Call in air for int'l protection for Palestinian children

PIC reported:

The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) called on the international community to provide protection for the children of Palestine vis-à-vis the crimes the Israeli occupation commits against them namely murder, torture and detention.

These calls are based on the provisions of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, issued in 1959, as well as on the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 and on the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict, issued in 1974.

Riyad Al-Ashqar, a researcher at the PPS, pointed out that the Israeli occupation crimes against children have escalated during recent months; the Israeli crimes included: summonses, arrests, torture, shooting without justification, house arrest, removing the child from the family for months, imposing heavy fines along with high sentences, and the detention of children under the age of ten.

 These crimes are war crimes and a clear and flagrant violation of the provisions of international conventions governing the rights of children, he added.

Ashqar stressed the importance of establishing a team of specialized lawyers in cooperation with the Arab Lawyers Union (ALU) in order to activate this file, monitor all Israeli occupation violations of the provisions on the protection and safety of children in the international conventions, submit the detected violations to international institutions to create public awareness of the Israeli occupation practices and violations of the Palestinian children rights, and securing condemnation for the Israeli occupation on its crimes against minors, especially the extrajudicial executions.

Ashqar noted that some of the provisions of the international law addressed the rights of children, but the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) flagrantly ignore them.

Among the most prominent of these provisions are: Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict, which regard all forms of repression and cruel and inhuman treatment of women and children, including imprisonment, torture, mass arrests and collective punishment as criminal acts, the PPS researcher said.

Furthermore, Articles 37 and 38 of the Convention on the rights of the Child in 1989 stipulate that no child should be subjected to torture or any other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, they also state that no child should be deprived of his freedom unlawfully or arbitrarily, Ashqar underlined.

Regarding children detention, he said that Articles 37 and 38 stipulate that a child should be arrested, detained or imprisoned only in accordance with the law, and children's detention should be used only as a last procedure and for the shortest appropriate period of time.

Ashqar believes that the international community's silence on these clear violations of the international humanitarian law encourages the occupation to continue its crimes against the children of Palestine.

Therefore, the international community must review its positions and change its policy and urgently intervene to bridle the Israeli occupation's repressive practices, he concluded.