Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism 10

NEWSLETTER Volume 2, Issue 6

Preventing Torture Framing the Issue

November 2008

within the fight against terrorism Inside this issue:

Framing the issue: children, torture and counter-terrorism

“This month, on November 19, the world marks the annual World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse.

On this day, governments and civil society promote the rights of children and call for an end to all forms of physical and mental violence against society’s youngest citizens.

Sadly, one form of violence against children that frequently goes unrecognised and underreported is torture. Like adults, child victims of torture often come from marginalised populations – e.g. refugees, internally displaced persons, street children, child soldiers and children from dis-advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Yet there is also evidence that, in some countries, children become victims of torture as a result of counter-terrorism activities – children may be targeted because of their familial associations or detained alongside adults accused of committing terrorist acts.

This special thematic issue of the newsletter looks at the youngest victims of torture and ill-treatment within the context of fighting terrorism.

In our opening article, “The war on terror’s youngest victims”, Brandy Bauer and Dr Jose Quiroga provide examples of child victims of torture in the name of fighting terror-

ism, and the impact this has on their development and the situation of their families.

And in his piece, “Trampling the rights of the child”, Andy Worthington looks at how conditions of detention for minors at Guantanamo Bay have violated the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Finally, we provide a list of resources that offer more information about the unique circumstances of child victims of torture.

The IRCT remains committed to preventing and putting an end to torture and illtreatment against children and to providing specific treatment and rehabilitation for torture’s youngest victims.

Last year alone, IRCT member centres and programmes provided rehabilitation services to more than 9,000

children; thousands more benefited as a result of a parent or other close relative receiving treatment services.

Within the IRCT Council, a global working group has been established on torture and children that is forming policy dedicated to collecting data, studying the scope of torture against children, and highlighting this invisible crime.

Our aim is to increase empirical knowledge on children and torture to bolster our advocacy platform, and to ensure that the IRCT becomes an increasingly credible and effective voice on behalf of child victims of torture. This will enable us to generate increased awareness of this important issue among policy makers, and medical and legal professionals. Furthermore, we will supplement our

Framing the issue

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The war on terror’s youngest victims

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Trampling the rights of the child

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Other resources

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Recommended reading

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promotion of an effective response to the rehabilitation needs of child victims of torture with support for effective legal action. This action will help to promote further investigation into allegations of torture against children and increase the prosecution of perpetrators.

We hope that by bringing forward the plight of child victims in this issue, the IRCT can generate increased momentum to tackle this problem in a more systematic fashion. We welcome collaboration from child rights and humanitarian groups wanting to step up advocacy in favour of child victims of torture and seeking ways to enhance and increase rehabilitation services for this extremely vulnerable group.

—Brita Sydhoff Secretary-General International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT)

Children in Georgia call for an end to torture as part of a commemoration of 26 June, the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, hosted by the Georgian Center for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims.

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The war on terror’s youngest victims

by Brandy Bauer with Dr Jose Quiroga

The torture of children in i

the context of counterterrorism efforts pre-dates the 2001 onset of the global “war on terrorism” launched by the United States. In countries such as Colombia, Kosovo, Sudan and Peru, children have been caught up and tortured in operations targeted at eradicating whole communities/ groups branded as terrorists.

Yet the right to freedom from torture is applicable to all citizens, including children. Nevertheless, the circumstances which make it difficult to monitor and report incidences of torture of adults – i.e. the secrecy with which it is practised and lack of judicial mechanisms to prosecute perpetrators of torture – are exacerbated when it comes to children. Because they lack both knowledge and political power, children may not understand their rights and cannot protest against torture and ill-treatment.

Nor do they have the means to report incidents to bodies that might monitor and record these violations. A lack of reporting leads to inaction – thereby perpetuating the likelihood of further torture and ill-treatment.

Looking specifically within the framework of counterterrorism, children can become victims of torture in several ways. They may be directly tortured (primary victims) as a means to coerce, harm or

control terror suspects – especially family members.

