A compilation of extracts from ngo reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child relating to violence against children This document is an annex to the publication
OMAN Middle East & North Africa No report available on the CRIN. PAKISTAN
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OMANMiddle East & North Africa No report available on the CRIN. PAKISTANSouth Asia CRC Session 34, 15 September 03 October 2003 SPARC, Pakistan (Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child) www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.34/pakistan_ngo_report.pdf […] Failure to extend the JJSO has serious implications for juvenile prisoners in the tribal areas, especially those sentenced to death, which the law prohibits. Two minor boys, Mohammad Rafique and Sohail Fida, face the death penalty in Swat, which is part of the PATA, after being convicted on July 23, 2002 by the Additional District & Sessions Judge of a May 2000 murder. Their appeal is pending before the Peshawar High Court. […] However, the situation is just the opposite in Interior Sindh, where children in most of the province’s 16 prisons are kept with adult prisoners, resulting in potential situations of sexual exploitation. The authorities in Sindh are tight-lipped about the state of affairs in Interior Sindh. Ironically, the same officials are forthcoming about the jails in Karachi. Prisons in Sindh generally are overcrowded. Government was providing only Rs 10.75 per prisoner for three meals a day: no wonder, then, that the prisoners remain malnourished. […] In Pakistan corporal punishment is widely practiced, particularly in educational institutions, and is documented as a major reason for the high school dropout rate. According to a study covering parents and teachers at 600 schools in the Frontier Province in 1998, 70 reports of serious injury arising from corporal punishment were received. The use of corporal punishment in some of its gravest forms is practiced in many religious educational institutions, the madrassas, where mostly children from poor families are housed and educated. Government schools, which are characterized by low quality education and untrained teachers, are also known for this practice, which in most cases puts an effective stop to the learning process of many children. The use of corporal punishment to discipline children is thus almost institutionalized. It is not only deeply entrenched in social attitudes it also has legal sanction. Section 89 of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 (No XLV) empowers parents, teachers and other guardians to use corporal punishment as a means to correct the behavior of children under 12 years of age. However, such punishment must be moderate. In the event the punishment inflicts serious injuries, the adult can be booked under sections 323 and 325 of the PPC and penalized and imprisoned. A very recent case highlights the practice and consequences of corporal punishment in Pakistan. Eleven-year old Mohamad Amir, a student of class 5 in Haripur, was cruelly beaten by two of his teachers for allegedly stealing a muffler. On his denial, the two teache rs locked him up in a classroom and beat him with a wooden rod, critically wounding the little boy. The teachers persisted with their demand for the muffler, and the boy with his denial. On continued torture the boy threatened to commit suicide. On February 7, 2003, after being released from several hours of confinement, Amir set fire to a stack of hay and jumped into the flames. He has been hospitalized with serious burns on his body. A police report was registered against the teachers after almost a week of the incident, following which they were arrested and later released on bail. […] Widespread societal acceptance of child labor has obscured the fact that it is exploitative and that many forms place the child’s health and development in jeopardy. Child labor survives in Pakistan in innumerable occupations and patterns. Child laborers are rarely found in Pakistan in large- and medium-sized industries barring commercial agriculture. They work primarily in the informal sector like small workshops, homebased operations, and casual mining. The areas that children work in are mostly hidden from the enforcement agencies and societies. International organizations such as the ILO are trying to help Pakistan eradicate child labor. Many programs have been initiated in different sectors that employ child labor. […] Many girls working as domestic servants become victims of physical, mental, or sexual abuse. […] Consequently, children living in the rural areas that constitute 65% of the total populace remains totally at the mercy of their parents and employers and to make matters worst, most of them are not even going to school. Any move to eradicate or even handle the issue of child labor thus has to take into account children employed in the rural sector. […] Today, there are as many as 45,000 such schools within Pakistan (the exact number has never been determined), ranging in size from a few students to several thousands. Importantly, these new schools tend to teach a more extreme version of Islam than what had been propagated before. They combine a mix of Wahabism (a puritanical version of Islam originating in Saudi Arabia) with Deobandism (a strand from the Indian subcontinent that is anti-Western, claiming that the West is the source of corruption in contemporary Islamic states and thus the laws of the state are not legitimate). With no state supervision, it is up to the individual schools to decide what to teach and preach. Many provide only religious subjects to their students, focusing on rote memorization of Arabic texts to the exclusion of basic skills such as simple math, science, or geography. Students graduate unable to multiply or to find their nation on a map, and are ignorant of basic events in human history such as the moon landing.
