Infant Oral Mutilation (IOM) – a persistent harmful practice across Eastern and Central Africa

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Health

Infant oral mutilation also known as milk teeth extraction is a harmful practice, which has been inflicted upon children for centuries in Eastern and Central Africa and that is still being carried out today. Like many other harmful practices facing children, it poses serious health risks and in certain cases even leads to death. Since […]

Child labour in agriculture: a hazardous but common practice worldwide

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Labour

Worldwide, the majority of child labour (70 percent) is found in the agriculture sector (FAO, 2023). More specifically, today 112 million boys and girls are engaged in child labour in crop production, livestock, forestry, fisheries or aquaculture, which often involves working long hours and hazardous conditions. While many of the challenges can be traced back to root causes like poverty, […]

Unraveling Norway’s Barnevernet: Examining children’s best interests

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Freedom, Human Rights, Poverty

The Norwegian Child Protection Services, commonly known as Barnevernet, has been embroiled in controversy for over a decade due to its practice of removing children from their parents. This common practice, subjected to strong criticism by the international community, is not limited to any particular group since it often involves even the most vulnerable members […]

Afghan girls’ rights erased: the Taliban takeover aftermath

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Education, Exploitation, Human Rights, Labour, violence

Afghanistan is a country that boasts a rich culture and magnificent landscapes but that also is the land of people who have endured immense hardship. The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 has brought Afghanistan to the centre of human rights concerns. Economic crisis, poverty, famine, and children’s imperilled livelihoods form part of the takeover […]

TikTok versus children’s privacy: pros and cons of the most popular app for teens 

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Digital Environment, Education, Empowerment, Exploitation

Recently TikTok has been fined £12.7m for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform without parental consent. This is the latest step taken by public authorities against the most popular app, but many other states have adopted measures to limit its use to protect child and adult […]

The importance of digital literacy and empowerment of children on the African continent

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Digital Environment, Education, Empowerment, Human Rights

Children’s rights in the digital environment go beyond protective rights – rights which protect children from being exploited – to include rights to education, the right to participate and the right to health among many other proactive entitlements. Despite global progress towards the protection of children’s rights in the digital space, the interaction between children […]

Nightmarish children’s situations in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Health, Human Rights, Migration, refugees

The Za’atari refugee camp is the largest refugee center in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world (DW, 2022). According to United Nations statistics, more than half of the 81,000 refugees living in the Za’atari camp are minors (Aljazeera, 2016). Children within the camp are subjected to violations of their fundamental rights and […]

The civil war in Sudan: a grave humanitarian crisis for children

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Education, Exploitation, Freedom, Human Rights, Poverty, violence

Sudan’s past tensions and turmoil resurfaces in April 2023, with a civil war raging between the Sudanese military and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (‘RSF’). At the crossroads of tensions and violence are the Sudanese population and a particularly vulnerable group in the midst of war – its children. Toppling an existing humanitarian […]

The ‘black hole’ of child abduction: Japan’s child custody laws

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Human Rights

Japan is one of the only countries in the world that protects and maintains a sole custody system (Cosier & Grant, 2022). As a result, national laws in the East Asian country fail to comprehensively protect the rights of both parents through divorce and marital separation. In the wake of increasing cross-cultural and cross-national marriages […]