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VI. Situation at La Esperanza and Arinaga Emergency Centers

La Esperanza center on Tenerife and Arinaga center on Gran Canaria are the two biggest emergency centers in the Canary Islands and were both opened in summer 2006. La Esperanza accommodated almost 200 children at the time of our visit, and Arinaga 134 children. The other two emergency centres are Tegueste (on Tenerife), which we also visited, and Arucas (on Gran Canaria).

1. La Esperanza Center

Infrastructure

The emergency center La Esperanza is a former juvenile detention facility that was closed by judicial order in mid-2005 for its failure to meet security standards.¹⁵⁸ The center is made up of three sections: two wings in the main building and one encampment. Two different directors are in charge, one overseeing wing one and the other overseeing wing two and the encampment section.

The center is located at 950 meters above sea level, in a secluded area surrounded by forests on the slope of Mount Teide, far from residential neighborhoods, and subject to very low temperatures in wintertime.¹⁵⁹ Seventeen-year old Jean-Marie N. summarized the location in the following words: “I am not happy here and I feel very isolated. We don’t even see a car passing by… I cannot understand how I am supposed to integrate in such a place.”¹⁶⁰

The section of wing one in use had a maximum capacity of 35 children as a juvenile detention center. In January 2007 it accommodated 89 migrant children.¹⁶¹ Wing two held 76 children in nine rooms. The staff member who accompanied us on our tour of the second wing could not tell us how many children it had been designed to hold, but the rated capacity would not have taken into account the fact that some parts of the wing were not in use.

More generally, the infrastructure in wing two was markedly worse than in wing one. The entrance to wing two is through a large, unused foyer littered with broken chairs, the ceiling stained from leaks and paint peeling off the walls.  Walking through the foyer and up the stairs, we passed a set of cell doors blackened from smoke, with scorch marks on the wall around it. The staff member accompanying us told us that the cell was an unused remnant of the time when the facility was a detention center; he said that the fire had happened before the facility was converted to its current use. “We had to open this part in two days, so we did what we could,” he explained.¹⁶² 

Lakh S., age 17, provided us with details that indicate that also no substantial renovation works were carried out in wing one prior to its opening as a residential section for migrant children:

In the beginning when we arrived we had to clean the center. When someone from outside came to visit we were told to stop cleaning so that the visitor wouldn’t see that we were put to work.… When we arrived at La Esperanza we were told that this was a prison and therefore normal that it smelled of urine and cigarettes.¹⁶³

Rooms in both wings are about 18 square meters, bare, and furnished with bunk beds (for up to eight children in wing one, for eight or more in wing two). There were no storage places in the rooms where children can keep their belongings safely, other than in suitcases under their beds (the closets in wing one had broken locks). There are no desks that would enable children to study privately.

The kitchen remains unequipped and no food is prepared in the center. The meals are brought to the center by catering services twice daily (see also below, Section VII.2). There are no utensils to prepare hot beverages or to heat milk for breakfast. Electricity in the rooms is controlled centrally and all lights are switched off at 11 p.m.

The encampment section is particularly remote—a 15- to 20-minute walk up the slope from the center itself.  Half a dozen cabins surround several larger buildings. Children assigned to the encampment had stayed in the cabins, where they were housed in small groups, but when we visited in January 2007 the 21 children in the encampment were all housed together in one of the larger buildings in an area that had been used to store supplies. Staff and children gave different explanations of the reason for this recent change.  Whatever the reason for the move, all of the children we spoke with at the encampment asked that they be allowed to return to the cabins if they had to stay at the encampment.  As in the words of Abdul Q., age 17, all children complained that their large dormitory was cold in comparison to the cabins: “We would like to return to the cabins because it is very cold in the dormitory. We are dying of cold.”¹⁶⁴

In all parts of the center, because windows in children’s rooms cannot be completely closed, temperatures in the rooms become very cold in wintertime.¹⁶⁵ All children interviewed in wing one reported that they were cold at night even if they slept in their warmest clothes. Some children specifically requested more clothes or blankets against the cold. However, they were not given a second blanket even after repeated requests. Seventeen-year old Jean-Marie N. told us:

It is very cold. I have enough clothes but I am still cold from time to time. The rooms are very cold and the blankets are not sufficient against the cold. We are told every day that we would get more blankets but we don’t receive them. I sleep in my clothes and one blanket but I am still cold.¹⁶⁶ 

Severe abuses and ill-treatment in wing one

Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned by the reports of children we interviewed that indicate widespread and very severe beatings of children in wing one taking place during the last five months of 2006. According to testimony from the children, beatings were common and went unchecked, although it would appear that staff at all levels must have been aware of the alleged beatings and may have been personally implicated in a number of them.

