4 January 2013
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
today called on the Central African Republic (CAR) to immediately stop
child recruitment by rebel groups and pro-government militias amidst
reports of increasing use of this practice.
“A number of
rebel groups and various pro-government militias have become more active in
recent weeks in the capital city of Bangui and across the country,”
said the UNICEF Representative for CAR, Souleymane Diabate.
“Reliable
sources have informed us that children are newly being recruited among
their ranks. These reports are of serious concern.”
“Our team on the ground is working with partners to monitor,
verify, and respond to grave violations of child rights, including
recruitment into armed groups – those at greater risk are children
who have lost their homes, are separated from their families or were
formerly associated with armed groups,” Mr. Diabate added.
According to UNICEF,
even before the latest round of violence in CAR
erupted in December last year, about 2,500 children – both girls and
boys – were associated with multiple armed groups, including
self-defence groups, in CAR.
The UN agency estimates that this number will
rise because of the recent conflict.
Over the past weeks,
widespread looting and violence occurred in the country as an alliance of
rebel groups known as ‘Séléka’ attacked several
towns in the northeast and threatened to march on Bangui.
This week,
the
group reportedly halted their advance on the capital and agreed to start
peace talks in Gabon.
CAR has a history of political
instability and recurring armed conflict.
State authority is weak in many
parts of the country, which are largely controlled by rebel groups and
criminal armed groups, according to the UN Department of Political Affairs
(DPA).
Coupled with ethnic tensions in the north, frequent
armed incursions by rebel elements from neighbouring countries and the
presence of members of the armed Ugandan group known as the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA), have added to insecurity and instability in CAR,
which also has 170,000 people displaced internally.
UNICEF said
more than 300,000 children have already been affected by the violence in
CAR and its consequences, including through recruitment, family separation,
sexual violence, forced displacement and having limited access to education
and health facilities.
In particular, the agency is highly
concerned about the involvement of youth under 18 years of age who may be
forced to fight, carry supplies, perform other support roles and be abused
as sex slaves by armed groups.
“Recent commitments under
international law by the Government and some rebel groups to keep children
out of the fighting must be respected,”
said Mr. Diabate.
“All
violations must stop. It is critical that everything is done to protect
these children and keep their families safe.”
UNICEF has
worked in CAR since 2007
with both the Government and rebel factions to
secure the release of more than 1,000 girls and boys from armed groups and
self-defence groups and support their reintegration into families and
communities.
However, the volatile security situation has
hampered the delivery of humanitarian assistance to affected communities
and has led UNICEF to relocate 14 international staff and consultants last
week.
The agency has established an operational crisis centre for CAR in
the city of Yaounde, Cameroon, where it said it will continue to work with
partners to conduct emergency activities.
In relation to the
latest violence, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council
have condemned the attacks involving ‘Seleka’ and called for a
halt hostilities.
They have also called on both the Government and the
rebels to resolve the current crisis through dialogue, and to abide by the
2008 Libreville Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which was signed by the
Government and the three main rebel groups and which helped bring an end to
conflicts inside CAR.
The Secretary-General’s Special
Representative and Head of the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in CAR
(BINUCA), Margaret Vogt, has remained in close dialogue with the key
parties and has offered support to political negotiations.
UN News Service
(Washington, DC) January 4, 2013
–
The Chinese government’s further tightening of internet
controls and mandating real name registration threaten security and privacy
of internet users.
On December 28, 2012, the Standing Committee
of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislative body,
passed the “Decision to Strengthen the Protection of Online
Information.”
The Decision contains troubling provisions that require
internet access and telecommunications providers to collect personal
information about users when they sign up for internet access, landline, or
mobile phone service.
Paragraph 6 of the Decision also applies to service
providers that allow users to publish online, who must be able to connect
pseudonyms to real identities when citizens post information.
In the days
following the decision, several well-known online activists found that
their weibo micro-blogging accounts had been shut down.
“These new mandates send a chilling message to China’s
netizens,”
said Cynthia Wong, senior researcher on the internet and
human rights at Human Rights Watch.
“The government’s decision
is an effort to silence critics and curb anonymity online by further
conscripting internet companies to monitor and censor users.”
“Real name registration” requirements allow authorities
to more easily identify online commentators or tie mobile use to specific
individuals, limiting anonymous expression, “whistleblowers”
who spotlight official corruption, and the right to privacy.
Even without
energetic enforcement, the law will suppress critical speech as users may
fear that anything they post critical of the government could lead to
reprisals.
