the context. Although recruitment of children by governments has been less systematic, there are reports of ad-hoc and/or forcible recruitment by groups with the acquiescence of governments such as the previous administration of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia.

In some instances the commanders approach the children directly and use scare tactics or entice them with money. They may also glorify freedom fighters, use gifts such as bicycles or false promises of overseas scholarships to bring the child under the control of the armed group, leaving the parents without any say. In some countries children have been told that killing the enemy is part of the Jihad, and if they die in the effort they will go to heaven. Previously recruited children are also used to recruit other children. If children resist, they are either killed, forced to participate in an assassination or put at the front line with the objective of breaking their will.

What makes children join armed forces? It’s likely to be a mix of desperation, poverty, dysfunctional schools systems, situations of extreme and traumatizing violence, the desire to take control of events, the protection offered by being at the shooting end of a gun, and peer-group pressure.

As much as we should advocate to dissuade forces from using children, the most certain way of preventing the recruitment of children is to stop civil or international conflict from occurring. As explained by a mother of three children who did not join the armed forces or groups, in Monrovia, Liberia:

If these people had not brought war, children would not have joined the fighting forces…

References

• Child Soldiers: Care and Protection of Children in Emergencies. A Field Guide, Mark Lorey, SAVE the Children Federation, 2001, Editors: Amy Hepburn and Tanya Wolfram
• Special UN Representative for Children and Armed Conflict
• Fighting Back: Child and Community-led strategies to avoid children’s recruitment into armed forces and groups in West Africa, Save the Children (funded by Oak Foundation) 2005, UK
• International Law and the Child Soldiers 1987, H. Mann, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 36 pp 32-57
• Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy’s, (SRSG/CAAC) Statement at the Paris International Conference “Free Children from war”, Monday, 5 February 2007

More on child soldiers. Other posts on human rights and international law. More about children’s rights.

Political Graffiti (86): Child Labor & Sweatshops

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More on child labor and sweatshops. More on children’s rights. More political graffiti.

Human Rights Ads (40): Pedophilia, Child Rape

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More on pedophilia. More on children’s rights in general. More human rights ads.

Human Rights Nonsense (10): Protecting Children by Banning Parents From Play Areas

It seems some people take the rights of children a bit too seriously. From Henry Porter’s Blog:

[The city of] Watford [in the U.K.] has just banned parents from watching their own children at two council play areas. … “Sadly, in today’s climate, you can’t have adults walking around unchecked in a children’s playground.” Instead of parents being able to watch and play with their own and other people’s children at the Harwoods and Harebreaks recreation grounds, vetted council staff known as “play rangers” will be in charge. … The council spokeswoman was keen to point out that the policy meant that if no parents were allowed into the two play areas it reduced the risk of adults wandering into the playground. … It seems possible that the mayor and her appalling council may be in breach of article 8 of the [U.K.] Human Rights Act – the right to family life. (source)

More on children, pedophiles and playgrounds. More human rights nonsense.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (67): Child Soldiers

A funny look at a deeply tragic phenomenon:

More on the problem of child soldiers here. Here is a map pinpointing the places in the world where children are used as soldiers. And here and here are adverts that are part of a campaign against child soldiers. Something more general on children’s rights is here. More jokes here.

Child Soldiers, A Collection of Images

(Other collections of human rights images are here).

Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world, and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any time. Although most child soldiers are between 15 and 18 years old, significant recruitment starts at the age of 10 and the use of even younger children has been recorded.

Around the world, children are singled out for recruitment by both armed forces and armed opposition groups, and exploited as combatants. Easily manipulated, children are sometimes coerced to commit grave atrocities, including rape and murder of civilians using assault rifles such as AK-47s and G4s. Some are forced to injure or kill members of their own families or other child soldiers. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves.

More on the problem of child soldiers here. Here is a map pinpointing the places in the world where children are used as soldiers. And here and here are adverts that are part of a campaign against child soldiers. Something more general on children’s rights is here.

Child soldiers – stolen innocence, by Sarah Hollick

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Child soldier in Northern Uganda

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A child soldier wearing a teddy in Liberia, Photo by Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images

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Last public appearance of Hitler, decorating Hitler Jugend

More on child soldiers.

