IN DEFENCE OF THE INNOCENT

Babies stolen 'to order'

2008-08-19T23:46:00.003+02:00

New evidence has shown that babies are being stolen to order in the Latin American country of Guatemala.

Though many Guatemalan children are adopted legally, BBC correspondent Matthew Price has found one mother who now has proof that her baby was kidnapped.

VIDEO

Madeleine McCann 'was snatched by paedophile ring to order'

2008-08-10T13:57:00.002+02:00

By Caroline Gammell in Portimao

British police were told that Madeleine McCann was snatched by an international paedophile ring which photographed her three days before she vanished, police files have disclosed.

According to an email sent by the Metropolitan Police a child abduction ring based in Belgium placed an order for a "young girl".

Three-year-old Madeleine was spotted while on holiday in Portugal by someone connected to the gang who took a picture of her.

The photograph was sent back to Belgium where the paedophile ring agreed that she should be abducted, the email states.

Three days later on May 3rd last year Madeleine was taken from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve while her parents ate at a nearby restaurant.

The astonishing revelation supports Kate and Gerry McCann's long-held theory that their eldest child may have been taken by a child smuggling ring.

The email, sent by an intelligence officer on the Met's vice squad on March 4 this year to counterparts in the Portuguese and Leicestershire police, marks a significant development in the case of the missing girl.

Just last month Portuguese police closed their investigation and cleared the McCanns of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance.

Related: Conspiracy of Silence

Child trafficking in U.K on the rise

2008-07-08T21:22:00.002+02:00

Jaiyant Cavale | Jul 4 2008

Child trafficking, one of the modern evils includes recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring of children for the purpose of exploiting them. Child trafficking almost always is synonymous with child sexual exploitation. Child trafficking is also synonymous with developing and under-developed countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. What is astonishing is the recent report that British-born children have been victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. In the heartland of Europe, where people assume the safety of children, traffickers and pimps have been using young children for the purposes of prostitution, drug trafficking and crimes as well.

A recent government report talks about an ‘emerging issue’ of British children being trafficked within the U.K. Children in Britain, as many as 18,000 may have been victims of child sexploitation. Shockingly, most venues for these exploitations take place in ‘very, very, ordinary’ places such as lower middle class and middle class neighborhoods and most neighbors don’t suspect anything to be wrong either. Out of the 800 or more premises that were raided, about 600 of them were residential, 157 were massage parlors, saunas, nail bars and the like which are more likely to turn out to be brothels.

Another appalling fact seems to be the method of these traffickers. Men, usually older, lure girls with drugs and gifts of money in cash and kind, act as boyfriends and groom the girls to be prostitutes. The girls usually go ‘missing’ from home to be with their boyfriends who are actually pimps, and succumb to prostitution due to violence and threats. The girls will have to provide sexual favors to the boyfriend’s ‘friends’. Most are subjected to rape, violence, and forced to traffic and peddle drugs. Some girls, as young as 12 are forced to perform sexual acts up to 20 times a night. Majority of the victims are from China and South-east Asian countries with a smaller number of girls from Eastern Europe. Girls who are not citizens of U.K and are staying illegally have been granted up to 45 days of grace to stay on.

Another issue is that of the resistance by the girls to be rescued, that is, they believe they are better off in their present condition than being rescued and according to the police, they go to extra-ordinary lengths to escape rescuers. The police so far have made 232 arrests but that is not a reason to rejoice as the problems seems to be deep rooted. The authorities are in Britain are taking all the steps they possibly could, to track the traffickers and the girls. So far, it has been an annoyingly slow and disturbing job for those trying to rescue and rehabilitate the girls.

UK Adults Face Anti-Pedophile Tests

2008-06-27T09:16:00.001+02:00

06-26-2008 London Telegraph

A quarter of the adult population faces an "anti-paedophile" test in an escalation of child protection policies, according to a report.

The launch of a new Government agency will see 11.3million people vetted for any criminal past before they are approved to have contact with children aged under 16.

But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is "poisoning" relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.

In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded "potential child abusers".

The checks were introduced to tighten procedures to protect children after school caretaker Ian Huntley murdered 10 year olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham in 2002.

However, there are growing fears that the measures have now gone too far.

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents "in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light".

From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.

But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.

In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were "CRB checked" when their children played together.

In a third example, a father was given "filthy looks" by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own in "a scene from a Western when the room goes silent and tumbleweed blows across the foreground".

Prof Furedi details how one woman was made to feel like a "second class mother" because she was barred from a school disco because she did not have a CRB check.

Prof Furedi, a sociology professor from Kent University, said that "adults are no longer trusted or expected to engage with children on their own initiative".

He said: "When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

"We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home."

Prof Furedi, the author of a book called "Paranoid Parenting", said there was a trend to treat parenthood as a "professional endeavour that demanded increasing regulation and monitoring".

Prof Furedi said that CRB checks did not "provide anything like a cast-iron guarantee that children will be safe with a particular adult".

"All it tells us is that the person has not been convicted of an offence in the past," he said.

He called for a national review to demonstrate the need to "improve and clarify adult authority".

Prof Furedi said: "The adult qualities of spontaneous compassion and commitment are far more effective safeguarding methods than pieces of paper that promote the messages 'Keep Out' and 'Watch Your Back'."

Figures show that volunteering is on the decline with 13 per cent of men saying they would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers, according to a survey last year.

The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.

Martin Narey, chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, said his behaviour had been affected by the suspicions around adult-child relationships.

Writing in The New Statesman, he says: "I am likely to usher my wife forward if a child falls over in the street, lest my picking up the child could be misinterpreted. We need to address that. Adults - particularly men - should not routinely be seen as potential child abusers.

"And we need urgently to expose the nonsense of 'stranger danger' and convince parents that, although the risk of a child of theirs being abused at all is small, that risk comes not from lurking strangers, but from people known by their children - often relatives - who are able to exploit a child's trust."

However, he stressed that not to run any checks on past behaviour that could point to potential abuse would be "scandalously reckless" and he supported plans for the new Independent Safeguarding Authority whose work he said "will restore parental confidence" in adults who volunteer to help groups like the Scouts.

The CRB said yesterday that it will process 3.6million checks this year - up from 3.4million last year - of which 20 per cent were for volunteers.

Vince Gaskell, the bureau's chief executive, said he did not believe that CRB checks were poisoning the relationship between adults and children.

Pedophile fears as student profiles, pictures go on net

2008-06-20T13:47:00.004+02:00

By James O'Loan and Melanie Christiansen

June 16, 2008

PARENTS are outraged at a State Government plan to post the profile of every state school student on its intranet, sparking fears pedophiles could find it.

The intranet database, dubbed OneSchool, will profile each of the state's 480,000 public school students enrolled from Prep to Year 12.

Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools.

The site already has been labelled a likely target for computer hackers.

"The social fabric of hackers is such that this database (OneSchool) is going to be a fair target," Queensland University of Technology deputy dean of Information Technology professor Mark Looi said.