In particular, the children described what they characterized as “a punishment cell” located on the upper floor, where children were beaten and locked up for periods of up to several days at a time. Children described it as a filthy, windowless and airless cell of a few square meters in which “it was even difficult to breathe.” Children locked up in this room had to urinate and defecate on the floor as they were not allowed to go to the toilet.

Children reported feeling a pervasive climate of fear in the center whereby they felt they could be severely punished for the slightest “offense.” Jean-Marie N. recounted, “One boy once called his family because his mother was sick. He could not be called back as he was scared that his phone would be confiscated if staff caught him using his mobile phone. So he kept his phone switched off and could not be called.”¹⁷² Papis F. recalled, “One boy was beaten up… It’s because he used a mobile phone—there was a categorical ban to use mobile phones. The director said that no one was entitled to use their mobile phones. The same was true about eating candies.”¹⁷³

Jean-Marie N., indicated that although some educators were concerned about children’s treatment in the center they were apparently powerless to change anything: “Some educators had pity on us but they couldn’t do anything as they were afraid themselves.”¹⁷⁴

In September 2006 approximately 100 children escaped as a group from the center in protest, and were immediately taken back by the police who were called to respond.¹⁷⁵ Seventeen-year-old Jean-Marie N. recalled their departure:

At one point we were so tired of [name withheld] we all said we wanted to leave the center. The director said we could leave but that we had to leave everything behind, all the clothes we had bought and everything we had bought or earned during the time we were in the center. We all got extremely angry but we left the center. We were many. The director alerted the Police and we were soon picked up by the police and returned to the center. We were treated like criminals afterwards. The police took us to the backyard where the director announced that nothing would change. Some of the boys started to cry and we all got very angry. The police had to call for reinforcement as it was about to escalate. The director changed her rules a little bit afterwards—we were allowed to use phones outside class but the ban on bringing in food from outside did not change.¹⁷⁶

2. Arinaga Center

Infrastructure

Arinaga center is a former dormitory of a technology institute, located in an industrial area outside Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The center, with a capacity for 90 children, accommodated 134 children at the time of our visit.¹⁷⁷ According to children’s reports, it is regularly overcrowded. Several children reported that there were times with well over 200 children in the center (the highest figure we heard was 269¹⁷⁸) and that they had had to sleep in the kitchen during that time. Seventeen-year-old Moussa N. said, “They put mattresses on the floor for everybody and we slept in the kitchen.… It was a difficult period and a very nervous situation—the educators became very nervous over any little thing.”¹⁷⁹ Nasir A. told us that he had to sleep on a carpet in the kitchen.¹⁸⁰

Human Rights Watch’s scheduled visit to Arinaga emergency center was delayed for one week from the authorities’ side. Children reported that in the weeks preceding our visit intense renovations had taken place.¹⁸¹ Fourteen-year-old Malik R. told us that “before your visit, the center smelled very bad.”¹⁸² Yussef A., age 17, described the previous situation similarly: “We slept in the kitchen previously under the tables; that was before. Then they sent the [sub-Saharan African] children to [mainland Spain] and now they changed everything; the center stank completely before.”¹⁸³ Abduileh K., age 15, described a flurry of activity preceding our visit:

The center was prepared and they put up the place to play bocce ball and the wrestling ground. They also put up the tent next to the entrance and all the benches. They took photos of activities that were set up the day before you came and then put them on the walls. Even the trash cans are new…. One guy who is the same level as the director… came here two days before your visit and he told us that we would start going to school and that important visitors were going to come.¹⁸⁴

Violence against children

Children at Arinaga center reported serious levels of violence perpetrated by other children as well as by staff working at the center.  Several children had physical marks of violence, including scars, on their bodies. Children told us that younger boys were particularly subject to violence, and some children reported that one staff member had sexually harassed them. 