Children’s Rights (11): More Children Surviving Beyond Fifth Birthday

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Thanks to scaled up support for simple, relatively inexpensive solutions like anti-malaria mosquito nets, measles vaccinations and vitamin supplements, the number of children dying before their fifth birthdays each year has been cut to the lowest level ever on record, 8.8 million, according to a report released today by Unicef. “This enormous global progress – 10,000 fewer children dying each day than in 1990 – is something to celebrate and carry forward,” said ONE President and CEO David Lane. (source, source)

However, there are still 8.8 million under-fives dying each year of treatable diseases, 40% of them in just three countries: India, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s unimaginable and a lot more work needs to be done.

Of these 8.8 million, 1.5 million children per year die of diarrhea, an easily preventable disease.

Inexpensive and effective treatments for diarrhea exist, but in developing countries only 39 percent of children with diarrhea receive the recommended treatment. Ann Veneman (source)

Read more on infant mortality rates. Or browse some more statistics on this topic.

Child Labor, A Collection of Images

A young girl sells popcorn on a sidewalk in Patna, India, on October 9, 2006, the day before a federal ban went into effect in India prohibiting employers from hiring children under 14 to work as maids or in restaurants, tea shops, hotels, or roadside eateries

(source, more on India)

Young mill worker, unknown city in the United States, 1918

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A group of boys after a 10-12 hour shift in the factory

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A silk factory worker at the Yodgorlik Silk Factory in Margilon, Uzbekistan is distracted from work at her machine for a moment, May 2008. By Gerard Lazaro via Getty Images.

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More on child labor. More collections of human rights images.

Limiting Free Speech (35): Publishing Lists of Pedophiles on the Internet, Ctd.

example of a sex offender registry

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A follow-up from this previous post on the same subject. We should of course do our utmost to protect people, and especially children, from sexual predators. In the U.S., and to a lesser degree elsewhere, “utmost” means publishing so-called “registries” of sex offenders on the internet. These registries contain the names, addresses and offenses of people convicted for sex crimes. The purpose of the registries is to inform people about the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders and allow them to take measures to protect their children. (A few examples of registries are here, here and here; some of those are government sites, others are not).

By definition, since the purpose is protection, these registries should contain only information on people who are likely to offend again, and to offend in a way that is dangerous to children (and possibly adults). People who have been convicted in the past but are not deemed to be possible repeat offenders, or people convicted for sex crimes that are not dangerous (flashers for example) shouldn’t be included, but regularly are.

These registries are an exercise of free speech. The question here is: should they be allowed, or are they doing more harm than good? In other words: should this case of freedom of speech be restricted in order to protect other rights? (we’ve seen before how human rights can be limited when they come into conflict with other human rights). Which other rights could possibly be harmed by this exercise of free speech? One could say the right to privacy of the offenders (it’s not because you’re a convicted criminal that you automatically lose your right t privacy). But that’s not obvious. Someone’s address and criminal record aren’t private information. So registries of sex offenders aren’t, by definition, violations of the right to privacy. Hence, the right to free speech of publishers of such registries can’t be limited because of the right to privacy of the offenders.

But there are other reasons why the rights of those publishers can be limited. Registries can (and did) lead to

• harassment of offenders, violent attacks and even murder
• ostracism, including their family members and children (some registries even have button to print a mugshot that can be posted on the offenders’ doors)
• violations of their right to freely choose a residence: they are either chased away, or legally prohibited from living near certain places (schools, playgrounds…); sometimes these prohibitions are so restrictive that people are forced to be homeless (in Miami, exclusion zones have created a camp of homeless offenders under a bridge)
• violations of the right to work: people whose names are in registries are often fired from their jobs or have difficulties finding a job.

These are obviously rights violations that are serious enough to at least make us consider whether the right to free speech of the publishers of registries should be maintained.

And even the right to privacy can become a problem. As noted, addresses and criminal records aren’t private. However, many registries contain a lot of “noise” – people who do not pose any threat (some U.S. states requires registration of people who have visited prostitutes, who have had consensual sex as teenagers etc.). Not only does this label harmless people as “predators”, with often devastating consequences for them. Another result of this noise is that the registries become useless. As a consequence, those who defend the registries ask for more information to be included so that they can judge which “predator” is a real one:

I agree that a man who exposes himself to a woman may not pose the same danger as a convicted child-molester or rapist. All represent a threat, however, so the solution is thus not less information but more detailed information. Give me the facts about the offence and let me decide the level of risk to me and my family. As the parent of two young children I would like to know who my neighbour is going to be before I buy that new home. Adrian Kendall

Taken to its logical extreme, such a view will defend putting everything “bad” about everyone in a super-register. 1984 all over again. Perhaps registries could be used on a need-to-know basis only.