"People are going to try and get in. There is no doubt in my mind."

But Education Minister Rod Welford has warned the state-wide rollout of the OneSchool database is "non-negotiable" and students could be refused an education if they don't divulge required information.

Parents outraged

couriermail.com.au reader Sari, of Brisbane, suggested personal information of our politicians, their wives and children should be posted first.

“Then we'll see how safe it is before adding school children.”

Sandra of Brisbane said Mr Welford could not stop her children from attending school if she refused to allow them to be part of the database “because by law the government has to provide my children with an education”.

“Stick that where you must. And you can get screwed if you think I am going to consent to my children's photo and private details being available to anyone and everyone in the system,” she wrote.

I Reckon of Brisbane wrote: “Ya gotta be joking? What a world of paranoid people we have became!”

Andrew of Queensland said: “My own children’s teachers need this information, not every person (including adminstration staff) and the entire education system.”

“Well, I guess my children will be getting a home education as there is no way on this earth any of my child's details will be available to anyone in this way,” Ad of Brisbane wrote.

However, Adam of Brisbane said: “Why would a pedophile bother to hack into a database like this when there seems to be enough vile content elsewhere on the internet?”

Education Queensland said details of 180,000 students from 637 schools already were online and the database would be completed by December.

About 80,000 students are expected to be added to the internal education department database each year.

Welford's ultimatum

Education Minister Rod Welford said parents could be denied access to public education if they refused to consent to their child being profiled, and he dismissed concerns from parents about pedophiles hacking into the database.

"It's not Facebook we're creating here," Mr Welford said, referring to the popular internet networking site.

"The Courier-Mail is playing to the ridiculous, extreme and hypothetical, and I will not be drawn into playing your game."

He said - to his knowledge - no one had gained unauthorised access to Education Queensland's other online databases.

Students must accept it

Mr Welford has warned OneSchool is "non-negotiable" and students could be denied an education if they don't divulge required information.

He also said he understood some people might have concerns about the security of online databases but OneSchool was designed to be more secure than the current system.

"If they don't want to have any of their information recorded ... how else does one record a student's results," he said.

However Civil Liberties Council vice-president Terry O'Gorman yesterday said parents should be concerned, warning the OneSchool system could put students' privacy at risk.

Mr O'Gorman called for the system to be restricted so principals and teachers could access data only on their own students, with non-teaching staff excluded and no access for home computers or laptops.

"Why should anyone other than the teacher of a particular student and the principal of that school have a right to know what a child's academic performance is, behavioural status is or what their life aims are?" he said.

"It just puzzles me as to how it can have any possible benefit to centralise that information, whereas it has a clear privacy downside."

At least four Queensland teachers have been arrested in the past fortnight in connection with an international child porn network. One is accused of super-imposing photos of himself and his students on online images of children being sexually abused.

OneSchool users will have passwords to one of 12 different levels of access to the encrypted data, according to their role.

Until now schools have used paper records and offline computer or internet-based databases to store student information.

Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Association vice-president Charles Alder rejected concerns about security breaches.

"The security standards on this are as high as on any other system," he said.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart also supported OneSchool.

The first phase of the database rollout, to be completed by December, focuses on developing accurate student-management records including school reports, contact details, attendance, extra-curricular activities, behaviour, career aspirations and parental contact.

Peacekeepers 'abusing children'

2008-05-27T08:22:00.000+02:00

Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.

Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.

After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said an international watchdog should be created to deal with the issue.

The UN has said it welcomes the report, which it will study closely.

Save the Children says the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.

No support

A 13-year-old girl described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home, and left her bleeding, trembling and vomiting on the ground.

The victims are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence
Heather Kerr
Save the Children

No action has been taken against the soldiers.

The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.

After research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.

It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems.

Heather Kerr, Save the Children's Ivory Coast country director, says little is being done to support the victims.

"It's a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that don't have the voice to report about this.

"They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."

Save the Children says the international community has promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.

A UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.

"What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he told the BBC.

Victory for Greek hunger strikers

2008-05-26T09:47:00.002+02:00

By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Leros

Eleven-year-old Salman Marufel sat cross-legged on a bed in an overcrowded dormitory and, using his fingers, hungrily devoured a plate of greasy chicken and rice.

It was, literally, the taste of victory.

Salman was the youngest of more than 100 other war children from Afghanistan who went on a series of hunger strikes to protest against what they claimed were the cramped, unsanitary conditions of their reception centre on the Aegean island of Leros, not far from the Turkish coast.

Their action embarrassed the Greek government, which is under increasing pressure from its European Union partners to improve its treatment of asylum seekers.

Late last week, the boys were visited by Giorgos Costandopoulos, the deputy health minister, who promised they would be moved to better accommodation on the mainland.

"We understand these people. We know very well what their needs are," said Mr Costandopoulos. "And we will do our best for these people in Athens."

Perilous journey

Some refugees will be taken to a summer holiday camp on the Attica coast, not far from the home of Greece's Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, while others will be housed in a village built for journalists covering the 2004 Athens' Olympic Games.

Salman said that on two occasions he had gone without food for four or five days.

We were compelled to stop eating to solve our problems
Javed, 14, hunger striker

"We wanted the government to listen to our problems," he said. "I want to go to Athens and be free."

Salman may only be 11 years old, but he displays a toughness forged from a lifetime of hardship.

His parents bankrupted themselves to raise the $10,000 (£5,000) demanded by traffickers for helping Salman to escape the conflict in Afghanistan, travel along the old Silk Road through Iran and Turkey, and into a rubber dinghy for the short, perilous crossing to Leros.

"I am really worried about my parents," he said. "But they will be happy that I am in Greece."

One of Salman's fellow hunger strikers was 14-year-old Javed Ahmadzi. He smiled proudly as he described their protest.

"We had been here for about 45 days and, every day, we asked the police, the government and the political people what will happen to us. But they didn't answer. So we were compelled to stop eating to solve our problems."

People trafficking

The move to Athens may not resolve Javed's personal dilemma. He is still of school age. But he wants to work to help pay off the $10,000 paid to a smuggling agent in Kabul by his widowed mother and brother.

"My brother cannot pay the money. I know it won't be easy to earn the money. But I will work in the future, and, in one or two or three years, I will earn enough money to send to Kabul. If I don't pay the money, it will be very bad for my mother and my brother."

On the day the deputy health minister visited Leros, coastguards deposited two boatloads of asylum seekers - 60 in all - who had been discovered hiding on neighbouring islets.

Most were from Afghanistan. But they also included refugees from Iraq and a couple from Ghana in West Africa.

The going rate from Afghanistan appears to range from $7-10,000, while a man who called himself "Bashir from Baghdad", said he paid $3,000 for the comparatively short journey from Iraq, through the Kurdish mountains to Turkey.

"All I have got left is 10 euros," he said. "But I am happy to be here, because here I am safe."

As Bashir and a dozen men without shoes walked to the coastguard headquarters, a burly officer led away two small, thin men, alleged to be the traffickers.

