[child-rights] Spain and Morocco abuse child migrants

(Madrid, May 7, 2002) Moroccan migrant children in Spain are frequently
beaten by police and abused by staff and other children in overcrowded,
unsanitary residential centers, Human Rights Watch charged in a report
released today. Spain also summarily expels children as young as eleven to
Morocco, where Moroccan police beat and ill-treat them and then abandon
them to the streets.

The sixty-two page report, "Nowhere to Turn: State Abuses of Unaccompanied
Migrant Children by Spain and Morocco," documents widespread abuse of
Moroccan children who travel alone to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and
Melilla, located on the North African coast. Human Rights Watch
interviewed dozens of current and former migrant children during a
five-week investigation in Spain and Morocco. Many children had been
summarily expelled multiple times.

"No one is caring for these children," said Clarisa Bencomo, researcher in
the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "Spanish officials
violate these migrant children's human rights in an effort to drive them
back to Morocco, and Moroccan officials punish them for having left."

Conditions in two Spanish residential centers, the San Antonio Center in
Ceuta and Purísima Concepción Fort in Melilla, were especially bad, with
substandard facilities, serious overcrowding, and no recreational space or
leisure-time activities for children. Children whom Human Rights Watch
interviewed consistently testified that staff at these centers frequently
beat and threatened them. Staff at the San Antonio Center operated a
"punishment cell" where they locked up children for up to a week without
adequate bedding and sometimes without access to a toilet. Younger and
smaller children reported being attacked or robbed by older or larger
children at these centers while staff watched without intervening.

"Children told us they felt safer living on the streets than in the
overcrowded, dangerous residential centers Spain provides for their care,"
Bencomo said.

Human Rights Watch charged that Spain denied education to the vast
majority of unaccompanied migrant children in Ceuta and many children in
Melilla, and that staff at both public health clinics and residential
centers arbitrarily denied health care to ill and injured children in
Ceuta.

Spanish law guarantees unaccompanied foreign children care and protection
on the same basis as Spanish children, including the right to education,
health care, temporary residency status, and protection from repatriation
when repatriation would put the child in danger. Local officials in Ceuta
and Melilla regularly disregard the law, arbitrarily denying children care
and protection. Central government officials admitted they do not
regularly monitor children's treatment or bring serious abuse cases to
court. In many instances that Human Rights Watch investigated, the bodies
charged with protecting children - the police and the Departments of
Social Welfare - were the source of abuses.

"The Spanish government says it cares about children's rights, but it does
little if anything to enforce its own laws," Bencomo said. "Whenever we
asked government officials what they were doing to protect children, they
always claimed it was someone else's responsibility."

Spain expelled children from Ceuta and Melilla by handing them over to
Moroccan police, who beat and ill-treated them. The Moroccan police then
released the children onto unfamiliar streets, often late at night. Even
very young children were left to fend for themselves because Morocco
lacked adequate provisions for the protection of children living outside a
family environment, and Moroccan authorities typically only intervened
when a child was suspected of committing a serious criminal offense. Care
in many Moroccan child detention centers was grossly inadequate, but
judges had few alternatives to these facilities if they could not safely
return a child to his or her family.

Human Rights Watch called on the Government of Spain to ensure that
unaccompanied migrant children have access to residential care, education,
emergency services and other health care, and temporary residency
documents, as required by Spanish law. Residential centers for
unaccompanied children should meet basic standards of health and safety
and provide children the protection and care necessary for their well
being. Spain should not repatriate or expel children unless the government
has verified that the child is to be returned either to a family member
who is willing and able to care for the child or to an appropriate social
service agency in the child's country of origin, and that the child's
return poses no risk or danger to the child's safety or to the safety of
his or her relatives.

Human Rights Watch called on the Government of Morocco to facilitate the
return to Morocco of unaccompanied migrant children when it is in the
children's best interest and to provide resources for their care and
protection, including designating a social welfare agency to receive
unaccompanied migrant children who have been returned from Spain and,
where appropriate, return them to their families. Morocco should protect
unaccompanied migrant children who have been returned to Morocco from
Spain from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and other abuses at the
hands of police.

The organization also called on both governments to work together to
ensure that children are repatriated from Spain to Morocco only when they
are returned to family members who are willing and able to care for them
or to an appropriate social service agency.

"Spanish or Moroccan police should not be the agency responsible for
repatriating unaccompanied migrant children," Bencomo said.