PS: there’s apparently also an iPhone app for this:

More posts in this series.

Political Graffiti (58): Child Soldiers

More child soldier graffiti. More on child soldiers in general. And more on children’s rights.

Human Rights Maps (64): Child Poverty in the U.S.

child poverty rates in the U.S.

child poverty rates in the U.S.

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“Being poor” meaning having an income below the federal poverty level, which is about $20,000 a year for a family of four. Which is quite stingy:

(source)

A poverty line, or poverty threshold, is the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an adequate standard of living in a given country.

Determining the poverty line is usually done by finding the total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. This approach is needs-based in that an assessment is made of the minimum expenditure needed to maintain a tolerable life. This was the original basis of the poverty line in the United States, whose poverty threshold has since been raised due to inflation. (source)

More about the U.S. poverty line here.

Children’s Rights (10): More Than 100 Million Children of Primary School Age Are Out of School

According to the Millennium Development Goals, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, should be able to complete a full course of primary schooling by 2015. Here‘s a map showing which countries will or will not, in all likelihood, achieve this goal.

Although there has been some progress in the proportions of children of primary school age actually receiving and completing primary education, some 101 million children worldwide are still denied this right. Not surprisingly, most of these children live in developing countries. See this graph (expressed in millions):

More Than 100 Million Children of Primary School Age Are Out of School

(source)

And here‘s a map on the problem of gender inequality in primary education.

Human Rights Maps (60): Child Wellbeing in the U.S.

(source, click here if you want to know how this ranking was established)

More on children’s rights.

Human Rights Maps (59): Child Marriage

Percentage of women aged 20-24 who were married or in union before the age of 18 (period 1987 to 2006):

(source)

Another version:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on child marriage (see also here).

Human Rights Ads (12): Child Labor

(source, perhaps it’s not visible, but the children are cardboard cutouts glued to a revolving door, giving the impression that they are pushing the door)

More on child labor.

Human Rights Maps (54): Death Penalty, States in the U.S. That Allow(ed) the Execution of Juvelines

(source)

Here’s what the rest of the world thinks of killing children that have committed a crime:

(source, source)

Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), was a decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18.

Human Rights Ads (11): Child Soldiers

(source, an Amnesty International ad; take a good look at the “ball”)

More on child soldiers here and here.

Children’s Rights (9): Child Soldiers

(source)

From Amnesty International:

Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world, and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any time. Although most child soldiers are between 15 and 18 years old, significant recruitment starts at the age of 10 and the use of even younger children has been recorded.

Around the world, children are singled out for recruitment by both armed forces and armed opposition groups, and exploited as combatants. Easily manipulated, children are sometimes coerced to commit grave atrocities, including rape and murder of civilians using assault rifles such as AK-47s and G4s. Some are forced to injure or kill members of their own families or other child soldiers. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves.

More on the problem of child soldiers here. Here is a map pinpointing the places in the world where children are used as soldiers. And here and here are adverts that are part of a campaign against child soldiers. Something more general on children’s rights is here.

Limiting Free Speech (21): Publishing Lists of Pedophiles on the Internet

(source, personal information blackened by me)

I know from experience that it’s not useless for a human rights defender to make this clear from the start: sexual activity with children is despicable and must be punished severely, but this punishment doesn’t imply the abandonment of all human rights by the convicted pedophiles. When you’ll read the rest of this post, you may rush to the conclusion that we pay more attention to the rights of criminals than to the rights of victims. Nothing is further from the truth.

My point is that the practice of publishing lists of pedophiles on special websites on the internet (also called “outing pedophiles”) may be well-intentioned but it is inappropriate and even dangerous, especially when such lists include addresses of pedophiles who have been released from prison and have done their time.

It’s not because you’re a convicted pedophile that you lose all your human rights, including your right to privacy. Of course, the fact that you are or have been a pedophile isn’t a private fact. You have been convicted in an open and fair trial, and hence your crime is in the public domain. There’s no reason to keep judicial verdicts secret. On the contrary. The facts of your crime may also be very relevant to people not immediately concerned with the crime or the trial, such as the children of your new wife. And perhaps your new neighbors should be informed, especially when there’s a risk that you’ll repeat your crime. (But then why have you been released?)