They may become secondary victims if forced to witness the torture of a family or community member; often this is done deliberately to put pressure on the primary victim to make a confession. Finally, children are also indirect victims when a family or community member has been tortured and whose life changes for the worse as a result.ii Examples from around the world The global discourse around torture has shifted since the advent of the “war on terrorism” and has created an alarming trend for principles of international humanitarian and human rights law to be undermined in the name of fighting terrorism. This trend affects both adults and children.

The United States itself has been at the centre of debate, with specific concern raised by numerous groups regarding children held in U.S. detention facilities that fall outside international monitoring mechanisms.

In its official report submitted to the United Nations in May 2008 regarding the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, the U.S. government reported:

“The United States does not currently detain any juveniles at Guantanamo Bay. In the entirety of its existence, the Guan-

tanamo Bay detention facility has held no more than eight juveniles, their ages ranging from 13 to 17 at the time of their capture…

Since 2002, the United States has held approximately 90 juveniles in Afghanistan. As of April 2008, there are approximately 10 juveniles being held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility as unlawful enemy combatants.

Since 2003, the United States has held approximately 2,400 juveniles in Iraq. The juveniles that the United States has detained have been captured engaging in anticoalition activity, such as planting Improvised Explosive Devices, operating as look-outs for insurgents, or actively engaging in fighting against U.S. and Coalition Forces. As of April 2008, the United States held approximately 500 juveniles in Iraq.” iii It would be misguided to allege that all children held in U.S. custody are/have been subjected to torture and other forms of illtreatment. However, what is troubling – and has been observed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child – is that these child detainees are held in the same conditions as adults – a violation of international law, which requires special considerations for children.

Given that several reports have documented torture

and ill-treatment among adult detainees at U.S. detention facilities iv –and that a world study from the United Nations indicates that children in detention are particularly vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment v – there appears to be a real risk that some of these children also might have been exposed to such treatment.

Yet it is unfair to single out the United States – since the advent of the “war on terrorism” numerous countries have stepped up their own activities against terrorists and insurgents, victimising children in the process. In the Philippines, for example, the press reported in August 2007 that eight children were arrested with six adults during a military campaign against the militant Abu Sayyaf Group and forced to witness the torture of their fathers. vi The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) conducted a fact-finding mission to the Philippines last year and documented other cases in the report,

Terrorism and human rights in the Philippines: fighting terror is terrorizing? Bimbas M. Abubakar provides another example: when he was 14 years old, Abubakar was abducted on his way to school by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Basilan.

The boy was tortured by men in uniform, who demanded he confess that his name was Ahmad and that he was a member of the Abu Sayyaf Group. When

Volume 2, Issue 6 interviewed by FIDH, Abubakar was still in detention, age 20, and awaiting trial.vii FIDH also recently completed a fact-finding mission to Pakistan, where it documented other cases of children tortured or illtreated as a result of counter-terrorism efforts.

The mission revealed how Pakistan’s Frontier Crimes Regulation, established to administer justice in tribal areas, routinely imprisons children for offences committed by family members. In another instance, an eight-year-old handicapped child of a chief justice was kept under house arrest and denied access to medical treatment following a wave of repression against lawyers and judges attempting to uphold human rights during the state of emergency.

Further examples have been documented in other recent human rights publications.

Human Rights Watch has detailed the plight of Kenyan children who were picked up with their families on allegations of terror suspicions and “renditioned” to Somalia or Ethiopia. All of the family members were held incommunicado in conditions that amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.viii Amnesty International reports that since Tunisia adopted new anti-terrorism legislation in 2003, hundreds of terror suspects have been held incommunicado, tortured and abused, including many children.ix These examples illustrate the widespread nature of the problem, though there

Page 3 remains a lack of independent and reliable statistics on the extent and frequency with which children are tortured during counter-terrorism activities.