East Asia and the PacificNo report available on the CRIN. PANAMA (Republic of)The Americas CRC Session 36, 17 May - 4 June 2004 CLADEM
www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.36/Panama_CLADEM_ngo_report(E).doc If these limitations are compared with the fact that according to the 2000 census, the 24,35% of the Panamanian homes were constituted by single women with their children,139 there is an evident urgency to take care of these cases constituting a violation to children’s rights. […]
In the Center of Victim Assistance of the Judicial Technical Police in Panama, according to the annual statistics from January to July 2000, 89 male and 72 female children were assisted because of domestic violence, costing 9,900 and 8,000 dollars respectively.140 Also, data of August, 2000 provided by this Panamanian Institution shows 51 rapes denounced, 98% against women. Among these victims, one was between 5 to 9 years old; 44% aged from10 to 14, and 16% from 15 to 17; thus, 62% of the victims were under age. According to information from the Children Hospital,141 166 cases of violence against children were assisted in 2001. From this amount, 65 attended due to physical maltreatment, 79 to sexual abuse, 11 to negligence, 10 to abandonment and 1 was a self attempt associated to mistreatment. The 2000 Report Suspicion on Domestic Violence and Child, Adolescent, and Adult Maltreatment142 informs that 957 suspicious cases of domestic violence of people aged from the first months to 19 were presented in the health centers along the country, a total of 2.512 people were assisted. The most outstanding kind of aggression was sexual violence with 345 reported cases, 66 of them in the Children Hospital, physical violence represented 1.875 cases, 131 in the Children Hospital, 405 psychological violence and 4 of them also in the same Hospital. In relation to the Patrimonial Violence, an increase of allowances is observed, 3.033 in 1999 and 4.307 in 2000.143 […] It is pertinent to indicate that according to the 2000 Census, 20% of the children born alive in the Republic, belonged to adolescents. […] In 2000 in all the elementary and secondary official schools, 53 cases of pregnant students appeared, 9% were eleven years old; 13% twelve; 23 % thirteen; 24% fourteen; 28% fifteen and one (2%) was seventeen.144 Such figures show us an academic delay in most (77%) of the students, those aged to be cursing high school studies. More than half (55%) of the pregnant students attended the sixth level and 30% the fifth; however, a pregnant girl was registered in the first level, one in the second , one in the third and five in the fourth145. Concerning secondary schools, there were 512 pregnant students between 15, 16, 17 and 18 years old.146 All this information is extremely worrisome. Though this legislation has been created to protect pregnant minors, the necessity to work on prevention programs for youth and family is evident due to the increasing number of pregnant adolescents. There are no programs that can guarantee adolescents’ right to a suitable sexual and reproductive health. […]
Similarly, it allows the 12 years old minor to work as domestic employee, as well as in light works authorized by the Ministry of Work. This norm appears to be unconstitutional since it prohibits work to those minors aged up to fifteen who had not completed their primary studies, but demands employers to send them to school until completing elementary school. It also states $50 to $600 dollars fines to any employer who does not fulfil these dispositions. Panama does not count on a Code of Childhood and Adolescence, reason why the norms on minors’ labor, among others, are treated in different Laws. Domestic and Agricultural Labor (Cane harvest) and Garbage collection as some of the hardest forms of children’s work. Since a qualitative and quantitative perspective on children’s work, the 2000 Census, registered 38,353 economically active ten to seventeen years old children population (EAP).147 From this amount, the agricultural sector concentrates about 43% of the minor workers148. The domestic work has the second place since girls represent 16.4% of the children manual labor149. In addition, ILO reports 90 to 95% women doing domestic work.150 […]
In the Salitrosa community, Province of Coclé, on March 29th, 2000, from twenty (20) people dedicated to the cane harvest, seven (7) were children between 9 and 17 years old, with work days from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. They participate in the whole process without any protection and no personal security. In addition, they are not considered employees, they are just assistants to cut and carry cane and to distribute water without any wage recognition. In the case of Concepción’s sugar cane plantations, province of Veraguas, the work day is from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 m. After this, they transport the cut cane to the trucks. Two 25 meters furrows are assigned to each child and they are paid $2.00 a day. In Posada de Sereno, province of Veraguas, the work day begins at 4:00 a.m. Children are paid fifty cents ($0.50) for the first 15 meter furrow and fifty five cents ($0.55) for the following ones. Each adult or child employee pays the company fifty cents ($0.50) for feeding and lodging.151 Garbage collection by female children in Cerro Patacón dump Female children and adolescents exploited in domestic work are already considered a high risk population. But their reality is even worse when they are dedicated to gather garbage remainders in the Cerro Patacón dump.152 A report showing the results of interviews made to a total of six (6) children who collect garbage remainders in Cerro Patacón153, aged 11 to 18 and whose work day is from 8 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., allows us to indicate that their work is not visible because of the general impression this work is only carried out by adults. In conclusion, the difficult socioeconomic condition, the high levels of poverty and marginality, as well as the lack of some authorities’ supervision are the causes of the no fulfilment of the existing legislation in matter of protection of children’s rights and the eradication of minor’s work. […]
At present, two Law Projects on children commercial sexual exploitation are in the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Panama. One tries to typify minors’ pornography as a crime and the other deals with aspects to sanction international sexual tourism, people’s traffic and children commercial sexual exploitation. […]
The most recent investigations on the commercial sexual exploitation in Panama has been carried out by the civil society and academic institutions. In this sense, a research made in Panama City and the District of San Miguelito by the Institute of Woman of the University of Panama directed to children and adolescents victims of commercial sexual exploitation154, allows to indicate that from 100 minors interviewed dedicated to this activity, 29 were men, 41 women; aged between 9 and 17, being more than the 50% the ones between 14 and 15 years old. A 63% of the male and female interviewed had begun in commercial sexual activity between the ages of 9 to 14 and 43% by friendship, 22% by themselves, 16% by clients, 8% by neighbors, 2% by mothers, 2% by a procurer, 2% by a cousin, 1% by an aunt and 1% by a teacher. It is important to indicate that close relatives represent the 5%. The results of this study show a very serious situation evidencing the necessity to stop ignoring the problem155. […]
According 1997 to 2001 statistics, the most serious crimes causing adolescents’ processes were robbery, that increased from 509 in 1997 to 790 in 2001; deceptive homicide, which decreased from 89 in 1997 to 49 in 2001. rape oscillating 76 in 1997, 88 in 1999 and 61 in 2001. Drug traffic registers 36 processes in 1997, 7 cases in 1999 and 35 in 2001. There were 5 kidnapping in 1997, 48 in 1998, none in 2000 and 3 in 2001. From a total of 3,249 of these crimes processed in 1997, 715 corresponded to minors, representing the 22%. […]
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