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	Nigeria: I kept telling the team “it’s all about food” by Helle Poulsen-Dobbyns Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors without Borders   11 November 2016   Interview with Helle Poulsen-Dobbyns, MSF programme coordinator in Maiduguri, Nigeria   Helle Poulsen-Dobbyns has just returned from Maiduguri – the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria – where she was programme coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). She explains how malnourished children were flooding into MSF medical facilities in a region affected by the conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian army.   What is the situation in Maiduguri?   Our teams were confronted with huge numbers of acutely malnourished children and an increasing number of malaria cases. We didn’t expect this in the capital, where there is no conflict and aid organisations do have access to the population.   In some locations, malnutrition rates were as high as those recorded in the conflict zones. We had lots of both manifestations of severe acute malnutrition: severe marasmus, or wasting, and kids with Kwashiorkor (swellings of fluid, known as oedema, occurring on the child’s ankles, feet and belly ), but so bad that their skin developed boil-like eruptions, as if they had suffered burns. When we conducted food distribution in a camp, it was the first food these 8,000 people had received in four months.   What were the main difficulties?   Our triage was overwhelmed by the number of children under five years of age; they are the most vulnerable. But we also experienced the deaths of too many older children. They were victims of the effect of severe malaria on bodies already weakened by malnutrition, and were not able to fight off disease. That’s why I kept telling the team “it’s all about food”.   To have a targeted impact, we established criteria for who should receive the food. For example, for children discharged from the inpatient therapeutic feeding centre (ITFC), we give their mothers a family ration of one month’s food supply so that that their children wouldn’t succumb to severe acute malnutrition again. We also do a targeted food distribution to families with six or more children and with at least one child under five. This is not replacing the food distribution that would be needed for the internally displaced people living in camps or in the community.   To complicate things, 90 per cent of the displaced people are hosted by communities in Maiduguri in poor conditions, with inadequate sanitation and hygiene. It’s making it harder to reach them and such conditions are like an incubator, spreading disease.   How is MSF responding to the emergency?   To deal with the influx of patients, we first increased our capacity to manage them by recruiting new staff, who are trained by our existing staff while receiving and treating a huge number of new emergency cases.   Then we worked on the management of our medical facilities. For example, in our Maimusari clinic, we have nurses triaging within the patient queues, to ensure prompt identification, which would then allow us to give the necessary care to the most severe cases: the children were so sick we would otherwise have risked them dying while waiting to be seen.   We maintain a comprehensive intervention in the camps in Maiduguri and outside through a four-day distribution campaign of food and non-food items like mosquito nets, jerry cans, mats, blankets and soap. We ran a mobile clinic simultaneously, doing medical screening as well as treating systematically, and giving preventive treatment like measles vaccination and seasonal malaria prophylaxis.   What are your main concerns for the future?   The rainy season has been short, with little rains, so it created the optimum conditions for mosquitos to develop in small water pools. When the hot season comes, the whole population will still be weakened by malnutrition as well as exposed to the massive risk of malaria, exacerbated by the crowded conditions.   People have missed the rain and therefore the planting season. Their villages have been destroyed, livestock stolen, fields and crops looted and torched. They will need as much, if not more, support in the Maiduguri camps and community.   There are some people returning and some businesses and shop merchants bring a sense of normalcy, but this crisis is still unfolding. And, there must be a comprehensive and collaborative approach, including food distribution by aid agencies and authorities.   http://www.savethechildren.net/article/two-hundred-children-could-die-every-day-north-east-nigeria-hunger-crisis Visit the related web page
	Give priority attention to children who have been left behind by UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, agencies   Statement by the UN Child Rights Experts for Universal Children''s Day marking the 27th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child   As the Convention on the Rights of the Child commemorates its 27th anniversary, UN child rights experts urge Governments in all regions to spare no efforts to ensure universal implementation of the most widely ratified human rights instrument.   Since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, much progress has been made in the protection of children’s rights. This progress has been achieved in part because the Convention has become a truly global instrument guiding the enactment of legislation, the design and enforcement of public policies and the setup of institutions to secure the protection of children’s rights. Moreover, the Convention has been reinforced by the adoption of three Optional Protocols, namely on the involvement of children in armed conflict, on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, and on a communications procedure.   “Despite this significant progress, important challenges compromise the universal realization of children’s rights,” the experts highlighted.   “It is high time to move from universal ratification to universal implementation and to give priority attention to children who have been left behind - especially those in vulnerable situations such as girls, children with disabilities, children living in poverty, children belonging to minorities and indigenous groups, and child victims of violence, conflict and crime,” they added.   The principles and provisions of the Convention are as relevant as ever. They constitute a crucial reference for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda and for the safeguarding of children’s rights in the face of humanitarian and financial crises and other pressing concerns, including the risks associated with the use of information and communication technologies and the impact of climate change and environmental deterioration.   “As we commemorate the 27th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced to abandon their homes. More than half of the refugee population are children, often pressed to flee their countries to escape unspeakable acts of violence, and embarking on a perilous journey of uncertainty and fear in the hope of finding a place of safety where life can be given a chance.   These pressing protection concerns must be addressed with a deep sense of urgency and as a shared responsibility,” the experts highlighted.   2016 also marks the 20th anniversary the UN Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children and the 10th anniversary of the UN Study on Violence against Children. These ground-breaking studies have shown how the Convention on the Rights of the Child can help shape an action-oriented policy agenda, ignite policy commitments, and support tangible implementation and monitoring efforts, while also mobilizing global advocacy and support to prevent and address serious violations of children’s rights.   Building upon this important process, the United Nations is now embarking on the development of a third landmark initiative: an in-depth Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, called for by the General Assembly. Children deprived of liberty are amongst the most vulnerable, invisible and forgotten in societies around the globe.   Held in closed institutions, psychiatric centres or adult prisons, often awaiting trial for long periods of time and enduring inhumane conditions, these children often lack genuine opportunities to access justice and challenge the legality of their detention, and to benefit from education and vocational training, necessary health services and long-lasting social reintegration.   “As the implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda moves forward, these children have been left behind. The global study provides a unique opportunity to promote the safeguarding of their rights and create opportunities for their fullest development. We welcome the designation of Manfred Nowak as the independent expert who will lead the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, and express our strong commitment to collaborate closely in the steps ahead. We call on Member States and all stakeholders to support this crucial process".   Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child   Over the years, the optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child have been widely ratified and become a decisive reference to safeguard the protection of children’s rights.   The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict is now in force in 166 countries, having been most recently ratified by Pakistan. States parties have committed to ban the compulsory recruitment of children under 18 in armed forces and to ensure that those under the age of 18 do not take part in hostilities.   The Optional Protocol on the sale children, child prostitution and child pornography provides detailed guidance to States for the prevention, prohibition and criminalization of the sale and all forms of sexual exploitation of children, as well as to fight impunity for those offences within and across borders, ensuring accountability of perpetrators and redress for child victims. The Protocol is in force in 173 States and nearing universal ratification.   The Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure foresees a system of individual and State’s complaints before the Committee on the Rights of the Child to address the violations of children’s rights, as well as a mechanism of inquiry that the Committee can initiate to investigate grave and systematic violations of the rights of child. This protocol has been ratified by 29 states and signed by 50.   “On Universal Children’s Day, we call upon all states which have not yet done so, to take steps towards the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and of its three optional protocols,” the experts urged.   * Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Marta Santos Pais, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children; Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict; Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. http://bit.ly/1fVlqsS   Dec. 2016   Legal reform urgently needed to protect children from online sexual exploitation. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)   Technology has fuelled a surge in the buying and selling of children online for sexual abuse with advertising a child on the internet as "easy as booking an airfare", campaigners told an anti-slavery conference in London.   Lawyer Carol Robles-Roman, who was deputy mayor for legal affairs to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said legal reform was urgently needed to protect children from online sexual exploitation.   The International Justice Mission (IJM), an anti-slavery organization, this week launched a campaign to tackle the "horrific crime" of cybersex trafficking that involves the sexual abuse of children in front of a live webcam.   