The effect of torture on children When children are tortured, the consequences tend to be more severe and longer lasting when compared to adults, because torture interrupts the process of normal psychological, emotional and social development. Furthermore, the threshold of physical pain in children is lower than it is in adults. x Chronic pain represents the most common physical after-effect of torture in

Treatment for children who have been tortured, such as that offered by the member rehabilitation centres and programmes of the IRCT, takes into account their special developmental stages. Rehabilitation is often done in concert with treatment of adults, since typically multiple family members are affected (directly or indirectly).

What can be done Eradicating torture – whether of children or adults – requires a multipronged approach involving states, civil society groups and ordinary citizens.

First, states should be encouraged to ratify all relevant conventions and

When children are tortured, the consequences tend to be more severe and longer lasting when compared to adults, because torture interrupts the process of normal psychological, emotional and social development. children, often lasting ten years or more. Injuries resulting from physical abuse – e.g. fractures, bruises, cuts and burns – are common immediately following the episode, and studies have revealed that between 40-70% of survivors may have permanent lesions or scars.xi The psychological consequences of torture on children often outlast the physical effects, and frequently include posttraumatic stress disorder, depression and other symptoms that also appear in adult torture survivors: sleep disorders, anxiety, aggression, memory impairment, etc.

enact national legislation that makes torture a crime in line with international law. Several international conventions outlaw torture and ill-treatment against children. The United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT) applies to children as well as adults. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) also outlaws torture and ill-treatment of children, and states that:

“States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of: any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse; torture or any other form

of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, selfrespect and dignity of the child.”

All but two countriesxii have ratified the CRC, but only 145 states have ratified UNCAT out of a possible 195. This leaves room for legal loopholes, as some observers point out:

“…unless the State Party has also ratified the Convention against Torture, there is no specific standard against which to assess the State’s compliance in national legislation…

Furthermore, there are additional obligations under the Convention against Torture which are not found in the CRC, such as making all acts of torture under national criminal law and applying the same principles to those who attempt to commit torture or to any individual who complies or participates in torture (Article 4(1)).”xiii Moreover, states should enact domestic laws that codify these conventions and prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment using the definition provided by UNCAT. Without such legislation, crimes of torture are not prosecuted and victims are left without their rights to redress, fair and adequate compensation and the means for as full rehabilitation as possible.

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The war on terror’s youngest victims (cont.)

In November 2007, the United Nations made a promising move when it established the post of Special Representative of the Secretary-General on violence against children.

At the time of writing, this post remained vacant, however, and the IRCT urges the UN to move quickly to fill this position.

Since children often lack the power, the knowledge and the resources to claim and advocate for their basic rights, including the right to freedom from torture, it is of utmost importance to assist them, both through the rehabilitation of victims and through preventive action. Wherever possible, NGOs working around issues of human rights and children should document violations against children and push for the inclusion of these issues in dialogues about states’ obligations toward children.

Individuals also should demand accountability from their governments and appeal to states to ratify and implement the terms of international human rights and humanitarian law. Included in this is the demand that states provide rehabilitation for torture survivors of all ages.

While the future of the global “war on terrorism” remains uncertain, there is a clarion call rising from many fronts that governments must end torture and ill-treatment and deal with terror suspects in a humane and

legal manner. The torture of children is an abhorrent practice that has no place in counter-terrorism or any other framework, and more work must be done to reveal this hidden crime and to denounce all forms of violence against children.

Through its newly established Working Group on Children and Torture, the IRCT is committed to collecting data that will promote awareness of and knowledge about children in the context of torture, enhance protection efforts for these children, and inform the assessment and development of treatment methodologies to facilitate their rehabilitation.

Brandy Bauer is Senior Communications Officer at the IRCT Secretariat in Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr Jose Quiroga is Vice President of the IRCT and Medical Director of the Los Angelesbased Program for Torture Victims. i

For the purpose of this article, we utilise the definition of a child as specified in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children are human beings under the age of 18, “unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”.

