Disproportionate Removal of Aboriginal Children from Families in Western Australia
The 86-page report, “‘All I Know Is I Want Them Home’: Disproportionate Removal of Aboriginal Children from Families in Western Australia,” describes how authorities in the state of Western Australia have been quick to remove children from Aboriginal mothers fleeing domestic violence and from Aboriginal parents without adequate housing, rather than providing appropriate services to address domestic violence and homelessness. Western Australia has the highest rate of overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care of any state or territory in Australia, and Aboriginal children are more than 20 times more likely to be living in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous children.
The Links between Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia
Sexual abuse of girls in Zambia fuels the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the strikingly higher HIV prevalence among girls than boys, Human Rights Watch said today. Concerted national and international efforts to protect the rights of girls and young women are key to curbing the AIDS epidemic’s destructive course.
The global scandal of violence against children is a horror story too often untold. With malice and clear intent, violence is used against the members of society least able to protect themselves—children in school, in orphanages, on the street, in refugee camps and war zones, in detention, and in fields and factories.
Every recognized country in the world, except for the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia, has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, pledging to uphold its protections for children. Today the convention stands as the single most widely ratified treaty in existence.
Police Abuse and Detention of Street Children in Kenya
In addition to the hazards of living on the streets, street children in Kenya are subject to frequent beatings, extortion, and sexual abuse by police. In violation of international law, they are rounded up and held for days or weeks in police lockups under deplorable physical conditions, commingled with adults and often beaten.
The publication of Death By Default on January 7, 1996 was followed by several weeks of intense coverage of the report by the international news media.
A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China’s State Orphanages
China’s claim to guarantee the “right to subsistence” conceals a secret world of starvation, disease, and unnatural death a world into which thousands of Chinese citizens disappear each year.
Shortly after Nicolar Ceauscu was overthrown on December 22, 1989, the world was exposed for the first time to the shocking images of Romania's orphans, expecially its handicapped children and babies with AIDS.