Michael Moran, assistant director of human trafficking and child exploitation at global police cooperation agency Interpol, said it was shocking that many children used in online abuse are so young they cannot yet speak. Many are sold by their families.   "About 90 percent of this child abuse takes place in the family home," Moran told Trust Women, an annual trafficking and women''s rights conference run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.   Although there is no data to indicate the scale of the problem globally, law enforcement and other agencies in various countries are reporting that numbers are on the rise with technological advances making it hard to track down the buyers.   The United Nations children''s agency UNICEF estimates 1.8 million children are trafficked into the sex trade every year - but this does not include cybersex trafficking.   The IJM said in a statement that the Philippines national police receive well over 2,000 referrals a month of potential online exploitation of Filipino children.   The organisation said this was made possible by greater than ever connectivity to the internet with people in North America or Europe paying as little as $20 for a "show".   The head of the Australian Federal Police recently told local reporters they received about 4,500 referrals of child exploitation material in 2014 but this jumped to 11,000 in 2015.   In the United States, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported a 98 percent rise in reports of suspected child sex trafficking in the past five years, much of it online.   Robles-Roman, now CEO of Legal Momentum, which fights for the legal rights of women, said laws must keep up with technology and ensure children can be protected in an increasingly digital world.   "How can it be legal to advertise children for sex online? I''m here to tell you it is as easy as booking an airfare online," she told Trust Women.   Robles-Roman said a film to be released in the United States next year, "I am Jane Doe", would highlight the issue by focusing on the real-life case of Backpage.com, the second-largest U.S. online classified ad service after Craigslist.   Backpage.com was accused of knowingly profiting from the commercial sexual exploitation of children with a case filed by three women who were sold on Backpage.com from the age of 15.   The case was heard in the District Court in Boston but was dismissed by a judge who held that Backpage was protected under the federal law, the Communications Decency Act. The decision was later upheld by the Court of Appeals, she said.   The controversy over Backpage.com is at the centre of a continuing debate over how much liability tech companies should face for user-generated content posted on their platforms.   Robles-Roman said it was inconceivable that a law whose clear intent was to protect children from harmful materials can continue to be used to give blanket immunity to website operators that provide an online marketplace for paedophiles.   "We urgently need change to laws to protect children in this digital age," she said.   http://tmsnrt.rs/2ldQHQ3 http://www.ijm.org/   22 Nov 2016   Children as young as 9 could be jailed under a proposed new law in the Philippines. (Plan International, agencies)   Following a proposal from the Government of the Philippines to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9, Plan International and partners have launched the campaign #ChildrenNotCriminals.   Children as young as 9 could be jailed under a proposed new law in the Philippines. In response, the #ChildrenNotCriminals campaign has been launched by Plan International and partners to advocate for the government to focus on prevention, education, and rehabilitation for child offenders. It also warns that punishing children as adults will have long-lasting impacts on their lives.   Although children will be most affected, national data shows that almost 98% of reported crimes in the country are committed by adults. In addition, according to the Council of Welfare for children, the majority of children in conflict with the law in the Philippines are between 14 and 17.   “We are talking about children, not hardened criminals. They are still developing emotionally and socially, and are born into family circumstances beyond their control. We must support these children, not turn our backs on them,” said Ernesto Almocera, Plan International Philippines Communications and Advocacy Manager.   Research by the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council shows that the majority of these children come from families with poor socio-economic backgrounds and have often experienced domestic violence.   “Instead of putting them in jail, we should address the root causes of juvenile offending. We will not be able to help children if we fail to address the underlying factors that force them to commit crimes in order to survive,” said Almocera.   The current age of criminal responsibility in the Philippines is 15, following landmark legislation that created a separate justice system for children based on the principles of restoration and rehabilitation.   Through the #ChildrenNotCriminals campaign, Plan International and partners are urging the Government of the Philippines to strengthen this legislation and maintain the current minimum age of criminal responsibility.   As of September 2016, only 35 of the 114 youth care facilities mandated by law are operational. This could result in more children being put in detention facilities with adult criminals. “The problem is not age but the weak implementation of the law,” says Almocera.   The campaign also urges proponents of the bill to provide evidence justifying lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility. “Why lower the age of criminal responsibility to 9 or 12 if there is little evidence that children are threats to society?” says Almocera. http://bit.ly/2g1kOHb Visit the related web page
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