eNCA: Child detention highlighted

The United Nations Human Rights Council says it is difficult to record numbers of migrant children detained around the world including in South Africa.

“Documentation remains quite problematic because there’s a lot of under documentation of situations. There are countries that have detention, formal detention, that is more or less easy but is the kind of thing that many governments do not allow reporting or even if they allow reporting, what they show is the tip of the iceberg,” said UNHCR regional representative Sergio Calle Norena.

Norena was speaking at the screening of the Invisible Picture Show which documents the plight of children in detention centres in the United States, Australia, Greece and South Africa. It is part of End Child Detention Campaign. According to Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), hundreds of thousands of children fleeing war, violence, famine and poverty are affected by immigration detention and in South Africa the organisation has helped several children be released from the Lindela Repatriation Centre.

“Those children had no access to the outside world, they couldn’t contact their families, and they can’t contact anyone for assistance because they did not have access to phone lines. They could only access assistance if someone went in to see them,” said the LR’s Head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh.

As Lawyers for Human Rights Battles to save children from detention, the UNHCR says South Africa’s detention record is not the highest.

“South Africa is not the worst we have situations very critical in places like Congo that you get the child under detention and on top of it recruited for military activities,” said Norena.

But he adds youngsters in centres face rights violations.

“Lindela is a Centre for detention – it is a holding cell, a term the authorities use, for detention of the people that are supposed to be deported but the question is that sometimes it gets so much time to get the deportation back home if possible that it becomes serious violation of the rights of these poor children that remain in horrible conditions,” said Norena.

As part of the campaign two pupils from Parktown Girls High School were selected to interview some of the children who had been moved from Lindela. The pair shared their experience at the screening.

“The boys we interviewed were my age yet their sense of maturity and strength was far beyond their age and it's made me realise that these children were forced to grow up and become adults as a result of being treated like an adult criminal for merely not having the right papers. It made me angry that children in sort of refuge and protection are being detained,” said Kiara Govender.

“I think that the fact that they came to South Africa because they didn’t have any other choice yet they were still detained and they were treated terribly, what impacted me the most was that after this terrible treatment, after the fact that they were contemplating suicide they still had this vision and this perception of South Africa and they had this hope to believe in the fact that they can have a good life if they try,” said Annabel Fenton.

Lawyers for Human Rights have now started a petition calling for an end to child detention.

“In a year’s time this [petition] will presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council,” said Ramjathan-Keogh.