Departamentul de Stat a publicat Raportul <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/> Anual pe 2006 asupra Drepturilor Omului. Am postat mai jos capitolul referitor la copii. Raportul mentioneaza, printre altele, urmatoarele: - discrimination against Roma children continued during 2006. - child abuse and neglect continued to be serious problems, and public awareness of the issue remained poor. - the abandonment of children in maternity hospitals remained a problem with over 2,580 children left in hospitals by their parents during 2005. Between January and August 1,654 children were abandoned in hospitals. - insufficient efforts to resolve the continued high number of abandonment cases (60% of children were abandoned by their parents in hospitals, while the remaining 40% were abandoned in other places, including on the street). - the 2005 child welfare law and its implementation continued to create confusion among entities responsible for child welfare; judges, police, and social workers generally lacked clear instructions from the central government, training, and the resources necessary to implement the legislation. As a result, thousands of children remained institutionalized or in foster care rather than reunited with biological families or legally approved for adoption when family reunification was not possible. - abandoned children being forced to wait for several years in institutions or foster care while authorities searched for their biological parents to formalize their abandonment in court. The adoptions office announced that 1,136 children were adopted during 2005 and 1,067 were adopted through November. The government claimed there were only 883 children available for adoption in the country in December, and over 1,680 families that wanted to adopt children. However, the number of children available for adoption represented only a fraction of the estimated 9,000 children abandoned each year. These low figures were due to the state's non-recognition of the physical abandonment of children. - Roma children, who were disproportionately represented among abandoned children, continued to suffer racial discrimination and were rarely adopted by Romanian families. - Illegal child marriage was common within certain social groups, particularly the Roma. While there were limited statistics available on the extent of the problem, a recent UNDP survey found that 35 percent of Romani girls were married before reaching the age of 16. There were no government programs to address the problem of child marriages. - reports detailed the inhumane conditions children with physical and mental disabilities were subjected to in state institutions, including being bound, malnourished, and abused, including repetitive sexual abuse. - child labor was a problem -- between 40,000 and 80,000 children were involved in activities identified as the worst forms of child labor, including begging, drug dealing, stealing, prostitution, or were victims of child trafficking. - trafficking in children continued. ---------------------------- Vali "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of greatness." (Carlo Goldoni)
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." (Jimi Hendrix) Romania <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78834.htm> Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/> 2006 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor March 6, 2007 [...] Children The government was committed to children's rights and welfare, but competing priorities, bureaucratic inefficiency, and poorly allocated resources prevented this commitment from being fulfilled in practice. Public education was free and compulsory through the 10th grade or age 16. After the 10th grade, schools charged fees for books, which discouraged lower-income children, particularly Roma, from attending. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that approximately 90 percent of primary school-age children attended school. The highest level of education achieved by most children was secondary school, although Romani students had lower rates of attendance at all education levels (see section 5, Minorities). A general health insurance plan covers all children until age 18 or graduation from secondary school. All schools have medical units which supply first aid and carry out vaccination campaigns. Boys and girls had equal access to medical care in schools. All medical costs for children are waived, and most drugs are provided at little or no cost. Of the 11,352 persons with HIV/AIDS, approximately 75 percent are children between the ages of 15 to 19 who were infected in the late 1980s and early 1990s through contaminated blood transfusions and other medical procedures. Child abuse and neglect continued to be serious problems, and public awareness of the issue remained poor. Media reported several severe cases both in families and in child welfare institutions. Abuse observed within state institutions included children tied to cribs with bed sheets and prolonged incarceration for misbehavior. While the law protects children from abuse and neglect, the government has not established a mechanism to identify and treat abused and neglected children and their families. In 2004 police reported that 1,221 cases of abused and neglected children were registered, including 832 cases of rape, 284 cases of sexual intercourse with a minor, 114 cases of sexual perversion, and 101 cases of sexual corruption. Officials believed the number of unreported cases was much higher. At year's end there were 39 hotlines to receive and assess reports of child abuse and neglect and 22 specialized counseling services for centers for abused, neglected, and trafficked children. During the year hotline operators received approximately 5,400 calls reporting child abuse and neglect. During the year the government funded the creation of services for child victims of abuse and neglect as a national interest program; however, implementation was delayed due to the fact that no NGOs bid to provide services under this program. The abandonment of children in maternity hospitals remained a problem with over 2,580 children left in hospitals by their parents during 2005. Between January and August 1,654 children were abandoned in hospitals. The National Authority for the Protection of Children's Rights (ANPDC) in coordination with the Ministry of Health made some progress in discouraging child abandonment through prenatal counseling and training of hospital personnel. However, children's rights NGOs and local child welfare officials reported that these efforts were insufficient to resolve the continued high number of abandonment cases, resulting in many essentially healthy children being kept in hospitals because family reintegration or foster placement was unavailable. According to the Children's High Level Group study on the prevention of child abandonment, 60 percent of children abandoned by their parents were left in hospitals, while the remaining 40 percent were abandoned in other places, including on the street. The 2005 child welfare law and its implementation continued to create confusion among entities responsible for child welfare and to prolong the time that a child spent in the child welfare system before being reunited with biological parents or being adopted. NGOs and child protection authorities continued to report that judges, police, and social workers generally lacked clear instructions from the central government, training, and the resources necessary to implement the legislation. As a result, thousands of children remained institutionalized or in foster care rather than reunited with biological families or legally approved for adoption when family reunification was not possible. There were credible reports of attempts to force family reunification for abandoned children in cases where biological family members explicitly stated they did not want the children or in which there was a high risk of child abuse or child labor. There were many reports of abandoned children being forced to wait for several years in institutions or foster care while authorities searched for their biological parents to formalize their abandonment in court. The adoptions office announced that 1,136 children were adopted during 2005 and 1,067 were