More generally, many children felt that staff members failed to stop or prevent violence amongst the children themselves and in some instances even encouraged fighting, as the following typical accounts reveal:

• “The educators say nothing when we are beaten.… I cried and screamed. When an educator came he just said, ‘Yes, beat him, you can die,’” Mohamad G. reported.¹⁸⁹

• “Saharawis and Moroccans don’t get along with one another. Fights take place. Not serious fights—in case there is a fight, [name withheld] comes and encourages us ‘fuerte, fuerte’ to hit hard,” we were told by Nasir A.¹⁹⁰

• “Everybody’s scared and the educators don’t intervene on our behalf,” said Yussef A., age 17.¹⁹¹

• “The educators consciously look away when [other children] are beating up another child,” 13-year-old Zubir F. told us.¹⁹²

• “The bigger children hit the smaller ones…. Nobody says or does anything about this,” said 15-year-old Abduileh K.¹⁹³

Mohamad G. told us that he was singled out and particularly subjected to violence, with nobody to help him. “One boy used to protect me but he escaped from the center. I have nobody to take care of me and protect me. I sometimes sleep outside the center to escape the abuses,” he told us.¹⁹⁴

Children reported that xenophobic remarks are common in the center. Seventeen-year-old Yussef A. told us, “There is a lot of racism in the center.… Few of the educators are good; the majority of them are racist.”¹⁹⁵ Serijme N. said, “Two educators are aggressive; they continue to work here. [Name withheld] speaks badly about Africa, for example during breakfast—if children ask for more sugar, [he] says that there is nothing in Africa but famine. It hurts us a lot to hear that.”¹⁹⁶

3. Violence in Other Centers

Arinaga is not the only center where peer violence is a frequent occurrence, nor is it confined to the emergency centers.  Mohammed K., age 17, told us that there was no protection from violence in Llanos Pelados (a CAME, now closed) and that he left the center as a result:

There were lots of problems there.… There was violence among children, very serious violence. There were two different groups, the Moroccans and the Saharawis, and they usually all attacked one of the others. I escaped from the center and went to Las Palmas because of these problems.… Violence often took place outside the center. The educators knew that. It happened every day. There was lots of violence.¹⁹⁷

Unsurprisingly, children in different centers reported that conditions in centers were especially tense and violent when facilities were overcrowded. Thirteen-year-old Ahmad S., at Playa Honda CAME/CAI, explained to us, “There are only conflicts when the center is overcrowded.… If there’s too many children staying here the center is out of control and there are conflicts between children.… I am the youngest; at my arrival there were lots of conflicts.”¹⁹⁸ Amadou N., age 17, told us, “There were lots of children in Tafira center [Fondillo CAME/CAI]. There were disputes and thefts and fights among children. Two or three children usually attacked a child with stones. Three of them attacked me once and wanted to get my money…. I was hit by a stone in the head; they took my money.”¹⁹⁹

4. Undue Restriction of Freedom of Movement

While children staying at CAMEs generally enjoyed full freedom of movement and simply had to keep staff informed about their whereabouts, children in emergency centers were significantly restricted in their freedom of movement. “The gate is always locked; only when we go to Las Palmas it is opened. I feel like a prisoner,” 17-year-old Moussa N. reported.²⁰⁰ Generally, children in emergency centers were only able to leave their center once or twice during the week for a few hours, and on some weekends. “On the other days, we’re always in the center, we cannot leave on our own…. I would like to be able to leave also on other days; it’s difficult to always stay in the center,” we were told by Yunus S., age 17.²⁰¹ “We’re kept like in a prison here,” said 12-year-old Mohammad I.²⁰²

Human Rights Watch found the gate of Arinaga center chained and padlocked on an unannounced visit. Children reported that the gate was locked 24 hours a day. The compound and building are surrounded by a high fence and children were not allowed to leave the compound unless in company of center staff. One staff member was assigned to monitor the fence in the back of the building to check that no children attempted to escape. We were also told that the gate of La Esperanza center had been constantly locked and guarded until the end of 2006.

