Sep 25, 2020 | News
On 24 September 2020, the ICJ held a webinar in collaboration with the Lesotho National Federation of Organisations of the Disabled on the right to education for children with disabilities.
Presenters and participants included representatives from civil society organizations, teachers’ unions, teachers and the Lesotho Department of Education.
“Children with disabilities have a right to access to education on an equal basis with all other children. The COVID-19 pandemic must not hamper the Lesotho governments efforts to ensure access to inclusive education for all children,” said Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, ICJ’s Africa Director.
Participants highlighted accessibility-related problems faced by learners with disabilities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some examples include:
- Ordinary masks necessary to combat the spread of COVID-19 inhibit communication for learners with hearing disabilities who often communication in part by lip-reading. These require access to face visors and/or transparent masks. Some deaf students also had difficulty in understanding the COVID-19 pandemic and virus, despite efforts to explain it to them.
- Blind learners need more access to hand sanitizer as they need to touch their surroundings for mobility. This also makes social distancing more difficult for them.
- Teachers have trouble understanding how to comply with social distancing measures while assisting learners experiencing epileptic seizures.
- Many learners with disabilities have stayed at home during the pandemic, not understanding why they were not at school.
- Many children with disabilities are rendered more vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation as they observe stay at home rules.
A representative of the Department of Education explained various measures which government had put in place to ensure that these obstacles could be overcome so that learners with disabilities could enjoy their right to education in the context of COVID-19. Learners’ health and safety would also remain a priority.
The Department noted the delays in the implementation of its inclusive education policy as a result of a lack of funding as government resources are diverted to COVID-19 responses.
The need for compliance with Lesotho’s global and regional international human rights obligations was also highlighted with participants agreeing about the importance of ensuring that there is “strength in numbers” in advocacy efforts toward the realization of children with disabilities’ right to education.
“Ensuring the right to education of persons with disabilities does not imply sacrificing and compromising their right to health. All human rights are interdependent and Lesotho should be guided by all of its human rights obligations as it continues to implement its domestic inclusive education policy during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ramjathan-Keogh added.
Background
Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa require States parties to ensure that their education systems are inclusive and fully realize the right to education of all children with disabilities. The normative content of Article 24 of the CRPD and corresponding obligations of member States are expanded on in the General Comment No 4 of the Committee on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
For more information on the impact of COVID-19 on access to education, find the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education’s report here.
Contact
Nokukhanya (Khanyo) Farisè, Legal Adviser (Africa Regional Programme), e: nokukhanya.farise(a)icj.org
Tanveer Jeewa, Communications Officer (Africa Regional Programme), e: tanveer.jeewa(a)icj.org
Jan 18, 2019 | News
A legal challenge to the violations of migrant children’s social rights on mainland Greece and its North Eastern Aegean islands has been lodged by the ICJ and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) before a European body specialized in the protection of social rights at the European level.
The legal action, taken in the form of a collective complaint to the European Committee on Social Rights, catalogues the numerous instances of Greece failing its child care and protection obligations towards migrant children by leaving them in conditions of squalor, insecurity and violence.
The complaint to the Committee, an impartial body which oversees the protection of certain economic and social rights by assessing the conformity of domestic law and practice with the European Social Charter, has been supported by the Greek Council for Refugees and includes reports from Médecins Sans Frontières on health and living conditions of migrant children in Lesvos.
Amongst the most blatant infringements of migrant children’s rights described in the complaint has been the systematic and ongoing absence of sufficient accommodation facilities and the lack of an effective guardianship system for unaccompanied children in Greece, exposing them to significant protection risks, including homelessness and placement in detention.
Such severe deficiencies in basic care facilities has led to dire living conditions which deprive children of their most fundamental rights.
Overcrowded, insalubrious and dangerous conditions prevail most obviously on the North Eastern Aegean islands where the standards of human dignity and special protection accorded to children by virtue of their particular status under international human rights law are repeatedly violated.
The complaint notes that the dearth in basic care facilities for migrants in Greece extends to medical services, particularly on the islands, which has a serious knock-on effect on hygiene, sanitation and substantive physical and mental health care and treatment for children.
In addition, mixed living arrangements, limited, if not non-existent security patrols and deficient guardianship systems have led to numerous reports of sexual abuse, violent assaults, harassment and humiliation of migrant children in camps on the Greek islands.
The consequences of the conditions listed in the complaint have been, in certain locations, children self-harming and even attempting suicide.
“Greece’s deference to the violations being committed against migrant children on its territory has gone on for far too long without any foreseeable improvement on the horizon.
Transfers of migrant children and vulnerable persons from the islands to the mainland are paralysed by a shortage of places on the mainland and administrative encumbrances.
All the while, children are left to languish in a forgotten environment of impoverishment and destitution.
This legal challenge to Greece’s indifference will hopefully pave the way for institutional condemnation and for substantive change in the protection of society’s most vulnerable” says Amanda Taylor, Senior EDAL Coordinator at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.