So the information regarding your crime isn’t private, and can be used in a targeted way to inform people who may need to know. But there is a difference between a fact being part of the public domain (and circulated in a targeted way), and the use of this fact in a sensationalist manner, by people who will never have anything to do with you, and directed at people who likewise will never be involved. (A very large majority of child molesters attacks relatives or the children of friends).

Your crime isn’t private, but what can be gained by publishing your whereabouts and informing people who will never be likely victims? It seems to me that websites that publish the whereabouts of pedophiles are part of a retrograde style of “justice”, in which it is important to name and shame, to publicly expose a felon, and ridicule him or her. And when the public starts to react, and start to call the alleged pedophiles to see “if they still rape children”, then there is an unjustified invasion of privacy. And maybe other rights will suffer as well, such as the right to physical security and bodily integrity of the pedophiles. In certain cases the “naming and shaming” amounts to incitement to violence. There have been cases of attacks on pedophiles following the publication of their names and whereabouts.

I suspect that the people who create these sites, rather than “protect the public”, intend to whip up a scandal, and hopefully get some attention. They also imply that the justice system is inadequate, and they want to cultivate public mistrust in institutions and politics. Institutions are never perfect, but fostering negativity isn’t the way to make them better.

Another problem: the lists that are published often contain people who are merely accused of pedophilia (and not yet convicted), or people who are, to some, suspicious. Imagine what it must be like for an innocent person to appear on such a list. A court deals much better with the presumption of innocence than an angry mob.

The rationale behind rules prohibiting the outing of pedophiles, and explicitly limiting the right to free speech of the “outers”, is the protection of the rights of the pedophiles (such as the right to privacy, inviolability of the home, and physical security). Some may find it difficult to accept that pedophiles have rights, and that some people pay attention to these rights, rather than to the rights of the victims. But it is fair to say that a defining part of our shared humanity is precisely the limits we impose on the ways in which people can be punished.

And, of course, we do pay attention to the rights of victims. That is why pedophiles are put into prison. And we have to try to balance the pedophiles’ rights against those of their victims and possible victims even after they leave prison. That is why I stated above that it should be possible to inform neighbors and new family members. This kind of information is a limitation of certain rights of pedophiles – such as the right to form a family, the right to choose a residence etc. – for the sake of the rights of possible victims. We rightly believe that such limitations are less harmful than a new attack on children.

(source, photo by Dith Pran/The New York Times)

So-called zoning laws are also justified in certain cases. Pedophiles are then prohibited from entering a certain zone, or loitering and living in a certain zone (e.g. close to schools or playgrounds). These laws limit the right to choose a residence and the right to freedom of movement of the pedophiles in question, but if there is a high probability that these laws will prevent future attacks on children, then they are justified because the rights of the children that would be violated by an attack are more important than the cited rights of the pedophiles.

Of course, zoning laws aren’t always the answer, and may create more problems than they solve. They can make it harder for law enforcement officers to keep track of the pedophiles, and make it harder for the pedophiles to receive treatment for their condition. Hence, zoning laws may be counter-productive.

Human Rights Ads (5): Child Soldiers

(source, two Amnesty International ads)

“It’s not happening here, but it is happening now”. More on child soldiers.

Human Rights Maps (40): Corporal Punishment a Crime?

(source, click on the image to enlarge)

(source)

(source)

More on corporal punishment.

Children’s Rights (7): Child Mortality Rates Not Declining Fast Enough

One of the so-called Millennium Development Goals is to reduce child mortality. Currently, in the developing world, about 85 children out of every 1.000 do not live beyond their 5th birthday. In Africa, this is even 160 children. The goal is to bring this down to about 35 children in the developing world, and about 60 in Africa, in 2015.

However, the latest measurements show that this target is out of reach; at least, the current rates of decline aren’t enough to reach the goal by 2015:

(source, click on the picture to enlarge)

More on child mortality. More on children’s rights.

Children’s Rights (6): Index of Child Wellbeing

(source)

Save the Children has created a Child Development Index (CDI), a simple but convincing combination of three basic indicators measuring child welfare and wellbeing:

• Mortality rates for children under 5
• Rates of children under 5 who are underweight
• And the rates of children enrolled or not enrolled in primary school.

This index goes back in time so it provides an indication of which countries are doing better or worse. Globally, the trend is positive. Unsurprisingly, Africa isn’t doing very well, although some African countries are progressing. The entire data set is here (excel-file).