"Falestine, Falestine," said the smaller of the two, protesting that he was a Palestinian refugee. But the Greeks were adamant that he was in fact Turkish.

According to charity workers helping the asylum seekers, the smuggling gangs have adopted a new ruthless tactic. They are now using naive Turkish boys aged less than 18 to row the rubber dinghies into Greek waters.

They pay them about $200 for the trip. Human rights lawyers claim that a loophole in new legislation allows under-age smugglers to be deported back to Turkey without prosecution.

Impossible to police

Leros, an island of 8,500 inhabitants in the middle of the Dodacanese archipelago, simply cannot handle the daily human tide.

The responsibility for what happened lies with Britain and America - they are the ones who bombarded Iraq and Afghanistan
Mayor of Leros, Timotheos Kottakis

During 2007, the total number of illegal arrivals amounted to 980. That figure has already been surpassed and it is only May. The favourable, long, summer months are when the smuggling really starts.

The Mayor of Leros, Timotheos Kottakis, is incandescent that Europe is upbraiding Greece for its treatment of asylum seekers

"The responsibility for what happened lies with Britain and America," he said. "They are the ones who bombarded Iraq and Afghanistan."

With its hundreds of islands, jagged topography and remote beaches, Greece has a coastline that is as long as the perimeter of the African continent. Its waters are impossible to police completely.

The influx of refugees has increased since Europe acted to discourage asylum seekers from targeting the Canary Islands and southern Italy.

"There is not the infrastructure in Greece to host this large number of immigrants," says Sophia Ioannou, of Medecins du Monde, which is the lead charity in Leros.

"Greece is a big door for immigrants at the moment. I strongly believe that the European Union has to support Greece in terms of funds, in order to cope with these increasing numbers of immigrants," she said.

Stopover to the West

I asked a British official to list the assistance the United Kingdom was offering its partner on the easternmost frontier of the European Union.

It amounted to little more than meetings and lectures to Greece on how to improve its human rights.

The most kindly face awaiting the asylum seekers on Leros is that of Phillipos Olympitis, a 72-year-old retired pharmacist, who proudly wears the blue and white symbol of Medecins du Monde.

As Phillipos drove to help document the latest batch of asylum seekers, he was stopped by a Leros inhabitant who taunted him: "Just off to boost the island's tourism are you?"

"Malaka!" exploded Phillipos, using the most common Greek insult. "These people are under guard and staying put. They are not coming anywhere near you are they?"

Phillipos is convinced that the only way to stop the influx is to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We used to be overwhelmed by Kurdish refugees," he said. "But I was in northern Iraq recently and it was pretty peaceful. And the Kurds have stopped coming to Greece."

The current occupants of the Leros reception centres may be moving to Athens, but others are sure to take their place.

The frightened and the dispossessed of Afghanistan and Iraq are walking. Greece is just a stop over on their way west.

"My sister lives in Birmingham," said one Afghan as I left his temporary Leros home. "I love Birmingham. See you soon in Birmingham."

Saudi women 'kept in childhood'

2008-04-21T18:56:00.000+02:00

Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so male relatives can exercise "guardianship" over them, the Human Rights Watch group has said.

The New York-based group says Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care.

Their access to justice is also severely constrained, it says.

The group says the Saudi establishment sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

Saudi clerics see the guardianship of women's honour as a key to the country's social and moral order.

'No progress'

The report, Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia, draws on more than 100 interviews with Saudi women.

Farida Deif, women's rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch, said: "Saudi women won't make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies."

It's astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty

Farida Deif,
Human Rights Watch

The report says that Saudi women are denied the legal right to make even trivial decisions for their children - women cannot open bank accounts for children, enrol them in school, obtain school files or travel with their children without written permission from the child's father.

Human Rights Watch says that Saudi women are prevented from accessing government agencies that have no established female sections unless they have a male representative.

The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities, the report says.

Male guardianship over adult women also contributes to their risk of exposure to violence within the family as victims of violence find it difficult to seek protection or redress from the courts.

Social workers, physicians and lawyers say that it is nearly impossible to remove guardianship from male guardians who are abusive, the group says.

"It's astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty," said Ms Deif.

"For Saudi women, reaching adulthood brings no rights, only responsibilities."

The Globalization of Baby-Making

2008-04-12T12:07:00.003+02:00

International Herald Tribune
The globalization of baby-making
By Ellen Goodman
Friday, April 11, 2008

By now we all have a story about a job outsourced beyond our reach in the global economy. My favorite is about the California publisher who hired two reporters in India to cover the Pasadena city government. Really.

There are times as well when the offshoring of jobs takes on a quite literal meaning. When the labor we are talking about is, well, labor.

In the last few months we've had a full nursery of international stories about surrogate mothers. Hundreds of couples are crossing borders in search of lower-cost ways to fill the family business. In turn, there's a new coterie of international workers who are gestating for a living.

Many of the stories about the globalization of baby production begin in India, where the government seems to regard this as, literally, a growth industry. In the little town of Anand, dubbed "The Cradle of the World," 45 women were recently on the books of a local clinic. For the production and delivery of a child, they will earn $5,000 to $7,000, a decade's worth of women's wages in rural India.

But even in America, some women, including Army wives, are supplementing their income by contracting out their wombs. They have become surrogate mothers for wealthy couples from European countries that ban the practice.

This globalization of baby-making comes at the peculiar intersection of a high reproductive technology and a low-tech workforce. The biotech business was created in the same petri dish as Baby Louise, the first IVF baby. But since then, we've seen conception outsourced to egg donors and sperm donors. We've had motherhood divided into its parts from genetic mother to gestational mother to birth mother and now contract mother.

We've also seen the growth of an international economy. Frozen sperm is flown from one continent to another. And patients have become medical tourists, searching for cheaper healthcare whether it's a new hip in Thailand or IVF treatment in South Africa that comes with a photo safari thrown in for the same price. Why not then rent a foreign womb?

I don't make light of infertility. The primal desire to have a child underlies this multinational Creation Inc. On one side, couples who choose surrogacy want a baby with at least half their own genes. On the other side, surrogate mothers, who are rarely implanted with their own eggs any longer, can believe that the child they bear and deliver is not really theirs.

As one woman put it, "We give them a baby and they give us much-needed money. It's good for them and for us." A surrogate in Anand used the money to buy a heart operation for her son. Another raised a dowry for her daughter.

Nevertheless, there is - and there should be - something uncomfortable about a free-market approach to baby-making. It's easier to accept surrogacy when it's a gift from one woman to another. But we rarely see a rich woman become a surrogate for a poor family. Indeed, in Third World countries, some women sign these contracts with a fingerprint because they are illiterate.

For that matter, we have not yet had stories about the contract workers for whom pregnancy was a dangerous occupation, but we will. What obligation does a family that simply contracted for a child have to its birth mother? What control do - should - contractors have over their "employee's" lives while incubating "their" children? What will we tell the offspring of this international trade?

