Violating Children’s Rights - CRIN

1. IntroductionEach year, thousands of children die worldwide and the childhoods and development of millionsmore are scarred by harmful practices perpetrated by parents, relatives, religious and communityleaders and other adults.All violations of children’s rights can legitimately be described as harmful practices, but thecommon characteristic of the violations highlighted in this report is that they are based ontradition, culture, religion or superstition and are perpetrated and actively condoned by thechild’s parents or significant adults within the child’s community. Indeed, they often still enjoymajority support within communities or whole states.Many of the identified practices involve gross and unlawful discrimination against groups ofchildren, including gender discrimination, and in particular discrimination against children withdisabilities. Some are based on tradition and/or superstition, some on religious belief, others onfalse information or beliefs about child development and health. Many involve extreme physicalviolence and pain leading, in some cases intentionally, to death or serious injury. Others involvemental violence. All are an assault on the child’s human dignity and violate universally agreedinternational human rights standards.The International NGO Council on Violence against Children believes the continued legalityand social and cultural acceptance of a very wide range of these practices in many statesillustrates a devastating failure of international and regional human rights mechanisms toprovoke the necessary challenge, prohibition and elimination. Comprehensive, children’srights-based analysis and action are needed now. Above all, there must be an assertion ofevery state’s immediate obligation to ensure all children their right to full respect for theirhuman dignity and physical integrity.Harmful practices based on tradition, culture, religion or superstition are often perpetratedagainst very young children or infants, who are clearly lacking the capacity to consent or torefuse consent themselves. Assumptions of parental powers or rights over their children allowthe perpetration of a wide range of these practices, many by parents directly, some by otherindividuals with parents’ assumed or actual consent. Yet the UN Convention on the Rightsof the Child (CRC), ratified by almost every state, favours the replacement of the concept ofparental “rights” over children with parental “responsibilities,” ensuring that the child’s bestinterests are parents’ “basic concern” (Article 18).introduction1

The CRC also upholds the child’s own independentright to religious freedom (Article 14). Children arenot born into a religion. Every individual has theright to religious freedom. Thus, parents and otherscannot quote their adult religious beliefs to justifyperpetrating harmful practices on a child, before sheor he has the capacity to provide informed consent.constitute systematic and severe violations of therights of millions of children and the international,rights-based focus on them has certainly resulted inmuch greater visibility. But universal prohibition andelimination still seems distant. For example, a 2008statement from ten UN or UN-related agencies on“Eliminating female genital mutilation” estimatesthat three million girls were at risk of undergoingFGM each year in Africa, and that between 100 and140 million girls and women worldwide have beensubjected to some form of FGM.The child’s right to life, survival and maximumdevelopment and the right to health and healthservices place an active duty on the state toensure parents are equipped with“In every region, in contradiction to human rightsaccurate information on child healthand development. Such informationobligations and children’s developmental needs,will enable parents to fulfil theirviolence against children is socially approved and isresponsibilities and to not harm theirfrequently legal and state-authorised.”children either through administeringharmful treatments or throughUN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Childrenwithholding necessary and provenThe introduction to the 2006 report of the UNtreatments. Where parents fail their children, statesSecretary-General’s Study on Violence againstmust intervene.Children notes: “In every region, in contradictionto human rights obligations and children’sHarmful traditional or cultural practices have beendevelopmental needs, violence against children isa concern of the United Nations from early in itssocially approved and is frequently legal and statehistory, first highlighted in a General Assemblyauthorised.” The report urged that the UN Studyresolution more than 50 years ago. The Commissionshould mark a turning point, “an end to adulton Human Rights, formed in 1946, adopted itsjustification of violence against children, whetherfirst resolution on “traditional practices affectingaccepted as ‘tradition’ or disguised as ‘discipline.’the health of women and children” in 1984. AThere can be no compromise in challenging violenceSpecial Rapporteur on traditional practices affectingagainst children [ ].”the health of women and the girl child was firstappointed in 1988. Many UN bodies and specializedThe UN Study did not have the resources to researchagencies have addressed harmful traditionalin detail harmful practices affecting children that arepractices, among them OHCHR, UNAIDS, UNDP,based on tradition, culture, religion or superstition.UNECA, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNThe issue was raised, including during the UNWomen and WHO.Study’s nine regional consultations, and the reportexplicitly recommends the prohibition “of all formsMost of the high-profile literature, debates andof violence against children in all settings, includingaction on harmful practices have focused onall corporal punishment, harmful traditional practicesparticular widespread practices that primarilyincluding early and forced marriage, female genitalaffect girls and women, in particular female genitalmutilation and so-called honour crimes [ ].”mutilation (FGM) and child marriage. These practices2violating children’s rights

It also proposes that “States and civil societyshould strive to transform attitudes that condoneor normalize violence against children, includingstereotypical gender roles and discrimination,acceptance of corporal punishment and harmfultraditional practices ” (A/61/299, overarchingrecommendations 2 and 4, paras. 97 and 100).But the “turning point” has not arrived forchildren. They are still waiting for a rigorous globalinvestigation, covering every region and state, toidentify the full range of these harmful practicesthat violate girls’ and boys’ rights, including new ornewly visible practices and others spread throughmigration. It is essential that the individual practicesand the particular rights they violate shouldbe identified, made visible and unambiguouslycondemned in every society in which they occur.the Child and the Committee on the Eliminationof Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), arecollaborating in drafting a General Comment/GeneralRecommendation on harmful practices.The International NGO Council believes that thecontinuing legal and social acceptance of theseviolations and the slow progress in identifying andeffectively addressing them are symptomatic ofchildren’s low status, as possessions rather thanindividuals and rights-holders, in societies acrossall regions. The oft-quoted mantra of the UN Studywas “No violence against children is justifiable; allviolence against children is preventable.” Tragically,many adults are still justifying even extreme violence,both physical and mental, on spurious grounds oftradition, culture or religion.The report first looks at the definition and scope ofharmful traditional, cultural and religious practicesThe International NGO Council is mandated toviolating children’s rights. Section 3 outlines thefollow up the recommendations of the UN Study.human rightscontext for their“To abandon these practices, countries need to address their root causes.prohibition andLaw reform on violence against children, including harmful practices, is anelimination.Section 4 listsessential component of this process and cannot be reduced to isolated orpractices identifiedfragmented actions or ignore the role of customary and religious law.”through a call forMarta Santos Pais at International Consultation Addis Ababa, June 2012 evidence issued bythe InternationalNGO Councilearlier in 2012 and additional desk research. ItThis short report is designed to complement otheralso provides some examples of legal and othercurrent activities in the UN system that are focusingmeasures already taken to challenge and eliminateon harmful practices and children and will hopefullythem. Section 5 provides recommendations forlead to more effective action. The UN Secretaryaction by states, UN and UN-related agencies,General’s Special Representative on Violence againstINGOs, NGOs, national human rights institutionsChildren, Marta Santos Pais, held an Internationaland others.Expert Consultation on the issue in June 2012 inAddis Ababa in which the International NGO Councilwas represented and prepared a submission. TwoUN Treaty Bodies, the Committee on the Rights ofintroduction3

what do we mean byharmful PRACTICES?Amani Saéed and Samir Hassan sit with their children, including their daughters Shimus, 4, and Don

to cultures fully respectful of children’s rights. It marks a failure of religious leaders to insist that no form of violence against children can be justified in the name of religion and to highlight, as the Convention on the Rights of the Child does, children’s own right to freedom of religion.