Interestingly, there are countries, such as India, with high rates of GDP growth but relatively low levels of child wellbeing. This means that specific policies and measures aimed at child wellbeing are necessary (investment in education and health etc.). One cannot just rely on growth and hope that all else follows.

(source)

Of course, there are other and more complex indicators of child wellbeing. Unicef has one. And there’s this one from the Annie E. Casey Foundation regarding the situation in the different states of the U.S. (needless to say, the U.S. isn’t one of the worst countries for child wellbeing):

(source)

Child mortality, child undernutrition and non-attendance at school are gross violations of children’s basic human rights, and are a scandalous waste of human potential. Children will suffer their entire lives from the rights violations they suffer early on.

More on children’s rights.

Children’s Rights (5): Child Marriage

Children who marry often do not marry voluntarily. They are most likely forced into an arranged marriage on the grounds of tradition or custom, or because of the poverty of their parents.

This is a violation of the rights of children, because in many cases their marriage means that they have to give up their education. They may also suffer from the health consequences of premature pregnancy. When a child marries an adult – in practice, it is almost always a young girl marrying an adult man – there’s also the likelihood of marital rape, slavery or bonded labor and the lack of social contact with peers.

Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:

The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized. No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

The practice has gradually diminished over the years, but is still widespread in many parts of the world. 36 per cent of women aged 20-24 were married or in union before they reached 18 years of age.

Here are some graphs:

Percentage of women aged 20-24 who were married or in union before age 18 (1987-2006):

More than 60% of women were married before they reached the age of 18 in five countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and in Bangladesh.

Percentage of women aged 20-24 who were married or in union before age 18, by wealth index quintile (1987-2006):

Child marriage is more likely in poor families.

Number of women aged 20-24 who were married or in union before age 18, by region (2006):

(source)

More on children’s rights.

Children’s Rights (4): Juvenile Incarceration

(source)

The practice of locking children in prisons, especially adult prisons, has devastating effects on them. They mix with criminal adults and they tend to follow inappropriate role models. It just makes them worse people.

Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:

Juvenile offenders shall be segregated from adults and be accorded treatment appropriate to their age and legal status. (source)

But even putting them in special child detention centers or so-called “corrective facilities” makes it difficult for these children to get a proper education, to learn appropriate social skills and to receive the special kind of support that only a family can provide. Of course, their families are often part of the problem. Prison guards are no teachers, no matter how well they try (and in many countries, they don’t). Some of these children undoubtedly have to be kept off the streets, but other, non-custodial options must be possible.

However, the fact is that many children are in prison, not because they have committed a crime, but because their parents are in prison (maybe the children were born in prison) or because their parents entered the country illegally. Maybe they did commit some kind of crime, but not one severe enough to have them locked up. They are locked up because their government didn’t provide the funds necessary for adequate guidance and support.

Some statistics on national prison systems. More on children’s rights.

Children’s Rights (3): Child Soldiers

Sir Roger Moore

The saddest sight these days is the image of hundreds of thousands of children kidnapped and lured into being child soldiers from the age of eight. Sir Roger Moore

According to The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

“a child soldier any person under the age of 18 who is a member of or attached to government armed forces or any other regular or irregular armed force or armed political group, whether or not an armed conflict exists”.

The plight of child soldiers is similar to albeit even worse than the one suffered by child workers (see this post). Their rights, and especially their right to education, are violated in a similar way and in addition they have to endure the very specific and horrendous rights violations inherent in armed conflict. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, they have to participate in every sordid aspect of modern warfare. Although many are abducted or recruited by force, some probably also “volunteer” because of poverty, religious indoctrination etc. Violent conflict cuts off access to school, drives children away from their homes or families. Children may see enlisting in an army or rebel group as a strategy for survival. They may believe that the group will offer food, protection or security.

From Human Rights Watch:

“Children are sometimes forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. Such practices help ensure that the child is “stigmatized” and unable to return to his or her home community,” thereby ensuring that they remain loyal to the group.