It's the commercialism that is troubling. Some things we cannot sell no matter how good "the deal." We cannot, for example, sell ourselves into slavery. We cannot sell our children. But the surrogacy business comes perilously close to both of these. And international surrogacy tips the scales.

So, these borders we are crossing are not just geographic ones. They are ethical ones. Today the global economy sends everyone in search of the cheaper deal as if that were the single common good. But in the biological search, humanity is sacrificed to the economy and the person becomes the product. And, step by step, we come to a stunning place in our ancient creation story. It's called the marketplace.

Washington Post Writers Group

Rowling demands action in Dafur

2008-04-12T11:58:00.002+02:00

Darfuri children have drawn powerful images of the war around them

CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has joined fellow children's writers in calling for greater protection for children living in war-torn Darfur.

An open letter signed by 14 authors, including best-selling US writer Judy Blume and Michael Morpugo, declares: "It is time to change the narrative."

"The world needs to wake up. For too long it has let these children suffer. Our politicians need to act on Darfur."

The conflict in Darfur, a region of Sudan, is now in its fifth year.

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since rebels took up arms in 2003, according to the UN. Two million have fled their homes.

'Caught in crossfire'

Sunday marks Global Day for Darfur, with protesters around the world calling on the international community to take further action to end the crisis.

"The children of Darfur didn't ask for this war, but are living their days caught in the crossfire of reverberating bullets," the open letter continues.

"They must be allowed to be children again. Despite the daily terror they face, they still have hopes and dreams.

"The world needs to act now to give the children of Darfur a future."

Germany's Cornelia Funke and RL Stine, the American author of the Goosebumps series, are among the writers taking part. Their plea includes calls for an immediate ceasefire and the full deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

Human rights groups estimate that more than a million Sudanese children have been caught up in the bloodshed, displacement and killing in the region.

Hollywood stars Matt Damon, Thandie Newton and George Clooney are also taking part in Sunday's global protest.

"Days like this matter because they keep what is happening in the eyes of the international community," said Clooney, a UN "messenger of peace".

"If we all raise our voices the international community will have to listen and respond."

Child death raises tough questions

2008-04-10T19:38:00.002+02:00

By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

In a country such as Brazil, which lives with high levels of crime and violence, it usually takes a particularly shocking event to have an impact across the country.

Some experts believe extensive media coverage has led to copycat cases

The tragic death of five-year-old Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni is one such case.

For days the crime has been grabbing headlines in all the main Brazilian papers, leading the front pages of the weekly news magazines, and taking up hours of television reports.

It initially appeared that the little girl was thrown to her death from the sixth floor apartment in Sao Paulo belonging to her father and stepmother, where she had been spending the weekend.

However, preliminary tests indicated that she may also have been strangled beforehand, and suffered other injuries.

Blood was found in the apartment and there was a hole in the wire safety netting that covered the window. She died just a few minutes after being discovered.

'Inexplicable act'

"The unacceptable death of Isabella," proclaimed the headline on a report from the weekly news magazine Istoe.

"Extroverted, lively and gracious, Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni, aged five, was the centre of attention at family reunions," it said.

The case has prompted Brazilians to reflect on the kind of cruelty that adults seem capable of inflicting on children

Isabella wanted to be a ballerina, the magazine reported.

"How did someone commit an inexplicable act like this?" asked the magazine Epoca.

Her father Alexandre, 29, says he believes that his daughter was killed by an intruder, while he was helping his wife bring their other children from their car in the garage in the basement of the building.

However, both he and his wife Anna Carolina Jatoba have been held by police for questioning over the death.

Whoever was responsible for Isabella's death, the case has prompted Brazilians to reflect on the kind of cruelty that adults seem capable of inflicting on children.

Only last month police here filed charges against 49-year-old businesswoman Silvia Calabresi, who is accused of torturing a 12-year-old girl.

When police in the city of Goiania found the girl she was handcuffed to a staircase and showing signs of torture and ill-treatment.

Ms Calabresi later said in a television interview that she didn't think she was torturing the child but was "educating" her.

Greater awareness

Brazil is not alone in dealing with the consequences of extreme acts of violence against the most vulnerable members of society, and there are indications of some worrying trends.

The risk is that if we become used to this type of event I think we lose a very valuable part of our humanity

Ivonise Fernandes da Motta
Psychology professor

Research carried out by the University of Sao Paulo showed that domestic violence against children had risen by 75% in the first years of this century.

Professor Ivonise Fernandes da Motta of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sao Paulo, says this increase may be explained by the greater awareness in society, and a willingness to report what has happened to the authorities.

She also highlights the speed and sometimes sensationalist nature of reports in the media as a reason why society is much more conscious of this kind of crime. Even so, she says, such cruelty still has the capacity to shock Brazilian society.

"We have indications that this is increasing and there is a danger that situations like this will become more common. The risk is that if we become used to this type of event I think we lose a very valuable part of our humanity," she warned.

One expert from a referral centre of Victims of Violence in the Institute of Sedes Sapientae in Sao Paulo says the greater awareness may have led to others copying particular acts of cruelty.

The violence is of different types and becoming more specific and more sophisticated, says general co-ordinator Dalka Chaves de Almeida Ferrari.

"If a crime happens of a particular type in another place and it is exposed in the media, then in one or two weeks something similar will happen here," she says.

"I think that this communication - which is much more direct today - ends up freeing people who wish to participate in some violence, that have a wish to do something.

"Related to the case of this girl [Isabella] you see how many similar cases have emerged," she said.

Far from unique

In one case since Isabella's death a baby was thrown out of a window in a house in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and is being treated in hospital.

But it is also the cases which do not always make the headlines which worry those who work in this area.

"I think violence which ends up in death always shocks, but I think the violence that is more psychological, which happens every day and decreases the self-esteem of children or uses physical discipline still needs to change a lot in Brazil," says Dalka de Almeida Ferrari.

While the exact circumstances of Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni's death remain uncertain, part of the enormous tragedy of her story is that it is far from unique.

Amen

2008-03-11T14:56:00.003+01:00

Posters of Scorsone and Drueding at www.SDposters.com

Chad 'orphans' to return to homes

2008-03-07T13:02:00.004+01:00

The government of Chad has given permission for 103 children who were caught up in a trafficking scandal to be returned home, Unicef says.

Six French aid workers were convicted last year of trying to kidnap the 103 children from Chad, saying they thought they were orphans from Darfur.

The children will be returned to their families from an orphanage in Chad as soon as possible, Unicef says.

The aid workers have been returned to France to serve out their jail terms.

They said they had been tricked into thinking the children they were preparing to fly to France were Sudanese orphans from Darfur.

However, most of the children were found to be from Chad, which borders the war-torn western Sudanese region, and had parents who were still alive.

See more on this scandal:

allAfrica.com

Anger at Chad ‘abduction’ fiasco may shut door on Africa adoptions

Protest over Chad child scandal

Chad court jails French aid staff

Sydney police free sex captives

2008-03-07T12:50:00.001+01:00

Australian police say they have broken up an international sex-trafficking ring after rescuing 10 South Korean women from Sydney brothels.

