Children’s Rights

Asia/ Qatar / 17.10.2018/ Source: www.gulf-times.com.

Qatar affirmed Friday its commitment to protecting the rights of children at the national, regional and international levels.

The country would also spare no effort in providing the necessary support to the protection of children in all circumstances and by all means, in order to help ensure their development and education take place in safe and healthy conditions.
This came in the statement read by Qatar in a meeting on the sidelines of the 73rd UN General Assembly on enhancing and protecting the right of children.
The statement was read by member of the Qatari delegation participating in the 73rd UN General Assembly Mariam Ali al-Mawlawi.
She said that Qatar signed an agreement with the Office of the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict on September 28, 2018 to open a centre for children and armed conflict in Doha, which will contribute significantly to strengthening knowledge and skills for the protection of children affected by armed conflict in the region.
She noted that the move reflected Qatar’s commitment to protecting the rights of children, particularly in times of armed conflicts.
She also stressed that Qatar has made great strides in promoting and protecting the rights of children by taking a number of legislative and executive measures in various fields and sectors, such as education, health, social protection and family policies.
These measures were implemented within the framework of Qatar National Vision 2030 and the other national development strategies, and in line with international conventions on the subject.
The Qatari official also highlighted the country’s effort in preventing violence against children, noting that the State has developed a system for early detection of child abuse and neglect through increasing the number of social workers in schools, developing their knowledge and skills on the subject, developing an awareness programme for students about violence and protection, establishing a hotline for schools to report cases of violence.
There are also other programmes, such as the one run by Hamad Medical Corp to detect and report suspected cases of violence, provide care for abused children and promote a safe environment for children at home.
The Social Rehabilitation and Protection Centre (AMAN), a civil society organisation, carries out awareness-raising activities in schools to develop the skills of teachers and social workers for early detection and response to peer abuse.
Al-Mawlawi stressed that the issue of protecting the right to education is of great importance in the implementation of Qatar’s policy in international co-operation and its development and relief programmes, based on Qatar’s belief that education is the key to development and the importance of investing in the upbringing, protection and education of children, and based on its conviction that the right to education does not fall due to emergency circumstances.
She added that the State has been able to realise many achievements in this field in co-operation with its partners in the international community, where Education Above All foundation in partnership with Unicef and more than 80 global partners has managed to provide quality education for 10mn children without school in more than 50 countries around the world, including areas plagued by armed conflict, poverty and natural disasters.
Qatar has also recently provided $70mn to Unicef to support Yemen’s water and sanitation sector to reduce the spread of diseases related to contaminated water, such as cholera and others, which will save the lives of thousands of children in Yemen.

Source of the notice: https://www.gulf-times.com/story/609225/Qatar-stresses-vow-to-protect-children-s-rights

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By: hrw.org/Bill Van Esveld/ 22-08-2018

«I get depressed here. I want to go to a good school to study,» said a bright, 12-year-old girl from Afghanistan, who’s been stuck for six months in the grim Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. «If we don’t study we won’t have a future and we won’t become successful.»

The European Commission’s humanitarian agency agrees: «education is crucial» for girls and boys affected by crises, and is «one of the best tools to invest in their long-term future.»

So one might expect that the European Union would demand to see educational results for its money in Greece, where by some counts it has spent over $14,000 [€12,100] in aid for every migrant and asylum seeker.

One would be wrong, especially when it comes to asylum-seeking and migrant children stuck on the Aegean islands.

The importance of children having an education seems to have been trumped by a Greek government policy, backed by the EU, of keeping most asylum seekers who arrive by sea from Turkey confined to the islands until their asylum claims are adjudicated, rather than transferring them to the mainland where services are better.

Human Rights Watch research has found that on the Aegean islands, where at any given time there are more than 3,000 school-age asylum-seeking children, fewer than 400 are in school.

In Syria, which many of the refugees are fleeing, net primary school enrollment was 63 percent in 2013 (the latest available figures), two years after the war erupted.

Greece has opened pre-school classes for some children in the government-run camps on the islands. But the other children in those camps – unlike children in camps on the mainland – have no access to formal education.

Overcrowded camps

The Greek education ministry has opened formal classes tailored to children who do not speak Greek and who have been out of school, but they serve only a small number who were allowed to leave the government camps for shelters or subsidised housing.

Right now the Greek authorities are trying to close a volunteer shelter that was the first on the islands to help asylum seeking children enrol in public schools.

The Greek government has claimed it is impractical to provide access to education to children in the island camps, since they are «on the move.» In reality, new arrivals to the islands continue to outpace deportations to Turkey and transfers to the mainland.

Colleagues and I met children who had been stuck in the overcrowded, unsanitary, dangerous camps for up to 11 months without even the respite that going to school could provide.

Greek law makes education compulsory from ages five to 15 and provides that all children have the right to go to school, including asylum seekers without all their papers.

So it was welcome news in April 2018 when Greece’s highest court ruled that there was no basis in law for containing new arrivals on the Aegean islands. But while the government has transferred over 10,000 people since November to the mainland, where there are more educational resources, it refused to implement the ruling and instead adopted a law to reinstate the policy.

Wishful thinking

The Greek ministry for migration policy has also played an opaque and at times unhelpful role, blocking the education ministry from opening more classes on the islands in 2017.

Education is critical to refugee children’s ability to integrate and contribute in Europe. And investing in education more than pays for itself; every dollar spent on education reaps two in earnings and health benefits.

Despite all that EU money, Greece seems to do a worse job educating asylum seeker children than countries like Jordan and Turkey, which have lower gross national incomes per capita and vastly more refugee children, and enrolment rates above 60 percent.

By one count, enrollment in Greece was 55 percent – and that only counted the minority of children outside camps across the country, not the majority who are in camps.

Despite the wishful thinking of some European politicians, there is little prospect that most asylum-seeking children in Greece will go to Turkey any time soon. Greece faces a choice between squandering the talents and harming the integration and future of thousands of children or doing the right thing and making sure they can go to school.

*Fuente: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/06/children-losing-out-education-eu-migration-deal

*image information: A child in the Moria “hotspot” camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, December 2017. Parents in the camp said their children cannot access adequate healthcare. © Bill Van Esveld / Human Rights Watch, 2017.

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