The numbers of child soldiers are constantly fluctuating given the evolution of different armed conflicts. So it’s difficult to estimate, a difficulty compounded by the secrecy of the often shady recruiters and the wartime conditions. Human Rights Watch estimates that 200,000 to 300,000 children are currently serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in armed conflicts. This graph shows the countries where there were child soldiers active in armed conflict in 1998:

And this graph is a bit more specific on the African situation since Africa has without any doubt the largest number of child soldiers (Myanmar in Asia also does it’s “best”):

The main human rights declarations and treaties do not specifically mention child soldiers, but the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict sets 18 as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for recruitment into armed groups, and for compulsory recruitment by governments. States may accept volunteers from the age of 16. The definition of war crimes of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 includes “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities”.

Child soldiers are undoubtedly victims of armed conflict, but can also commit war crimes, in which case there may be a case for a prosecution respecting the rules of juvenile justice.

More on children’s rights.

Children’s Rights (2): Child Labor

Three cartoons about child labor:

(copyright Fredrikke Palmer & unknown & Robert Minor respectively)

Child labor not only keeps children from attending school. It often harms them physically and mentally. It is therefore a double problem from the point of view of the human rights of children.

1. It denies them the education that they need for the exercise of and struggle for their human rights. Without education the freedom of thought and opinion becomes rather academic since thought and opinion requires a certain level of education. Political participation without literacy is also quite difficult. Without education people will find it difficult to struggle against rights violations and to find meaningful work when they are adults. So child labor can have lifetime consequences for human rights.
2. The conditions in which children have to work often lead directly to violations of their rights, such as the right to good health. Moreover the kinds of jobs children have to do are often extremely stultifying, creating feelings of insignificance and hopelessness, with disastrous consequences for their personality and future development.

Legal aspects

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 26, includes the right to education and hence, implicitly (not explicitly), the prohibition of child labor since the two are incompatible. Article 10 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states, rather carefully in order not to frighten away developing countries who might otherwise not have accepted the treaty:

“Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. Their employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development should be punishable by law. States should also set age limits below which the paid employment of child labour should be prohibited and punishable by law”.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides the strongest legal language prohibiting illegal child labor but does not make child labor illegal.

Numbers

The International Labor Organization estimates that 246 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 currently work (or about 15% of the world’s children, about 35% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa).

They work in very different industries but mostly in commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, parents’ business and domestic service either at home or in other homes, in factories, sweatshops, fields, tourist attractions etc. Some children work in illicit activities like the drug trade and prostitution or as soldiers. Often their situation is aggravated by child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage and forced labor.

Where?

In Western countries, child labor has gradually died out. It was common during the industrial revolution (and before) when children as young as four were employed in factories with dangerous working conditions, but labor laws, education laws and technological progress (and some say colonialism) have caused its disappearance.

From Unicef:

“Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the worldwide highest share of child labourers. In the 18 countries in this region with data on child labour, 38 percent of all children between 7 and 14 years of age are engaged in work that can be considered harmful to their development. Among these children, slightly more than half (20 percent of the total) also attend school while another 18 percent are only engaged in labour. Overall, 60 percent of all children between 7 and 14 years attend school. 21 percent of all children are neither in school nor do they engage in labour. These children may, however, perform work that is not considered labour, for example household work for less than 28 hours per week… [T]he share of child labourers among girls is the same as among boys, about 38 percent. On the other hand, the area of residence is strongly associated with child labour: rural children (43 percent) work much more than urban children (25 percent).”

Why?

It’s often the poverty of their parents that forces millions of young children out of school and into work. But companies obviously also have an interest in hiring children. Children earn less, are less vocal defenders of their rights, are more easily forced to accept certain “work procedures” etc. For some professions, the anatomy of children also gives them an advantage compared to adults (mining for instance). Many companies, including Western multinationals, often find the temptation too hard to resist, and the consumers engage in moral complicity when purchasing products assembled or manufactured in developing countries with child labor. Consumer boycotts of such products, however, without compensating measures such as the provision of education for the children in question or benefits to poor families, may simply result in an even worse situation when children are forced into other labor activities, often more hasardous or detrimental.

A child may sometimes consent to work if, for example, the salary is relatively attractive, but such consent may not be informed consent. Child labor may still be an undesirable situation for a child in the long run.

Economic advantages of the abolition of child labor

Child labor undermines the general economy because it lowers general labor standards and wages for all workers (adult workers often suffer from unfair competition since they normally would be paid more and are generally more vocal about their labor conditions). It may have a short-term beneficial effect on a country’s international competitiveness because it allows countries to produce at lower costs and with fewer regulations, but internally in the country it affects the general labor standards and work force.

(source)

More on children’s rights.