Five people have been arrested and charged with offences including people trafficking and debt bondage.

Police said the women were lured to Australia and forced to work up to 20 hours a day in legal Sydney brothels.

They had agreed to work in the sex industry, but were deceived about conditions, police said.

"My understanding is that they came to Australia to work in the sex industry, but under more reasonable conditions," Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Tim Morris said.

'Vanloads of men'

Once the women were in Australia, the syndicate took their passports, officials said.

"This is probably the largest alleged syndicate that we have smashed," Immigration Department Assistant Secretary Lyn O'Connell said.

The five people arrested include a South Korean woman and a Korean-Australian woman, who police allege is the head of a syndicate that was making $2.8m (£1.4m) annually.

Government prosecutors said the evidence against the five includes six months of intercepted phone calls and Korean-language business documents, Reuters news agency reported.

Prostitution is legal in most of Australia but new slavery laws were introduced in 1999 to prevent vulnerable women being exploited.

A business owner near one of the brothels said it was staffed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean women and was always busy, says the BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney.

At the weekends, vanloads of Asian men would descend on the premises, he says.

First pictures of 'abuse' cellar

2008-03-03T00:31:00.002+01:00

The pictures are the first to
be released by police

First pictures of 'abuse' cellar The first pictures of the cellar at the centre of a child abuse investigation in Jersey have been released.

Police have been excavating the chamber at the Haut de la Garenne former children's home over the past week.

Around 160 people claim they were abused at the home and a child's remains were found under a floor in a stairwell last Saturday.

Forensic experts are continuing to sift evidence and suspect there may be four bricked-up chambers.

'Significant finds'

Dozens of people have come forward in the last week claiming they were abused while at the centre.

The allegations date back to the 1970s and 1980s and some are from more than 40 years ago.

There have been accusations that people were kept in solitary confinement, raped and beaten.

Detectives said their investigation of the first cellar had uncovered two "significant finds" - reportedly shackles and a bath.

Police have used a digger to take off layers of soil but investigations were scaled down on Sunday to give forensic teams a break.

Twelve detectives from forces across England and Wales have been called in to help with the investigation.

Deputy police chief Lenny Harper told reporters on Saturday that police had been able to substantiate "to some degree" reports that someone had been approached by a former care worker and intimidated.

"I can't emphasise too much that anyone approaching victims or witnesses in this case could well be found to be perverting the course of justice," he warned.

[ Establishment child abuse is still going on behind closed doors. Occasionally, there will be cases surfacing in public institutions and private companies but the real core psychopathology remains very much untouched. Indeed, they thrive on the disclosures and discoveries such as the one above, as it gives the illusion that the authorities are doing their job. Meanwhile, the Police chief or politician, diplomat or Duke can continue to prey on the young.

Systematic abuse is endemic in the Establishment circles and remains tightly sealed Club. How wonderful it would be see that nest of vipers brought out from the dark cover of Parliament or Congress and given the full light of truth. ]

Child's body found at care home

2008-02-24T00:15:00.000+01:00

Parts of a child's body have been found by police in a former children's home in Jersey.

Police believe more bodies may be found at Haut de la Garenne in St Martin, which is at the centre of an inquiry into alleged child abuse.

The remains are thought to date from the early 1980s. Police have not said whether they are male or female.

The investigation involves the abuse of boys and girls aged between 11 and 15, since the 1960s.

We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there
Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer, Lenny Harper

Jersey police began investigating allegations of abuse in November last year.

The excavation of Haut de la Garenne, involving a sniffer dog and ground radar, started on Tuesday when information emerged from the police inquiry.

The investigation involves several government institutions and organisations in Jersey, with the Haute de la Garenne home and Jersey Sea Cadets the main focus of the inquiry.

A police spokeswoman said more than 140 potential victims or witnesses had contacted a helpline since the investigations began.

Specialist assistance

Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer, Lenny Harper, who is in charge of the investigation, said detectives "think there is the possibility they may find more remains".

There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse
Senator Frank Walker, Chief Minister of Jersey

Mr Harper told a news conference Jersey police were in close touch with more specialist assistance from the UK.

He said he was now dealing with a "potential major crime inquiry concerning a possible homicide".

"We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there," he said.

He said the search would continue in the coming days, and possibly weeks.

'Deeply distressing'

Senator Frank Walker, Chief Minister of Jersey, said he was horrified and saddened by the discovery.

"It's deeply distressing and a most serious issue for Jersey," he said.

I am frankly very apprehensive about what else they will find
Former Jersey Health Minister Senator Stuart Syvret

However, he added: "I understand the remains [that] have been found go back quite some time.

"There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse."

Former Jersey Health Minister Senator Stuart Syvret urged anyone who had been at Haut de la Garenne to come forward.

His concerns last year about alleged child abuse in Jersey institutions led to an independent review of child care services by Jersey's parliament, the States of Jersey.

Mr Syvret told BBC News: "It's essential those with concerns call it, or get in touch with the police.

"Having spoken to people who were at Haut de la Garenne, this discovery is not surprising.

"I am frankly very apprehensive about what else they will find."

Haut de la Garenne started life in 1867 as the Industrial School, for "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children".

It is now Jersey's Youth Hostel and featured as a police station in the TV series Bergerac.

Why the Leniency for Pedophiles?

2008-02-16T11:56:00.002+01:00

According to data disclosed at this week's Beersheba Conference on Child Welfare, some 2,500 complaints are filed annually in Israel regarding sexual assaults against minors under 14. Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, executive director of the National Council for the Child, paints a darker picture yet, estimating that over the past several years no fewer than 100,000 of this country's children have suffered some degree of sexual molestation.

Most cases never reach the courts and most offenders aren't brought to justice. Yet in those that are, sentences meted out to pedophiles tend to be exceptionally lenient. Even hardcore repeat offenders are hardly supervised after they are released back to society. Legislation adopted to keep track of them remains largely unimplemented.

Studies conducted recently for the council, Kadman reported, indicated that not only do judges sometimes impose ludicrously mild punishments for pedophilia but they often fail to impose even the minimum stipulated by law. Incomprehensibly, punishment for offenses against children tends to be significantly lighter than for offenses against adults. The lightest penalties are reserved for crimes within the family. The greatest leniency appears in plea bargains. While judges sometimes criticize such bargains, they nevertheless (in 99% of the cases, according to Kadman) acquiesce to them. This despite the fact that legislation enacted a decade ago fixed minimum sentences for certain sex crimes.

Moreover, the law demands a clear explanation in cases where the minimum is disregarded. Yet council research found only two cases in the past three years in which judges bothered to account for extra lenient sentencing. One of the cases cited was of a teacher who molested his 13-year-old female student. He was given six months community service and another 14 months' probationary sentence. By law he could have been imprisoned for up to seven years.