Drawing made by a child as part of a therapeutic session at the IRCT member centre Vive Žene in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Art therapy is often used to assist child victims of torture in dealing with their trauma.

brokenlives.info and Human Rights Watch. Locked up alone: detention conditions and mental health and Guantanamo. 2008, available at http://hrw.org/ reports/2008/us0608/.

x

V

xi

See the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence and Children (2006) online at: http:// www.violencestudy.org/r25 vi

Corpuz GA. Philippine war on terror yields eight tortured kids.

20 September 2007. Available at: http://www.upiasia.com/ Human_Rights/2007/09/19/ commentary_philippine_war_o n_terror_yields_eight_tortured _kids/3059/ Vii FIDH. Terrorism and human rights in the Philippines: fighting terror or terrorizing?

2008, p.35, available at: http:// www.philippinehumanrights.or g/images/stories/ph493a.pdf

ii

Green C. Politically motivated torture and child survivors.

Pediatric Nursing. May/June 2007. 33,3: 267-270.

Viii

See Human Rights Watch.

Why am I still here? 2008 at: http://hrw.org/reports/2008/ eastafrica1008/

iii

See http://www2.ohchr.org/ english/bodies/crc/docs/ AdvanceVersions/ CRC.C.OPAC.USA.Q1.Add1.doc iV

See, for example, Physicians for Human Rights. Broken Laws, Broken Lives. 2008.

Available at: http://

ix

See Amnesty International. In the name of security: routine abuses in Tunisia. 2008, available at: http:// www.amnesty.org/en/library/ info/MDE30/007/2008/en

Quiroga J, Jaranson J. Politically motivated torture and its survivors: a desk study review of the literature. Torture.

2005. 15(2-3); 1-111. Available at: http://www.irct.org/ Default.aspx?ID=550 Ibid.

xii

Somalia and the United States.

xiii

Man N. Children, torture and power. Save the Children: London; 2000.

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Trampling the rights of the child The treatment of juveniles in the Guantánamo Bay detention facility

by Andy Worthington

A ccording to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict)i , to which the United States has been a signatory since January 23, 2003ii, juvenile prisoners – those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place – “require special protection”. The Optional Protocol specifically recognises “the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities”, and requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

In January 2003, four doctors in Guantánamo put together a fascinating document, entitled “Recommended Course of Action for Reception and Detention of Individuals Under 18 Years of Age”. This was clearly influenced by international agreements regarding the distinctions between adult and juvenile prisoners (including the Geneva Conventions, which were, in general, shredded by the Bush administration), and it laid out, in painstaking detail, how juvenile prisoners held at Guantánamo should be treated.iii Noting, in the first instance, that “all efforts should be made” to prevent juveniles from being imprisoned at

Guantánamo, the doctors proceeded to explain that the exposure of juvenile prisoners to adult prisoners would “have a high likelihood of producing physical, emotional, and psychological damage,” and recommended that they be held separately from the adult population, with “a primary living space with a minimum space of 20ft by 30ft,” and an “open, outside

“SecDef directive” (a directive from Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense), all of their recommendations were ignored. The reality for the juveniles held at Guantánamo (twenty-two in total, according to the Pentagon’s own records) was detention in conditions akin to solitary confinement, in cells that measured 8ft by 6ft, little opportunity for

The reality for juveniles held at Guantánamo (22 in total, according to the Pentagon’s own records) was detention conditions akin to solitary confinement, in cells that measured 8ft by 6ft, little opportunity for exercise, and no educational facilities whatsoever. recreation area,” measuring at least 50ft by 50ft, in which they “should be allowed to play” for at least three hours a day.

The doctors also recommended that juvenile prisoners should be educated for four to six hours a day, and listed a large number of staff – interpreters, social workers, medical and psychiatric professionals, and a nutritionist – who should be assigned or on call to provide assistance to the prisoners. They concluded by stating that all personnel “should refrain from wearing military uniforms and utilize appropriate civilian attire”.

