Category Archives: Children

Home Office planning to end family reunion for children after Brexit

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Exclusive: Current system for asylum-seeking minors set to end the day after UK leaves EU

The Home Office is preparing to end the current system of family reunification for asylum-seeking children if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the Guardian has learned.

The government has privately briefed the UN refugee agency UNHCR and other NGOs that open cases may be able to progress, but a no-deal Brexit would mean no new applications after 1 November from asylum-seeking children to be reunited with relatives living in the UK. Even if there is a deal, the future of family reunion is not certain.

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Channel smugglers cram 30 migrants into boats made for six

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Children tell charity workers of being knocked into the water as attempts to reach UK from France increase

Smugglers are cramming up to 30 people on to small boats to cross the Channel from France to the UK, and children have been among those who have recently fallen overboard, campaigners have revealed.

As crossing attempts surge at the close of summer amid rumours that Brexit will mean tighter border restrictions, criminal gangs are loading inflatable boats up to five times their capacity. Previously, people smugglers would put about eight passengers on each vessel.

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Babies in the Beehive: the man behind New Zealand’s child-friendly parliament

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From bottle feeding infants in the chamber to a playground on the front lawn, speaker Trevor Mallard has welcomed infants into the corridors of power

Trevor Mallard thought his days nursing babies might be over when he became speaker of New Zealand’s parliament in late 2017.

But the grandfather who has raised three children of his own has overseen a baby boom in the Beehive – as the most recognisable building in the parliamentary complex is known – and has become determined to make life easier for parents in the country’s halls of power.

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The west takes its eyes off Africa at its peril | Larry Elliott

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The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bomb

Time was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.

In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a bigger picture. There was the occasional financial panic, but the G7 thought the problems of economic management had largely been solved and all that was needed was a bit of tinkering by technocratic central bankers.

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Homeless children put up in shipping containers, report says

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Children’s commissioner for England condemns ‘scandal’ of family homelessness

Thousands of homeless children are growing up in cheaply converted shipping containers and cramped rooms in former office blocks, putting their health and wellbeing at serious risk, according to the children’s commissioner for England.

Anne Longfield said it was scandal that at least 210,000 young people in homeless families in England were put up by councils in temporary housing and bed and breakfasts or forced to “sofa surf” with friends, often for long periods.

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This porridge is just right: homemade baby food that’s big business in India | Amrita Gupta

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Entrepreneurs are cooking up wholesome alternatives to sugary baby formulas in a country where only one baby in 10 gets the recommended nutrition

When her baby was six months old, Dr Hemapriya Natesan found herself appalled by the sugary commercial baby food available. With her mother, she began to make batches of mullaikatiya sathumaavu, a traditional porridge for weaning infants in Tamil Nadu, southern India.

It’s a painstaking 10-day process with more than 15 grains, lentils and nuts. Many of the ingredients are first sprouted, then sun-dried in the sweltering heat before being slow-roasted, ground and sieved.

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Don’t call them Syria’s child casualties. This is the slaughter of the innocents

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As violence escalates, more children have died in rebel-held areas in the past month than in all of 2018. But does anybody care?

Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because children are being killed almost every day – and who is really counting?

Harrowing images briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in Ariha, in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister, Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister. Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.

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Problems investigating historical child sex abuse | Letters

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This crime needs specialist units to investigate, says Sara Newman, and a group of mental health professionals say there are lessons to be learned from Carl Beech’s trial

Carl Beech and the Metropolitan police’s investigation have done a great disservice to all victims of this terrible crime (Report, 27 July). There are many problems concerning the investigation of historical child sex abuse. The gathering of facts can be almost impossible as the passage of time may have erased any evidence, and what does survive needs properly resourced and trained officers to bring it to court. I wonder if the taboo and heinousness of this subject conspire to for ever hold it in an investigative system lacking in rigour, ingenuity and the will to make change.

I also see that Beech claimed criminal injury compensation to the tune of £22,000. How was this possible? There is something seriously wrong when conviction rates are this low and innocent people have their lives shattered. Is it not time we admitted that this crime needs specialist units who are well trained and resourced, so that when a child or adult makes the brave decision to report, they can be supported by a system they can trust, and see justice done.
Sara Newman
Groombridge, East Sussex

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Foreskin reclaimers: the ‘intactivists’ fighting infant male circumcision

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Emboldened by the body-positive movement and a sense of rage, a growing chorus is pushing back against a common custom

The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.

