UN - New York
The
United States has the world's highest rate
of children in detention, including more than 100,000 in
immigration-related custody that violates international law, the author of a
United Nations study said on Monday.
Worldwide
more than 7 million people under age 18 are held in jails and police custody,
including 330,000 in immigration detention centres, independent expert Manfred
Nowak said.
Children
should only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time
possible, according to the United Nations Global
Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
"The United States is
one of the countries with the highest numbers - we still have more than 100,000
children in migration-related detention in the (U.S.)," Nowak told a news
briefing.
"Of
course separating children, as was done by the Trump administration,
from their parents and even small children at the Mexican-U.S. border is
absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I would
call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children."
There was
no immediate reaction from U.S. authorities. Novak said U.S. officials had not
replied to his questionnaire sent to all countries.
He said
the United States had ratified major international treaties such as those
guaranteeing civil and political rights and banning torture, but was the only
country not to have ratified the pact on the rights of children.
"The
way they were separating infants from families only in order to deter irregular
migration from Central America to the United States to me constitutes inhuman
treatment, and that is absolutely prohibited by the two treaties," said
Nowak, a professor of international law at the University of Vienna.
The
United States detains an average of 60 out of every 100,000 children in its
justice system or immigration-related custody, Nowak said, the world's highest
rate, followed by countries such as Bolivia, Botswana and Sri Lanka.
Mexico,
where many Central American migrants have been turned back at the U.S. border,
also has high numbers, with 18,000 children in immigration-related detention
and 7,000 in prisons, he said.
The U.S.
rate compared with an average of five per 100,000 in Western Europe and 14-15
in Canada, he said.
At least
29,000 children, mainly linked to Islamic State fighters, are held in northern
Syria and in Iraq - with French citizens among the biggest group of foreigners,
Nowak added.
Even if
some of these children had been child soldiers, he said, they should be mainly
treated as victims, not perpetrators, so that they could be rehabilitated and
reintegrated in society. – Reuters
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