Rights of the Child Can Neither Be Delayed Nor Bent on Any Excuse!
20 November 2020
While the Convention on the Rights of the Child maintains its status as the most commonly adopted human rights document worldwide, violations of the rights of children are still being committed all over the world on the 31st anniversary of the adoption of the convention.
The COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the world by the storm has been negatively affecting children’s living routines as well. Children have long been kept in confined spaces in a way inconsistent with their natures. The fact that acts of violence escalate in enclosed spaces has re-emerged in the 27.8% increase in cases of violence against women and children during the pandemic.
According to findings put forth in reports by the World Health Organization, it was again children who were the most affected by the pandemic although COVID-19 mortality rates remained quite low for them.
Distance learning, which has been put into practice due to the closure of schools within the scope of measures taken in response to the pandemic, has also rendered the problems of the education system more visible. A great majority of children have been deprived of their right to education due to such reasons as lack of access to the Internet, of computers, tablets, or mobile phones or of appropriate time and space. Participation to online courses offered through the Education Information Network (Eğitim Bilişim Ağı –EBA) in Turkey stayed as low as 15-20% due to the above-mentioned reasons. The right to education, which is indeed a constitutional right, has been rendered inaccessible.
In İstanbul 8-year-old Çınar Mert went up the roof with his father to install Internet connection to access EBA. He lost his life as he slipped and fell from the fourth floor.
Child workers in the agricultural sector went on working during the pandemic. While the Minister of National Education, who is responsible for making sure children enjoy their right to education, was contended with taking photos with child laborers working in the fields and sharing these on social media, 15-year-old seasonal agricultural worker, Ayşe Daş, lost her life as the minibus carrying workers toppled in an accident.
The Enforcement Law that went into effect in response to the COVID-19 pandemic did not cover children in prisons directly. Authorities have not issued information about children released upon reductions in their sentences. Authorities running children’s prisons have not released any kind of sufficient information either. Further, authorities have not been sharing information on the number of children held in prisons with the public.
During the curfews in May, declared within the scope of pandemic measures, a police officer went after children playing in the yard of an apartment compound in Nusaybin by firing into the air. The officer in question was subsequently suspended from duty as a video of the incident was shared with the public.
A specialized sergeant attempted to sexually assault a 13-year-old girl in Şırnak in July. The sexual offender specialized sergeant was apprehended by people in the neighborhood upon hearing the child scream.
A bill that granted impunity to perpetrators of abuse through marriage was shelved upon receiving much pressure from children’s rights and women’s organizations.
27 children lost their lives in the 30 October earthquake in İzmir, while numerous children were injured or suffered the loss of a parent. The images and identity information of children as they were rescued from under the rubbles were released with utter disregard for their rights. Children were neglected and abused during this traumatizing process rather than being protected.
It is not the pandemic that is responsible for all these violations of children’s rights, but the state of Turkey that does not have a holistic policy to protect children and fails to undertake its responsibilities set forth in international conventions it is a party to.
İHD, therefore, invites the Turkish State to undertake its responsibilities within the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it had ratified in1995, and to implement the following recommendations without delay:
- Under Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to provide all kinds of infrastructure necessary to grant equal opportunity in education for each and every child;
- To make support networks that children subjected to violence can have easy access prevalent;
- To release data on the number of children held in prisons and to immediately release all children in prisons;
- To provide free access to education and healthcare to working children;
- To make sure that the bill granting impunity in cases of child abuse through marriage is cancelled in a way so as not to be put into the agenda again;
- To raise marriage age to over 18 unconditionally, which has been prescribed by the Civil Code as 17 with familial consent and as 16 by a court ruling;
- To eradicate the culture of impunity by having regard to the best interests of the child within the scope of criminal offenses against children;
- To repeal its reservations on Articles 17, 29, and 30 of the Convention in order to grant children the right to education in their own languages;
- To establish an applicable and holistic child protection policy by cooperating with children’s rights organizations.
İHD will persistently and tenaciously remind Turkey of its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it signed, ratified and put into effect but has not been undertaking its provisions, and demand their implementation.
Because rights of the child can neither be delayed nor bent on any excuse!
Human Rights Association
Children’s Rights Commission