Although the doctors assumed that their “Recommended Course of Action” would become a

exercise, and no educational facilities whatsoever. In addition, adult prisoners were held as their neighbours, no staff were provided with expertise in the requirements of juveniles, and their dealings with the prison’s personnel were always with people in military uniform.iv As far as the administration was concerned, the age of the Guantánamo prisoners was completely irrelevant, and the premise for this was confirmed by Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference in May 2003, after the story first broke that juveniles were being held at Guantánamo.

Rumsfeld stated, “This constant refrain of ‘the juveniles,’ as though there’s a hundred children in there – these are not children”

and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that they “may be juveniles, but they’re not on the Little League team anywhere.

They’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team, and they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason – for our safety, for your safety”.v Behind this gleefully dismissive rhetoric, the truth was even darker.

Guantánamo’s most celebrated juvenile, Omar Khadr, was severely wounded after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, when he was just 15 years old, but on arrival at the US prison at Bagram airbase, he was subjected to chronic abuse. According to his own account, reported by Amnesty International, he “asked for pain medication for his wounds but was refused,” said that “during interrogations a bag was placed over his head and US personnel brought military dogs into the room to frighten him,” and added that he was “not allowed to use the bathroom and was forced to urinate on himself”. Like many other prisoners, he was also hung from his wrists, and explained that “his hands were tied above a door frame and he was forced to stand in this position for hours”.vi An article in Rolling Stone, in August 2006, added further details, noting that he was “brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain” and was “ordered to clean

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Trampling the rights of the child (cont.) floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet”.vii In Guantánamo, the abuse of Khadr continued. On his arrival, in October 2002, just a few weeks after his 16th birthday, he was immediately subjected to a regime of humiliation, isolation and abuse – including extreme temperature manipulation, forced nudity and sexual humiliation – which had just been introduced in an attempt to increase the meagre flow of “actionable intelligence” from the prison. He told his

tional and resident of Saudi Arabia, who was just 14 or 15 years old when he traveled to Pakistan in October 2001 and was seized in a random raid on a mosque, has also been subjected to a regime of “enhanced” techniques to prepare him for interrogation – including prolonged sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the use of painful stress positions – and has also been regularly abused by the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), a heavily-armoured riot squad used to quell even the most minor

..the administration’s disdain for the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture, with its requirement to rehabilitate children caught up in war, has remained as pronounced as ever. lawyers that he was “shortshackled by his hands and feet to a bolt in the floor and left for five to six hours,” and that “occasionally a U.S. officer would enter the room to laugh at him”. He also said that he was “kept in extremely cold rooms,” “lifted up by the neck while shackled, and then dropped to the floor,” and “beaten by guards”. In one particularly notorious incident, the guards left him short-shackled until he urinated on himself, and then “poured a pinescented cleaning fluid over him and used him as a ‘human mop’ to clean up the mess”.viii Omar Khadr was not the only juvenile to receive brutal treatment in U.S. custody. Mohammed ElGharani, a Chadian na-

infringements of the rules.

On one occasion, an IRF team slammed his head into the floor of his cell, breaking one of his teeth, and on another occasion an interrogator stubbed out a cigarette on his arm. As a result of this violence he has become deeply depressed, and has attempted to commit suicide on several occasions.ix Another juvenile, Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan who was 16 when he was seized after a grenade attack on a U.S. jeep in December 2002, was also subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation, under the programme known euphemistically as the “frequent flier program,” which involved moving prisoners from cell to cell every few hours to prevent them sleeping. In Jawad’s case, this took place 112 times

over a two-week period in 2004.x To make matters worse, both Khadr and Jawad have been put forward for trial by Military Commission, the system of trials for “terror suspects” conceived in November 2001, even though, as Khadr’s lawyers pointed out in February,

