A summary of issues discussed at the 

Children’s Human rights morning briefing
24th of March, 2005

The meeting was opened at 09:00 by Julia Ekstedt who presented the speakers of the day, Eva Loftman and Janet Symes, from Save the Children Sweden and Save the Children UK. The topic discussed this morning was "Children's situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories".

Eva began by holding a breif introduction of how Save the Children work to improve the conditions under which children live in the occupeid Palestinian territories. She explained that Save the Children Sweden is in close contact with Swedish authorities and assists the Swedish Foreign Minister in how to adress this topic in her speeches.  

Janet, who is based in Jerusalem, gave a short breifing on how the current situation is on ground. She mentioned that one important issue is the right to protection, which concerns both palestinian and israeli children.

Another pressing issue, she explained, is the policy of closure and cerfew that is imposed on the palestinians. The issue of closure is divided into two parts, external closure and internal closure. The external closure concerns all the palestinians who are not able to enter into Israel. Only a very little part of the population is able to get work permits, which means that they get isolated in the palestinian territory. The internal closure concerns roadblocks and checkpoints inside Palestinian territory. Freedom of movement is restricted for palestinian inside Palestinian territory and the right to access to health and education is resticted. 

Eva then continued by raising  the issue of child detainees. She explained that Save the Children is cooperating with legal Palestinian orginanisations to help children released from prison to overcome the inhuman treatment that they have suffered. These children are often detained for having been suspected or seen  throwing stones at Israeli forces. The allegations are often very vague, and the children are not afforded the right to child right protection since they are prosecuted under military law, which enables the Israeli forces to imprison children from the age of 12.

The problem of house demolitions was then brought up and Eva explained that children are extremely affected. An issue that makes this problem even worse is the fact that the possibilities for rehabilitaion is very poor and many children are left without any help.

General questions and comment followed and Ulrika Sundberg from the Swedish Permanent Mission in Geneva gave a status update of how the negotiations are moving on. The meeting was closed at 09:55.