But the judges' lapses aren't the only problem. The entire system seems to make a mockery of the law. Some 300 convicted sex offenders, most of them pedophiles, are released from prison each year and, despite existing legislation, aren't supervised. Most are repeat offenders.

Of the 300, two-thirds are judged as "seriously dangerous." A 2006 law which mandated careful evaluation of each sex offender eligible for release, and close supervision following said release, essentially remains on paper only. The cause: budgetary constraints.

Health Ministry psychiatrists complain that a lack of manpower limits evaluations. When these are made, they are completed late, after the offender has been set loose. The ministry reported to the Knesset Law Committee recently that even when evaluations meet deadlines, the prosecution does not apply for court-ordered supervision and closes cases of some dangerous offenders. Thus the authorities have no way of gauging how many menaces they release into the vulnerable population.

Of Israel's currently imprisoned 1,200 sex offenders, some 50 are behind bars for the sixth time or more. About 25 percent are thought likely to strike again, though that is almost certainly an underestimate: the highest recidivism rates are among pedophiles.

Although the 2006 law has yet to be applied, complimentary legislation is being piled on. The Knesset recently approved a bill by Shelly Yacimovich forbidding the employment of sex offender ex-cons in schools and institutions for the disabled. Michael Eitan's pending bill would regulate rehabilitation services for ex-cons, while another legislative initiative, by Eli Aflalo, would set up a nationwide offender register, accessible to members of the public to forewarn them of past offenders in their vicinity.

The latter two bills still have a long legislative route ahead before they are ratified. But what then? A law that decorates our legal codes but isn't put into effect is a dead letter. It fails to protect those most in need, and becomes a demoralizing travesty that further corrodes the citizenry's trust in the system - especially when those who disrespect legal strictures include the judges themselves.

"The Knesset," as Kadman put it, "insisted on minimum sentences because it perceived the existing situation as too lax and as lacking any real deterrent or protection value. But the judiciary seems to be telling the legislature that 'you can stipulate what you wish but we will do as we please.' Judges abhor guidelines."

It is not just the police who are charged with protecting children from sexual predators, but the entire judicial system. If judges do not want more guidelines, they had better do a better job of enforcing the law themselves.

Czech anger at caged beds report

2008-01-17T22:50:00.000+01:00

Czech officials say side rails are safer than strong medicines

A Czech minister has questioned claims that cage-like beds are still being used for children in social care homes a year after being banned.

An undercover BBC team found children kept in high-bar beds in five homes.

Social affairs minister Petr Necas told Czech media the beds were "cots" not cages and "completely normal" if a doctor and guardian agreed to them.

But Council of Europe human rights commissioner Thomas Hammarberg called for a more child-oriented approach.

Mr Necas accused the BBC of "classic journalistic distortion".

He told the Aktualne.cz website that his children were in a cot with bars until they were three years old and "it does not matter whether a client is 20, their mental age makes the difference".

A ministry spokesman, quoted by Czech media, said that the alternative to side rails was increasing the dosage of tranquillisers.

In the ministry's opinion it was felt that strong medicine was far worse.

But Mr Hammarberg told the BBC News website that arguments about the safety of the child were second to the effect on the child's mental state.

"The psychological impact of having such a bed is negative and that's why anyone concerned with the rights of the child would recommend very highly against it."

Inspection team

In the BBC report, a girl with severe mental disabilities is shown in a bed, locked behind bars that rise up six feet from the floor.

Jan Fiala of the Mental Disability Advocacy Centre said that the beds shown were cages and could not be considered cots

"In a cot a child can't climb out, but cots aren't so high that carers cannot reach them," he said.

Martin Zarsky, who drafted the law for the ministry of social affairs, told the BBC that an inspection team would be sent immediately.

The human rights commissioner said the decision to have another look at the care homes in question was a positive step.

"They have to have an overall clear policy that they shouldn't use beds that have a psychological impact of being imprisoned," Mr Hammarberg said.

"Hopefully they'll have a child-rights-oriented approach in the future."

Circumcision 'does not curb sex'

2008-01-07T19:21:00.001+01:00

Charities warn circumcision should not replace condoms in the war on HIV

Circumcision does not reduce sexual satisfaction and so there should be no reservations about using this method as a way to combat HIV, a study says.

Nearly 5,000 Ugandan men were recruited for the study. Half were circumcised, half had yet to undergo surgery.

There was little difference between the two groups when they were asked to rate performance and satisfaction, the journal BJU International reports.

Some studies suggest circumcision can cut male HIV infection by up to 50%.

There are several reasons why circumcision may protect against the virus.

Specific cells in the foreskin may be potential targets for HIV infection, while the skin under the foreskin may become less sensitive and less likely to bleed - reducing risk of infection - following circumcision.

Mixed picture

But despite this, it is thought there is some reluctance to be circumcised over fears that it may impact upon sexual experience.

Previous studies into circumcision and satisfaction have given a mixed picture.

But researchers from the Johns Hopkins University in the US say the size of their study and demographic profile of their participants made it one of the most reliable to date.

"Our study clearly shows that being circumcised did not have an adverse effect on the men who underwent the procedure when we compared them with the men who had not yet received surgery," said Professor Ronald Gray, who led the study.

"Other studies already show that being able to reassure men that the procedure won't affect sexual satisfaction or performance makes them much more likely to be circumcised."

Mixed armoury

While there were very slight differences in rates of sexual satisfaction between the two groups, these were not felt to be clinically significant.

Some 98.4% of the circumcised men reported satisfaction, compared to 99.9% in the control group.

In terms of ability to penetrate, 98.6% of the circumcised group reported no problem, compared with 99.4 of the non-circumcised group.

However marginally more circumcised men - 99.4% - reported that they had no pain during intercourse, compared with 98.8% of the other group.

But campaigning charities warned against using circumcision as the main weapon against HIV, noting that it was far from 100% effective.

Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National Aids Trust, said: "There is a fear that people that have been circumcised will feel they are protected from HIV when they are not.

"Condoms remain the best way of preventing HIV through sexual intercourse.

"It should be noted that research into HIV and circumcision has been very limited in its scope.

"We still need further research into new prevention methods from circumcision to microbicides and vaccines."

______________________

What a ridiculous survey. Anyone who is circumcised has been so from birth so how is either group going to know anything different?

Circumcision causes trauma to the child so there should be every reservation in using this practice at all. And vaccines are highly controversial for a number of reasons. We need to look between the lines here...

Court Mulls Death Penalty for Child Rape

2008-01-05T01:04:00.000+01:00

By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether a state can execute someone convicted of raping a child, one of the few remaining crimes that does not require the death of the victim to result in capital punishment.

43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Kennedy's lawyers say the death penalty for child rape violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The justices were scheduled to hear arguments in the case in April.

The last executions for rape or any other crime that did not include a victim's death were in 1964.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Kennedy's case is the only time a state has sought to execute someone. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the sentence. "Our state legislature and this court have determined this category of aggravated rapist to be among those deserving of the death penalty, and short of first-degree murder, we can think of no other non-homicide crime more deserving," Justice Jeffrey Victory wrote.

