UKCHR'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHILDREN'S
RIGHTS CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE HUMAN RIGHTS INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE
(HRIA) 11 SEPTEMBER 2000 - 15 SEPTEMBER 2000. AT WESTMINSTER CENTRAL
HALL, LONDON SW1
PART 1.
CHILDREN IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Britain is the worst country in the
European Union in which to be a child, according to a study by UNICEF
for the Institute for Public Policy Research. The UK comes out bottom
of the table out of 15 countries on three of the seven indicators
of child poverty, and below average on two others.
According to this damning report,
Britain has one of the worst records on childhood poverty in the industrialised
world, worse than the rates for Turkey, Poland and Hungary. Of the
23 countries surveyed, only Italy, the United States and Mexico have
a worse record.
When it comes to absolute poverty,
i.e. households with an income below the official US poverty line,
Britain languishes in the bottom quarter. Of 19 countries in the analysis
of absolute poverty, Britain came 14th, just above Italy. Nearly every
European country has a lower rate of children living in poor households.
UNICEF accuses Britain of failing
on five key indicators, namely the high rate of child poverty, the
high numbers of lone-parent families suffering from poverty, workless
households, people on low wages and people on low benefits.
Child poverty is one of the most serious
problems affecting Britain; and yet Ministers go on to make empty
promises. The 1p cut in the rate of income tax could instead have
been used to help the most vulnerable people.
The independent Family Policy Studies
Centre says that the 21% of dependent children living in lone-parent
households has trebled from the 7% in 1972. The number of lone parents
has trebled in the past 25 years. There were about 1.6 million such
parents and 2.8 million dependents by the mid-nineties, compared with
about 1/2 million lone parents and 1 million dependent children in
1971. The fastest-growing group of lone parents is single, never-married
mothers, 24% in 1984 , but 42% in 1997.
More than 150,000 children under 16
experience their parents' divorce. Almost 38% of babies are born outside
marriage, compared with 7.2% in 1964. The number of children living
in poverty rose from 1.4 million to 4.4 million between 1968 and 1998.
The number of children living in one- parent families has nearly trebled
in 25 years from 1 million to 2.8 million. 150,000 children live in
families of divorced couples, nearly double the 1971 figure.
UKCHR'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHILDREN'S
RIGHTS CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE HUMAN RIGHTS INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE
- HRIA. 11 SEPTEMBER 2000 - 15 SEPTEMBER 2000. AT WESTMINSTER CENTRAL
HALL, LONDON SW1
PART - 2
CHILDREN IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
The second part of UKCHR's contribution
to the Children's Rights Conference
CHILD ABUSE
Although there has been greater public
awareness of child abuse since the sixties and much pious talk from
successive government leaders, the problem remains as intractable
as ever. We should be asking ourselves why indeed this is so and what
are the factors that perpetuate the problem.
A recent £13.5 million inquiry
has revealed how thousands of children in public care were abandoned
to years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The report by Sir
Ronald Waterhouse, a former High Court judge, catalogued "deeds
of appalling mistreatment and wickedness" in children's homes
in Wales.
The 937-page report, 'Lost in Care',
published after a three-year inquiry, said that in one centre of child
abuse there was "a harsh institutional regime in which, for many,
there was a heavy atmosphere of fear ......for many children who were
consigned to this centre, in the 10 or so years of its existence as
a community home, it was a form of purgatory or worse, from which
they emerged more damaged than when they had entered, and for whom
the future had become even more bleak".
Police are now investigating what
could be one of Britain's biggest child abuse scandals, involving
as many as 20,000 children in council care in the west country in
the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Officers found a disturbing pattern of abuse
at the Bristol homes. Many of the suspected victims were boys and
girls who passed through the centres before moving back home, to foster
homes or another institution. Meanwhile the Metropolitan Police are
investigating claims that 200 children in the London Borough of Lambeth
may have been sexually and physically abused between 1974 and 1994.
Successive Home Office ministers have
reacted in knee-jerk fashion to individual reports of child abuse.
There has not been a systematic, in- depth and far-reaching review
of this widespread and devastating problem. We should be asking ourselves,
for example, whether some of the adult population, for genetic or
cultural reasons, are only capable of obtaining sexual gratification
in this manner and, if so, what are the solutions. Furthermore, many
of the abusers are senior local government civil servants. Have they
been receiving protection through the membership of secret organisations
and professional and old-boy networks? None of the public-funded and
expensive high-level inquiries have said so much as a single word
on the subject.
It is not without interest that in
the past few years several elderly men in their 70s and 80s, some
of them senile and unable to answer for themselves, have been tried
and convicted on charges involving the abuse of children 30 or 40
years ago. Few current abusers have been charged. Is this a ploy to
falsely assure the public that the authorities are really doing something
about the problem after all, whilst possibly rewarding, with inaction,
current abusers for their political and other loyalties. In any case,
all these matters have to be looked into in detail.
After all, in the medical profession,
incompetents and psychopaths are permitted to practise upon and harm
vulnerable patients, when the Department of Health and even members
of the local public are aware of, and are able to identify, these
culprits.