Although the right to freedom of expression is
guaranteed in article 35 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic
of China, the Chinese government continues to regularly impose sharp curbs,
including through broad internet censorship, surveillance practices, and
prosecution of citizens and journalists for their online activity.
For
example, in February 2012, writer Zhu Yufu was sentenced to seven years in
prison for “inciting subversion of state power” because he
posted a poem online calling for political reform in the wake of the Arab
Spring.
Real Name Registration Background
This is not the
government’s first attempt to impose real name registration.
In 2011,
the government promulgated registration requirements for weibo, a
Twitter-like service, and previously tried to impose similar rules for
blogging services in 2007.
In 2010, two US companies stopped registering
internet domain names in China because of expanded registration rules that
the companies deemed too intrusive of their customers’ privacy.
To
date, the Chinese government has not consistently implemented or enforced
these directives, though real name registration was a key part of the
internet strategy released in 2010.
However, the new action by
the Standing Committee may signal renewed commitment to the real name
approach and increased enforcement of existing controls.
This decision
follows a series of high-profile corruption exposés that were widely
discussed online, despite government efforts to control media coverage, as
well as increased use of social media to mobilize citizen action.
For
example, weibo users and bloggers became important watchdogs in revealing
corruption and governmental cover-up attempts in the wake of the July 2011
Wenzhou high-speed train crash.
Public outcry forced officials to respond:
railway workers unearthed the first train car for analysis after initially
burying it, and local officials rescinded an order they had given to
lawyers to refuse cases from the families of crash victims.
Similarly, Shaanxi safety official Yang Dacai was removed from office
after a photo of him smiling at the site of a deadly bus crash and wearing
a luxury watch went viral online in August 2012.
Outraged netizens quickly
posted photos of Yang wearing other expensive watches and discovered that
Yang owned property worth millions of dollars, at odds with his public
servant salary.
Given the otherwise tightly controlled media in China, the
internet remains one of the few sources for independent information and an
increasingly powerful tool for citizens to call for government
accountability.
The Decision also follows a series of
commentaries published by state-run news outlets in December 2012
describing the internet as a haven for bullies, rumor-mongers, and cyber
criminals.
The Standing Committee cited the need to safeguard privacy and
information security as justification for the Decision.
However, the real
name requirement may exacerbate security and privacy risks instead.
For
example, South Korea, in response to concern about online bullying, passed
a law in 2007 requiring all websites to collect identity information of
users who wished to post content on social media services.
The government
was forced to abandon the law after hackers breached databases used to
comply with the real name system, compromising the privacy of about 35
million social media users.
The South Korean Supreme Court eventually ruled
the law an unconstitutional restraint on expression, finding it ineffective
at addressing online bullying.
In China’s case, the Standing
Committee has not offered a persuasive case that there are sufficiently
serious threats that justify such draconian restrictions on privacy and
expression online, especially restrictions that could also harm
users’ security.
Both the right to privacy and the right
to free expression entail a corollary right to communicate anonymously.
While this right is not absolute, the importance of allowing individuals to
speak anonymously has been recognized as worthy of protection to encourage
speech that might invite reprisals.
In his 2011 report to the Human Rights
Council, the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the
right to freedom of opinion and expression explicitly called upon states to
“ensure that individuals can express themselves anonymously online
and to refrain from adopting real-name registration systems.”
Human
Rights Watch believes that users should have the ability to comment
anonymously online, particularly in countries such as China where the
government persecutes critics.
Service Providers Conscripted for
Censorship
The Standing Committee’s decision also directs
network service providers to “strengthen management of
information” published by users, a phrase used to signify privatized
censorship by internet and telecommunications companies.
All service
providers in China are already responsible for restricting access to a wide
range of “illegal content,” defined broadly and implemented in
a way to prohibit speech that reflects a line different from the official
government position, or contains information that the government deems too
politically sensitive.
A directive to strengthen such efforts may indicate
increased pressure on private companies to further limit use of social
media, search engines, and other key online tools.
In addition,
companies that provide virtual private networks (VPNs) that circumvent
China’s “Great Firewall” have also reported expanded
interference with the use of their services.
VPNs can allow users to secure
their communications over an internet connection.
Businesses, journalists,
and ordinary users rely on VPNs to encrypt internet traffic and evade
China’s filtering system.
“Social media has become
an incredible tool for public accountability in China, but these new
controls certainly undermine that potential,”
Wong said.
“If
the government is serious about fighting rampant corruption, it
shouldn’t silence whistleblowers and ordinary citizens, or enlist
companies to do it on their behalf. Instead, it should allow people to
speak out and to protect their identities online.”
Human
Rights Watch Press release