Chief Justice Pascal Calogero dissented, saying that with the possible exception of espionage or treason, "the Eighth Amendment precludes capital punishment for any offense that does not involve the death of the victim."

The child rape case is the second capital punishment case from Louisiana this term at the Supreme Court. The justices already are considering whether a prosecutor improperly excluded blacks from a jury and then inflamed the all-white panel with references to the O.J. Simpson Case.

In addition, the court is weighing whether the way Kentucky executes prisoners by lethal injection — procedures similar to those used in three dozen states — violates the Constitution.

Kennedy was convicted in 2003 of raping his stepdaughter at their home in suburban New Orleans. The girl initially told police she was sorting Girl Scout cookies in the garage when two boys assaulted her.

Police arrested Kennedy a couple of weeks after the March 1998 rape, but more than 20 months passed before the girl identified him as her attacker.

His defense attorney at the time argued that blood testing was inconclusive and that the victim was pressured to change her story.

Kennedy's Supreme Court lawyers also pointed out that Kennedy is black and that nearly 90 percent of people executed for rape in the United States were black. "This court should pause before condoning a practice so heavily tinged with the scourge of racism," said Stanford University law professor Jeffrey Fisher, Kennedy's lead lawyer.

The state said the court should turn down the case because Louisiana law is narrowly tailored to apply only to people convicted of raping children younger than 12.

Last month, jurors in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport, sentenced Richard Davis, 35, to death for repeatedly raping a 5-year-old girl. Before their deliberations, local prosecutor Lea Hall told jurors: "Execute this man. Justice has a sword and this sword needs to swing today."

The case being considered by the Supreme Court is Kennedy v. Louisiana, 07-343.

_________________________

Iraq children 'paying high price'

2007-12-21T23:33:00.000+01:00

The violence led to extreme hardship for many children in Iraq

Two million children in Iraq are facing threats including poor nutrition, lack of education, disease and violence, the UN children's agency, Unicef, has said.

Hundreds were killed in violence during 2007, while 1,350 were detained by the authorities, it said in a new report.

Some 25,000 children and their families had to leave their homes each month to seek shelter in other parts of Iraq.

But Unicef said the fall in violence in recent months was opening a window for more international assistance.

Earlier, the top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, told the BBC that the number of violent attacks in Iraq had fallen to its lowest in two-and-a-half years.

According to recent figures, some 536 Iraqis have died in violence so far this month, compared with more than 2,300 in December 2006.

'High price'

In a report entitled "Little Respite for Iraq's Children in 2007", Unicef said Iraqi children continued to pay too high a price for their country's turmoil, and that this year things had got worse.

The report said an average 25,000 children per month were being displaced from their homes as their families fled violence or intimidation. By the end of the year, 75,000 children had resorted to living in camps or temporary shelters.

The disruption led to extreme hardship for many children and eroded access to education and healthcare, Unicef said.

Many of the 220,000 displaced children of primary school age had their education affected in a country where around 760,000 children (17%) were already absent from primary school. Only 28% of 17-year-olds sat their final exams.

Unicef said children in remote and hard-to-reach areas were frequently cut off from healthcare and that only 20% outside the capital, Baghdad, had working sewerage in their community. Access to safe water was also a serious issue.

But the agency said there had been some progress during 2007 - more than 4m children were vaccinated against polio and 3m against measles, and more than 500,000 internal refugees were given medical help, safe water and shelter by relief agencies and local communities.

[ vaccines are not necessarily all they appear to be]

It also said the current fall in violence provided an opportunity to deliver more aid and to get a clearer view of exactly what the conflict had done to Iraq's children.

"Iraqi children are paying far too high a price," said Roger Wright, Unicef's special representative for Iraq.

"While we have been providing as much assistance as possible, a new window of opportunity is opening, which should enable us to reach the most vulnerable with expanded, consistent support. We must act now."Mr Wright stressed that Iraqi children should be the priority for international investment in Iraq as they would be the "foundation for their country's recovery".

Free the Slaves

2007-12-18T22:49:00.000+01:00

Child Rape Camps of San Diego

2007-12-18T13:35:00.000+01:00

The San Diego Child Sex Trafficking Scandal

About the Child Rape Camps of San Diego County, California - A Crime Against Humanity inside the U.S.A.

The articles here below describe one of the largest known child and youth sex trafficking cases in the United States to date. In one of several related cases, hundreds of Mexican girls between 7 and 18 were kidnapped or subjected to false romantic entrapment by organized criminal sex trafficking gangs. Victims were then brought to San Diego County, California. Over a 10 year period these girls were raped by hundreds of men per day in more than 2 dozen home based and agricultural camp based brothels.

A Latina medical doctor employed by a U.S. federal agency provided condoms to the victims for years, and was told by her supervisors not to speak out and organize efforts to rescue the victims. This doctor was ordered under threat of legal action to keep quiet about the mass victimization of children in "rape camps."

When a joint FBI, INS and San Diego Sheriff's raid was finally organized and executed, ten years after local law enforcement first learned about local trafficking, many of the criminal traffickers and johns escaped. The 50 johns and traffickers who were captured were later released when the intimidated child victims refused to accuse their enslavers. Most of the victims were then deported to Mexico without being provided with any victim services.

A number of murdered immigrant teen girls have been found in San Diego, possibly linked to trafficking rings.

The San Diego child sex trafficking case continues to evolve. In June, 2003 one of the key trafficking ringleaders was convicted of a charge that would bring him 18 months in jail. The rural rape camps continue to exist and were filmed by a local TV station (see below).

The San Diego Sex Trafficking Case deserves the full attention of the criminal justice system, social service providers and victim advocates. Previous to the notoriety of this case, anti-trafficking advocates noted that some concerned members of Congress and other decision makers would ask "if 50,000 enslaved persons are trafficked into the U.S. each year, where are they?"

That question still needs to be researched and answered on a national basis. In the present, the San Diego case provides the "smoking gun" that documents the true horror of the Latin America to U.S. trafficking crisis.

The San Diego case represents a large tip of the national trafficking 'iceberg,' and this case must be addressed with aggressive legal zeal. The San Diego child sex trafficking case is a true abomination in the eyes of the creator and in the eyes of the entire the human race!

Failure to deal with this case effectively will send a clear message to traffickers that the U.S. does not care about the lives and mass-rape of the hundreds of 7 to 18 year old girls who have been, and are today, victimized in this international criminal enterprise. To accomplish an end to such trafficking, cross-cultural compassion and an end to anti-immigrant hostility in U.S. society will have to take place. Otherwise, such hostility and apathy will allow traffickers to continue their criminal violence against these victimized women and children with impunity.

End criminal impunity now!