“If jurisdiction is exercised over Mr. Khadr, the military judge will be the first in western history to preside over the trial of alleged war crimes committed by a child. No international criminal tribunal established under the laws of war, from Nuremberg forward, has ever prosecuted former child soldiers as war criminals … A critical component of the response of our nation and the world to the tragedy of the use and abuse of child solders in war by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda is that post-conflict legal proceedings must pursue the best interest of the victimized child -- with the aim of their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not their imprisonment or execution.” xi The examples above will hopefully suffice to demonstrate that, in the “War on Terror,” in which a rogue administration, devoted to unfettered executive power, has refused to be bound by the law, those seized and detained as juveniles were doubly unfortunate. After the scandal of the juvenile prisoners was revealed in 2003, the administration made a small concession to

its international obligations (and to common decency) by holding three Afghan boys, who were aged between 12 and 14 at the time of their capture, in a separate block, Camp Iguana, where they received treatment that at least approached the requirements laid down by Guantánamo’s scorned doctors.xii However, this was only until they were released in January 2004, and for the other 19 juveniles, including five who are still held, the administration’s disdain for the Optional Protocol, with its requirement to rehabilitate children caught up in war, has remained as pronounced as ever. It is one of many crimes that Barack Obama should address as urgently as possible.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by

Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk

i

Available at: http:// www.unhchr.ch/html/ menu2/6/protocolchild.htm. ii

See: http:// www.unhchr.ch/pdf/ report.pdf. iii

Available at: http:// www3.thestar.com/static/ PDF/080522_under18.pdf. iv

For a list of the prisoners’ names and dates of birth (according to the Pentagon), see: http://www.dod.mil/ pubs/foi/detainees/ detaineesFOIArelease15May 2006.pdf.

Volume 2, Issue 6 v

Available at: http:// www.defenselink.mil/ transcripts/transcript.aspx? transcriptid=2510.

Page 7 n_al_qaeda_childhood_to_a _gitmo_cell.

guantanamos-forgottenchild/.

trials-where-are-theterrorists/.

viii

x

xii

vi

Available at: http:// web.amnesty.org/library/ index/engamr511842005.

See: http:// www.andyworthington.co.uk /2007/11/14/the-trials-ofomar-khadr-guantanamoschild-soldier/.

vii

ix

xi

Available at: http:// www.rollingstone.com/ politics/story/11128331/ follow_omar_khadr_from_a

See: http:// www.andyworthington.co.uk /2008/04/24/

See: http:// www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/ article/2008/08/07/ AR2008080703004.html.

See: http:// www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2004/mar/06/ guantanamo.usa.

See: http:// www.andyworthington.co.uk /2008/02/08/guantanamo-

Other resources on children, torture and the fight against terrorism

The following resources provide more information about children and torture, and the legal instruments set up to protect them. This is not an exhaustive list; readers also are encouraged to visit the online database of the RCT Documentation Centre, the world’s largest library specifically dedicated to the subject of torture, prevention of torture and rehabilitation of victims at http://www.reindex.org/ RCT/rss/Portal.php.

Legal instruments United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, available at: http:// www.unhchr.ch/html/ menu3/b/k2crc.htm

www.unhchr.ch/html/ menu2/6/cat/treaties/ opcat.htm Other reports/resources Amnesty International.

Hidden scandal, secret shame: torture and illtreatment of children. 2000.

Available at: http:// www.amnesty.org/en/ library/info/ ACT40/038/2000&harpid= 1888 Asian Human Rights Commission. Children’s drawings on disappearances. Available at: http:// www.disappearances.org/ childrendrawings/ Brett R. Juvenile justice,

counter-terrorism and children. United Nations

Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the involvement of children in armed conflict, available at: http://www.unhchr.ch/ html/menu2/6/ protocolchild.htm

Institute for Disarmament Research. 2002. Available at: http://www.unidir.org/ pdf/articles/pdf-art1729.pdf

United Nations Convention against Torture, available at: http://www.unhchr.ch/ html/menu3/b/ h_cat39.htm

Eradicating violence against children: Council of Europe actions. 2008.

Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture, available at: http://

Child Rights Information Network, online at: http:// www.crin.org/ Council of Europe.