These restrictions at emergency centers leave children with limited access to outside recreational activity. At Arinaga center, trips to a sports ground nearby during the week stopped altogether when the center introduced a new educational program, one week prior to Human Rights Watch’s visit. Fifteen-year-old Abduileh K. described the new restrictions:

Before they started classes, I left [the center] more often. Now, not anymore—since we started taking the classes we were told we didn’t need to play football any longer. All educators told us so. We did not play football this week. We went to Las Palmas on Wednesday; we leave the center at 4 p.m. and arrive back at 7 p.m. We go to the beach every four weeks on a weekend. The other three weekends we stay inside or we are taken to the sports ground. Every weekend we go to the sports ground.²⁰³

Jean-Marie N., at La Esperanza, told us:

There’s nothing-else to do; we either sit in our rooms or watch TV; I’m very bored and some of the boys are very irritated. If somebody is very bored we support one another. Educators also try to help.²⁰⁴

States must recognize children’s right “to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”²⁰⁵ Leave regimes that limit children’s freedom of movement to a restricted compound area and that resemble prison-like conditions are not conducive to children’s well-being and their social development, and hardly comply with their best interest.

In the case of unaccompanied children in care it can be reasonably argued that some limitation in children’s freedom of movement is in response to these children’s particular vulnerability, risk of being trafficked, their age, and thus is in their best interest. The head of the Child Protection Directorate (in effect the children’s guardian) explained that limitations on leaving the center are for the sole purpose of protecting children.²⁰⁶ Maria José Ortega from the Prosecutor’s Office in Las Palmas similarly noted, “These centers are open centers and there’s no vigilance needed of any type. If there are restrictions to leave it is for the sake of protecting children.”²⁰⁷

Yet Human Rights Watch found very different regimes in place for the same group of children, which questions the validity of the explanations given by authorities. While children housed in CAMEs enjoy extensive freedom of movement, this is not the case for children in emergency centers. Furthermore, restrictions in place were blanket restrictions that negatively impacted on children’s right to recreational activity and that were not tailored to special needs of certain groups of children. For example, we found no different regimes in place for younger children who could be considered more vulnerable and therefore subject to special protection and rules. The limitation of children’s freedom of movement therefore was not based on any rational criteria but instead was determined by the type of center a child had been assigned to.

5. International Legal Standards on Protection of Children from Ill-treatment

International law stipulates that every child has the right to protection from physical or mental violence. Under Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children are to be protected from “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.”²⁰⁸

Both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment²⁰⁹ as does the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).²¹⁰

The European Court of Human Rights has on several occasions examined situations in which children in care—in both state care, and foster care—have been victims of ill-treatment, and has set out very clearly the obligations on states in relation to children in care.²¹¹ In reminding states that ECHR Article 3 requires them to take measures designed to ensure that individuals within their jurisdiction are not subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, including such ill-treatment administered by private individuals, the Court has held that “[t]hese measures should provide effective protection, in particular, of children and other vulnerable persons and include reasonable steps to prevent ill-treatment of which the authorities had or ought to have had knowledge…”²¹²

The court has also held that the right to privacy, protected by Article 8 of the ECHR, also imposes positive obligations to protect the physical and moral integrity of an individual from other persons.²¹³

Although children in care are not considered to be deprived of their liberty, but rather under the guardianship of state authorities, the conditions of their care and the treatment to which they are exposed in care can give rise to violations of the state’s obligation to protect children from any inhuman or degrading treatment. When assessing material conditions in which children are cared for, account has to be taken of the cumulative effects of those conditions over time and the state of health of the children. The nature of the “disciplinary” regime imposed on the children also needs to be taken into account.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the material conditions to which the children are subjected, including low quality of food and confiscation of food (see Section VII.2, below), and the low temperatures, when coupled with practices such as the use of a punishment room for children may rise to the level of inhuman and degrading treatment. In particular the detention of children in a punishment room for periods of up to a few days at a time could constitute arbitrary detention.²¹⁴

An in-depth 2006 UN study on violence against children highlights that children in residential care are vulnerable to violence from their peers, particularly when conditions and staff supervision are poor. Contributing factors are the lack of privacy, frustration, overcrowding, and a failure to separate particularly vulnerable children from older, more aggressive children. The report concludes that the mixing of various levels of vulnerability increases children’s risk of being subject to violence.²¹⁵ In the emergency centers Human Rights Watch visited, only in Tegueste were the sleeping areas for younger children separated from those of older children and located closer to the staff room. In all four centers children are not separated during daytime activities. Younger children themselves told us that they felt unsafe around older, bigger children.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes children’s entitlement to special care and protection and states’ obligation to ensure that “institutions, services and facilities responsible for the care or protection of children shall conform with the standards established by competent authorities, particularly in the areas of safety, health, in the number and suitability of their staff as well as competent supervision. In all actions concerning children, the best interest of the child shall be a primary consideration.”²¹⁶