“As signatory of the European Social Charter, Greece is under an international obligation to ensure that migrant children in its jurisdiction have access to basic economic and social rights. Particularly in the case of migrant children, who find themselves in a vulnerable situation, remaining even for a short period of time in such terrible conditions as currently exist in Greece, is likely to result in irreparable harm and injury and have a detrimental and non-reversible impact on their development,” said Karolína Babická, Legal Adviser for Europe and Central Asia with the ICJ.
“This complaint refers to two of the most pressing protection issues in Greece; the protection of unaccompanied minors and the conditions prevailing on the Greek islands after the launch of the EU-Turkey Statement, where migrant children are stranded. In December 2018, almost two out of three unaccompanied children in Greece were deprived of a place in long-term accommodation facility for minors. At the same time, 30% of the 14,600 persons remaining on the Greek islands were children. Thus, the procedure initiated before the European Committee of Social Rights can significantly contribute to guaranteeing the respect of migrant children’s rights in Greece,” said Alexandros Konstantinou, member of the Legal Unit of the Greek Council for Refugees.
The complaint awaits examination and determination by the European Committee on Social Rights.
As part of the complaint and in order to immediately alleviate the situation which migrant children face in Greece, ECRE and ICJ have urgently requested Greece to remove migrant children from unsuitable and overcrowded camps on the islands; to provide them with adequate and age-appropriate facilities, sufficient food, water and medical care, and with effective and competent guardians; and to remove unaccompanied migrant children from detention and place them in tailored accommodation suitable for their age.
Read the full complaint here.
Apr 16, 2018 | Advocacy, News, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ and ECRE have presented today to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants a submission on access to justice for migrants in Europe.
The submission is an input for the forthcoming report of the UN Special Rapporteur on access to justice for migrants to the UN General Assembly.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) have provided a brief overview of aspects of access to justice for migrants, with a particular focus on asylum seekers and migrant children, in European countries.
The issues dealt with include:
- obstructions to access to justice in relation to access to the territory;
- the undue use of national security exceptions to weaken access to justice in immigration procedures;
- concerns with access to justice in expulsion and detention procedures;
- specific obstacles to access to justice for asylum seekers, including when appealing the rejection of their claims by first instance asylum authorities before a judicial or administrative appeal body;
- specific obstacles to access to justice for undocumented minors.
ICJECRE-NonLegalSubmission-SRMigrants-Access2JusticeEurope4Migrants-2018-ENG (download the submission)
Feb 28, 2018 | Uncategorized
The ICJ together with 22 civil society organisations and UN agencies call on EU decision makers in a joint statement not to use coercion against children in order to obtain fingerprints and other biometric data.
The new EURODAC proposal currently being considered by the European Commission, Council and Parliament expands the purpose of the current database of asylum applicants to facilitate the identification of “irregularly staying third country nationals” through the use of biometric data and it lowers the age at which a child must be registered from 14 to six.
The European institutions are discussing allowing national authorities to use coercion to obtain fingerprints and facial images of children.
The identification and registration of children contributes to their protection within and across borders.
This must be done in a child-sensitive and child protective manner and the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in such matters, in accordance with Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Coercion of children in any manner or form in the context of migration related procedures, violates children’s rights, which EU Member States committed to respect and uphold.
All children, no matter their age, should be exempted from all forms of coercion in the EURODAC Regulation, in full compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) states that every person below the age of eighteen years is a child (art. 1).
States Parties should take all appropriate measures to protect children from all forms of physical or mental violence (art. 19.1) and no child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily (art. 37).
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has affirmed that “No violence against children is justifiable; all violence against children is preventable”, where violence includes both physical and mental violence (General comment No. 13).
It has equally clarified: “that the detention of any child because of their or their parent’s migration status constitutes a child rights violation and contravenes the principle of the best interests of the child”.
Both the UN CRC and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights state that child’s best interests must be a primary consideration in all actions relating to children (art. 3 UN CRC, art. 24.2 EU Charter).
Jan 11, 2018 | Advocacy, Cases, Legal submissions
The ICJ responded today to the observations of the Czech Government on the merits of the collective complaint brought against it earlier last year by the ICJ and Forum for Human Rights.
The complaint to the European Committee of Social Rights (ICJ v. the Czech Republic, No. 148/2017) argues that the Czech Republic fails to ensure equal legal protection and participation of children below the age of criminal responsibility in the pre-trial stage of juvenile justice procedures.
The ICJ and Forum for Human Rights reinforced the complaint, relying on Article 17 of the Social Charter, in relation to the State party’s failure to ensure that children below the age of criminal responsibility but recognised as having infringed the penal law are treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child’s respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child’s age and the desirability of promoting the child’s reintegration and the child’s assuming a constructive role in society.
Europe-ECSR-ICJvCzechRepublic-ChildrenJustice-ICJresponse1-2018-ENG (download the ICJ reply)