She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.

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World hunger on the rise as 820m at risk, UN report finds

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Eliminating hunger by 2030 is an immense challenge, say heads of UN agencies

More than 820 million people worldwide are still going hungry, according to a UN report that says reaching the target of zero hunger by 2030 is “an immense challenge”.

The number of people with not enough to eat has risen for the third year in a row as the population increases, after a decade when real progress was made. The underlying trend is stabilisation, when global agencies had hoped it would fall.

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Life is getting better for world’s poorest – but children bear greatest burden

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India and Bangladesh drive progress but UN study identifies vast inequalities between countries and among poor

The UN’s key global poverty index has identified that conditions for the world’s poorest 40% are improving more quickly than for those just above them.

The positive trend has been identified in the latest assessment of world poverty collected by the UN Development Programme, which quantifies relative impoverishment across the globe by multiple factors.

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Dutch council forces playground to close over noise complaints

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More than 4,000 sign petition to overturn decision, which aimed to appease neighbours

A national debate has been sparked in the Netherlands after a council ordered a primary school playground to be shut for being too noisy.

Questions have been raised in the Dutch parliament and a campaign has been launched to save the playground in the wake of the decision by Nijmegen council.

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Nepal jails Canadian former UN official for sexually abusing boys

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Aid worker Peter Dalglish, 62, sentenced for abusing two boys, aged 12 and 14

A former United Nations official has been jailed for sexually abusing children in Nepal after a trial that underscored the country’s growing appeal for foreign paedophiles.

Peter John Dalglish, 62, a high-profile humanitarian worker from Canada, was sentenced on Monday to two separate terms of nine years and seven years after being convicted last month.

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US government lawyer: detained children do not need soap and blankets – video

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Soap, toothbrushes and blankets are some of the items migrant children detained in the US do not need, a Trump administration official has claimed. Sarah Fabian, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, argued at the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit that such children do not always require certain sanitary products

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UK accused of profiteering on Syrians’ child citizenship fees

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Research shows government could make more than £5m by charging vulnerable children

The UK government could profit by more than £5m by charging children who have fled war-torn Syria to apply for British citizenship, according to research.

The revelation, based on the Home Office’s own data, has sparked accusations that the government is profiteering from vulnerable children and making a windfall profit by driving vulnerable families into debt.

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Uganda bans giving to child beggars in bid to stop exploitation

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Kampala officials say law aims to protect children and keep them off the streets but activists fear exploiters will develop new tactics

Ugandan officials have passed a law making it an offence to offer money, food or clothing to children living on the streets of the capital, in a controversial bid to stop exploitation and sexual abuse.

The Kampala Child Protection Ordinance 2019 also criminalises children loitering in public places, begging or soliciting, vending or hawking, and bans the sale of alcohol and drugs to children.

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How Stockholm became the city of work-life balance

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With flexible hours the norm, and almost two years’ parental leave for every child, Sweden’s capital boasts a happy and efficient workforce. What can other cities learn?

It is 3.30pm, and the first workers begin to trickle out of the curved glass headquarters of the Stockholm IT giant Ericsson.

John Langared, a 30-year-old programmer, is hurrying to pick up his daughter from school. He has her at home every other week, so tends to alternate short hours one week with long hours the next.

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Scotland will miss child poverty targets without vast cash boost – report

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Report highlights ‘massive gap between scale of ambition and scale of resources allocated’

The Scottish government will miss its own child poverty targets unless it substantially increases investment, according to a report on last December’s budget published by the independent Poverty and Inequality Commission.

The report highlights “a massive gap between the scale of Scotland’s ambition to tackle child poverty and the scale of resources allocated to delivering that commitment”, according to the Scottish branch of the charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).

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Thailand: disabled dog rescues baby buried alive by teenage mother

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Ping Pong alerts local villagers to infant’s location by digging to expose child’s legs

A disabled dog named Ping Pong has become the pride of his village in north-east Thailand, after rescuing a baby boy who had been buried alive by his teenage mother.

On Wednesday the canine’s sniffing and digging attracted the attention of farmers to a spot of ground in Ban Nong Kham village, in Cham Phuang district, north east of Bangkok. According to Ping Pong’s owner, the dog’s digging exposed the child’s legs, prompting locals to haul the infant to safety.

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