LibertadLatina.org

Modern Day Slavery: Shyima's Story

2007-12-18T12:58:00.000+01:00

Shyima, a 9-year-old Egyptian girl, was sold into virtual slavery and
shipped from Cairo to work at this home in California.
(ABC News/ Immigration & Customs Enforcement)

A beautiful girl with a Cinderella story -- this time it's not a fairy tale, but a young woman's real-life struggle to escape poverty and servitude. Shyima, now 17 years-old, once worked as a slave in an American household.

It was a house just like any other in the wealthy Northwood district of Irvine, California. But Shyima worked in that home as a secret servant, often locked inside, for three years. She labored up to twenty hours a day without pay, trapped in a life that amounted to slavery.

"I [could do] nothing but…pray to God. That's about it," Shyima said.

Shyima grew up in Egypt, one of twelve children living in a destitute section of Alexandria. When she was only nine, Shyima's mother sent her away from home so she could work.

But what Shyima did not know was that her parents had essentially sold her into slavery. A contract between her parents and Nassar Ibrahim, a 51-year-old entrepreneur, stated that Shyima would work for his family of seven for the next ten years. In exchange, Nasser would pay Shyima's parents a minimal monthly fee. She would receive no money for her work.

'A Classic Case'

"I thought, 'This is a classic case,'" said Kevin Bales, who leads a human rights organization called Free the Slaves (http://www.freetheslaves.net/). "It has virtually every single marker for the enslavement of a young girl under domestic service."

According to Bales, there are about 27 million people enslaved around the world today. He estimates 15,000 slaves are brought into the U.S. each year.

Shyima became one of them when the Ibrahims decided to relocate to Irvine, California in August of 2000. In Shyima's case, the human trafficking was easy to hide. A passport picture and a false visa were all it took. Shyima's paperwork claimed she was "a student," "on vacation," and she would be back in "one month."

Once in the United States, the Ibrahims moved into an upscale home in a gated community. Instead of living in the luxurious house with the family, however, the Ibrahims forced Shyima to live alone in a small, dirty room in the garage. She slept on a mattress with no heating or air conditioning and washed her clothes in a bucket. She worked seven days a week, washing the dishes, doing laundry, and scrubbing the kitchen floors until late at night.

"When the whole family was there it was really busy all the time. You didn't get much sleep," Shyima explained. "[I would] just wake up and go do what I was told to do -- like working, clean up the rooms or bathrooms, doing the dishes."

Slavery, Solitude, Salvation

Shyima was treated as a second-class citizen in the Ibrahim household. She was not allowed to socialize with the family or leave the house. Because she was not allowed to go to school, she did not know how to read, write, or speak English.

At age 11, Shyima had been not only forced into slavery, but also into a life of solitude. The Ibrahims controlled Shyima by intensifying her fears, telling her that her family in Egypt would be hurt or the police would beat her if she were to run away. Neighbors believed she was a cousin of the Ibrahim family, never suspecting the truth.

On April 9, 2002, 16 months after Shyima first arrived at the Ibrahim household, someone called in an anonymous tip. Detective Tracy Jacobson followed up with a visit to the house. Jacobson found a very frightened Shyima and brought her to a protective home for abused children.

"I believe she thought she was being arrested," Jacobson said. "Later on, I learned that Shyima had been told if she went outside that the police would arrest her and take her to jail."

At first she was scared, and only repeated what the Ibrahims had instructed her to say if she were ever discovered. But eventually, she confided to Jacobson about her life as a slave

Happily Ever After?

On the same day Jacobson freed Shyima, Nasser Ibrahim was arrested at his home. Nearly five years later Nasser and his wife Amal pleaded guilty to two federal slavery charges: conspiracy and harboring an illegal alien. Nasser was sentenced to three years in prison, and Amal was sentenced to 22 months.

Shyima was placed in foster care and taken in by Chuck and Jenny Hall, who invited her into their home, adopted her, and became the loving family she never had.

Shyima now attends school and speaks English. Once a hidden slave, she is now a typical American teenager: She recently got her driver's license, runs track at school, and attended the senior prom this past spring.

Shyima's escape from her life as a servant is the happily ever after many hidden slaves in America never get.

World 'must do more' for children (there's a surprise...)

2007-12-10T18:08:00.000+01:00

Children go hungry most often in South Asia

This report from the BBC on UNICEF is the same old tired denials of World realities. If mainstream journalists did their job instead rehashing the same old paradigm-cliches based on out-dated information and lazy research we would get to the real causes of disgusting state of the world's children.

The ONLY way the world is going to be even slightly safer for children is if the controls presently binding all mainstream media outlets - including the BBC - are understood and talked about. Until we understand that the propaganda and agendas associated with the incredibly lucrative trade in narcotics, human trafficking and weapons and how governments and their agencies are embroiled in such activities we will NEVER reach a more balanced state of affairs. Stories like the following amount to nothing more than platitudes.

Ask yourself who benefits and then read POLITICAL PONEROLOGY (link also on side bar) How about we go to the CORE of the world's problems for a change? How about we stop believing all the endless bullshit that passes for Journalism?

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More must be done more quickly to make the world fit for children by 2015, the UN children's agency, Unicef, has said.

In a report it noted considerable strides had been made to meet pledges in education and areas of health care.

But it stressed that "much more must be done" in order to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline.

The report identified areas for urgent action as maternal mortality, HIV prevention and pneumonia, which kills more children than any other illness.

The UN agreed a set of Millennium Development Goals in 2000 to improve standards in key areas such as education, employment and health care by 2015.

'Making a difference'

Unicef said its sixth Progress for Children report since 2004 was the most comprehensive to date.

It noted "some remarkable progress" in the under-five child mortality rate, which had fallen by 60% since 1960 to 9.7 million.

And there were "major improvements" in measles immunisation, breastfeeding rates, malaria prevention and supplements of vitamin A, which can help prevent common illnesses.

"Overall, [the report's] findings reinforce Unicef's conviction that the combined efforts of governments, international organisations, civil society, local communities and the private sector are making a difference and delivering results for children," Ann M Veneman, Unicef's executive director, said.

"Yet it also reveals that much more must be done. The 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals is fast approaching.

"We need to accelerate progress towards these goals and approach them with a common sense of urgency."

'No cause for celebration'

The Unicef report said more than 1.2 billion people had gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2004.

It said that between 1996 and 2004 rates of early and exclusive breastfeeding had increased in many countries. There had been a jump of 20% in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Unicef estimates that breastfeeding could stop 13% of all under-five deaths in developing countries.

The report said many malaria-affected countries had seen use of insecticide-treated nets triple, saving many children's lives.

And access to antiretroviral drugs to reduce HIV/Aids infection rates in mothers and children had risen significantly.

There had also been progress in education, gender equality and child protection, the report said.

But it said some statistics gave "no cause for celebration".

"An alarming number of children under five - 143 million - still suffer under-nutrition, with more than half of them in South Asia."

Treatment for major childhood diseases such as pneumonia and malaria had also "been slow to expand".

More than 500,000 women still die every year during pregnancy and childbirth, about half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.

And much more needed to be done to improve basic sanitation and prevent HIV/Aids.