Green C. Politically motivated torture and child survivors. Pediatric Nursing.

2007. 33(3):267-270.

A young client is attended to by staff at SAVE Congo, an IRCT member rehabilitation centre in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Hodgkin R, Newell P.

Implementation handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF. 2007.

OMCT. Protecting the rights of children in conflict with the law. World Organisation against Torture. 2005.

Available at: http:// www.omct.org/pdf/ cc/2005/ Protect_the_rights_of_child ren_in_conflict_with_the_la w.pdf Save the Children Sweden.

Child protection in emergencies: priorities, principles and practices.

2007.

United Nations Secretary General’s Study on Violence and Children. 2006.

Available at: http:// www.violencestudy.org/r25 Van Bueren G. Child rights

in Europe: convergence and divergence of judicial protection. Council of Europe publishing. 2007.

Worthington A. Children in Guantánamo: selected articles. Available at: http:// www.andyworthington.co.u k/category/children-inguantanamo/

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International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) Borgergade 13 · P.O. Box 9049

For more information...

1022 Copenhagen K DENMARK Phone: +45 33 76 06 00 Fax: +45 33 76 05 00 Email: irct@irct.org www.irct.org

FIDH 17, passage de la main d’or 75011 Paris FRANCE Phone: +33 1 43 55 25 18 Fax: +33 1 43 55 18 80 www.fidh.org

This newsletter is being published with funding from the European Commission

The “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” newsletter is published bimonthly as part of a joint FIDH-IRCT project aimed at reinstating respect for the prohibition against torture in counterterrorism strategies both globally and in ten target countries: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mauritania, the Philippines, Russia and Syria.

The newsletter editors welcome submissions of content for future issues, including articles (send query first), comments, letters to the editor (up to 250 words) and suggestions for recommended reading. To submit content or make enquiries, email Brandy Bauer, IRCT Senior Communications Officer, at tortureandterrorNL@irct.org For more information about the “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” project, please visit the IRCT web site (www.irct.org) or contact: Sune Segal, Head of Communications, IRCT, +45 20 34 69 14, sse@irct.org or Isabelle Brachet, Director of Operations, FIDH, +33 1 43 55 25 18, ibrachet@fidh.org

Recommended reading

Readers of the Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism newsletter may be interested in the following recent reports which discuss in more depth the issues of torture and other human rights abuses perpetrated within the context of counterterrorism measures. These resources are not meant to be an exhaustive list.

Guantanamo and its aftermath: U.S. detention and interrogation policies and their impact on former detainees from the Center for Constitutional Rights and University of California at Berkeley looks at the lingering consequences of

illegal detention practices on ex-prisoners of U.S. detention. Available at: http://ccrjustice.org/files/ Report_GTMO_And_Its_Afte rmath.pdf

outlines the dangers of sending persons back to countries where they risk torture. Available at: http:// hrw.org/reports/2008/ uk1008/

Human rights agenda for the new administration from

Shattered peace in Mindanao: the human cost of conflict in the Philippines

Human Rights Watch provides comprehensive guidance for how the next U.S. government should handle counter-terrorism, foreign policy and international human rights.

Available at: http://hrw.org/ english/docs/2008/10/29/ usdom20099.htm

Not the way forward: the UK’s dangerous reliance on diplomatic assurances from Human Rights Watch

from Amnesty International looks at the abuses committed both by insurgents and the military in the southern Philippines.

Available at: http:// www.amnesty.org/en/ news-and-updates/news/ the-human-cost-of-armedconflict-in-the-philippines20081029

Torturing Democracy, a new documentary film about

torture in the context of democratic governments’ fights against terrorism, is available online at: http:// audiovideoproducer.digital medianet.com/articles/ viewarticle.jsp?id=529956

Why am I still here? The Horn of Africa renditions and fate of those still missing from Human Rights Watch examines the practice of rendition of terror suspects in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Available at: http://hrw.org/ reports/2008/ eastafrica1008/