--- On Wed, 15/12/10, Human Rights Watch <donors...@hrw.org> wrote:
From: Human Rights Watch <donors...@hrw.org>
Subject: Impact Newsletter: Protecting Children Being Forced to Beg
To: "Avnish Jolly" <avnis...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, 15 December, 2010, 9:14
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Protecting Children Being Forced to Beg
Ending abuses by teachers in Senegal's Quranic schools
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In response to a Human Rights Watch investigation, Senegalese authorities have begun enforcing a law prohibiting anyone from forcing a child to beg. Since we released our report on widespread abuses taking place at Quranic boys’ schools, ten teachers who forced children to beg have been convicted.
In late 2009 Human Rights Watch researchers documented the system of exploitation in which boys who attend Quranic schools are forced to beg all day, seven days a week on Senegal’s streets to meet quotas for food and money set by their teachers. The teachers, known as marabouts, often live in relative affluence because they keep everything the boys (known as talibés) receive from begging. Should the boys fail to meet the quotas, they may be severely beaten by the marabouts.
Malick L., a 13-year-old boy, showed Human Rights Watch the scars from the beatings he had suffered at the hand of his marabout more than a year before. He recounted his experience, which was typical of many other boys we interviewed.
“When I could not bring the quota, the marabout beat me,” Malick told us. “Even if I lacked 5 CFA ($0.01), he beat me… he hit me over and over, generally on the back but at times he missed and hit my head.”
READ MORE >>
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Senegalese authorities have begun to enforce a law prohibiting anyone from forcing a child to beg. |
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Lead-Contaminated Roma Camps in Kosovo Shut Down
Protecting the health of vulnerable, displaced people
The site of the former Cesmin Lug camp for internally displaced persons in Kosovo. © 2010 Human Rights Watch
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This fall, the European Commission (EC) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) began closing down lead-contaminated camps in Kosovo, where displaced Roma were living in abysmal health conditions. Human Rights Watch documented more than a decade of failure by the United Nations and others to provide adequate housing and medical treatment for the Roma in these camps, and pressed the EC and USAID to relocate the camps’ inhabitants to a safe environment with access to medical treatment.
In Pristina, Brussels, New York, and Washington, we briefed Kosovo authorities, international donors, and governments on our findings and recommendations and pressed for urgent action to remedy the problem. We conducted substantial media outreach, including the production and distribution of a photo slideshow, which resulted in prominent press coverage in the Guardian, the Observer, and on Deutsche Welle and the newswires.
We briefed organizations such as the Open Society Institute and the European Roma Rights Centre, which conducted further advocacy on the issue. Finally, we briefed the staff of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Internally Displaced Persons on the situation in the Mitrovica Roma camps prior to his team’s visit to Kosovo. His subsequent report featured the Roma’s plight prominently and supported our key recommendations: the camps’ immediate closure and the provision of urgent medical treatment.
READ MORE >>
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The EC and USAID are now closing down the Roma camps in Mitrovica and constructing alternative housing.
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Closing China’s Network of Secret Jails
Fighting widespread illegal detention
Detained petitioners stand behind locked gates of a black jail in Beijing. © 2007 Reuters
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In September, Chinese state media reported that Beijing police had arrested the chairman and general manager of a private company accused of detaining people in “black jails”—secret, makeshift detention centers that Human Rights Watch helped to expose.
Each year thousands of people who want to petition Beijing with complaints about local governance are prevented from doing so by local officials who arrest and hold them in black jails. Once detained, petitioners are subjected to abuses including physical and sexual violence, food and sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, and intimidation. The central government, rather than crack down on these facilities, had simply denied that they exist.
Our researchers interviewed dozens of former detainees. We documented the proliferation of plainclothes thugs tasked with abducting petitioners from the streets of Beijing and provincial capitals and imprisoning them incommunicado in black jails.
Two weeks after we released our findings at a press conference in Hong Kong, Liaowang, a Chinese language publication aimed at Communist Party bureaucrats and policy-makers, published an article echoing our findings on black jails. A short time later, the Chinese government ordered the 582 Beijing-based liaison offices of local and provincial authorities, which had often been used as black jails, to issue schedules for their eventual closure.
READ MORE >>
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The Chinese government is finally addressing the urgent need to close the black jails we helped to expose.
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Lead-Contaminated Roma Camps in Kosovo Shut Down
Closing China’s Network of Secret Jails