adopted through November. The government claimed there were only 883 children available for adoption in the country in December, and over 1,680 families that wanted to adopt children. However, the number of children available for adoption represented only a fraction of the estimated 9,000 children abandoned each year. These low figures were due to the state's non-recognition of the physical abandonment of children. There was no time limit on parents' absence from children for the children to be legally recognized as abandoned. Instead, government policy aimed to reintegrate children into biological families even years after physical abandonment. Many citizens wishing to adopt the children whom they already cared for as foster parents were forced to wait for the abandoning parents' statement of abandonment in court before the children could be declared legally adoptable. Many expressed fears that the foster children who had spent years in their care could be taken back by the biological parent or relatives and forced into begging on the street. The public child welfare system tracked approximately 95,000 children. More than half of these lived with extended families or in foster care, and approximately 32,000 lived in public and private institutions. The government continued to build smaller, family-type residential units for children in need of protection, including children with disabilities. The number of children in institutions continued to drop, from 31,000 in 2005 to 27,000 during the year, while the foster care system expanded to care for 19,300 children during the year compared with 16,800 children in 2005. Abandoned children under two years of age were only allowed to be placed in foster care, not released for adoption, if reunification with biological parents failed. Roma children, who were disproportionately represented among abandoned children, continued to suffer racial discrimination and were rarely adopted by Romanian families. Child welfare authorities did not have a system for providing labor market information, skills training, or job placement services for older children in residential care, and there was a high probability that they would gravitate to the streets, where they would be vulnerable to sexual exploitation and crime. The legal age of marriage is 18, but girls as young as 15 may marry in certain circumstances. Illegal child marriage was common within certain social groups, particularly the Roma. While there were limited statistics available on the extent of the problem, a recent UNDP survey found that 35 percent of Romani girls were married before reaching the age of 16. There were no government programs to address the problem of child marriages. Trafficking in girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation was a problem (see section 5, Trafficking). There also were isolated cases of children involved in prostitution for survival without third-party involvement, and some instances of boys as victims of trafficking. The country has a mechanism for the repatriation of unaccompanied Romanian children and for ensuring special measures for their protection. In 2005 approximately 3,250 children and their families benefited from protection and assistance in 12 transit centers in the country. The national agency for employment is legally required to provide up to 75 percent of the median national salary to employers for hiring persons between 16 and 25 years who are at risk of social exclusion, a group that includes youth reintegrating into society after spending time in state-care facilities or prison; young parents; and other categories of at-risk youth. The law provides that youth leaving the state institutional system may receive state assistance for an additional two years, during which they receive skills training for independent living. However, fewer than 1,000 youth benefited directly from this program during the year. During the year the NGO Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) reported that doctors in some hospitals were still encouraging parents to give up children born with disabilities. The abandonment of children with disabilities decreased steadily in recent years, as specialized rehabilitation services for such children became slightly more available. There were approximately 75,000 children with disabilities, of which 12,000 were in state care. The MDRI report detailed the physical and mental disabling of abandoned children due to the conditions they were subjected to in state institutions. Several reports detailed the inhumane conditions children with physical and mental disabilities were subjected to in state institutions, including being bound, malnourished, and abused. In one instance, authorities sought to cover up repetitive sexual abuse within a state institution by denying those who revealed the problem further access to the institution. No attempt was made to separate the abuser from the abused until well after the issue appeared in the press. Child labor was a problem (see sections 5, Trafficking, and 6.d.). An official complete list of hazardous child labor activities still did not exist by year's end. A draft list was submitted by the National Steering Committee to the Ministry of Labor, Social Solidarity and Family, in February. At year's end, the Directorate for EU Integration was analyzing the document. A National Statistics Institute survey released in 2003 on children's activities--the only nationwide survey to document the extent of child labor--found that between 40,000 and 80,000 children were involved in activities identified as the worst forms of child labor, including begging, drug dealing, stealing, prostitution, or were victims of child trafficking. Over 90 percent of these children were from rural areas. Street children, children in urban areas, and Romani children were the most vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation. While the government did not maintain official estimates on the number of homeless children living on the streets, police, social workers, and NGOs estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 children lived on the streets, depending on the season. During the year the government continued to administer six national programs for the protection of children's rights. The programs focused on closing large state-run institutions for children; developing services for children with disabilities; creating services for children victims of child abuse, neglect, and exploitation; implementing the national professional standards of child welfare services and monitoring children's rights; improving the foster care network; and creating and developing community social services to support family cohesion. NGOs implemented these programs with governmental funding from the national budget. Trafficking in Persons The law prohibits trafficking; however, trafficking in persons continued to be a serious problem. The law defines trafficking as the use of coercion to recruit, transport, harbor, or receive persons for exploitation. Coercion includes fraud or misrepresentation. Exploitation includes slavery, forced labor, prostitution, being a subject in pornography, organ theft, or other conditions that violate human rights. For minors under the age of 18, it is not necessary to prove coercion. The country was a point of both origin and transit for trafficking in persons. While the majority of trafficking cases involved international trafficking between the country and Western Europe, cases of domestic trafficking were also reported. Victims--primarily women and children--were trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, and forced begging. In 2005 the government identified 2,250 victims of trafficking. Recent trends indicated that traffickers rented private apartments, rather than using public bars and brothels, to conduct their illicit activities. The use of clandestine locations complicated the already difficult task of locating victims and allowed traffickers to operate with less concern of discovery by local authorities. According to the government, many of the child victims originated in the eastern and northern areas of the country. Boys were targeted for forced labor, petty theft activities, and solicitation. Girls were targeted for sexual exploitation and solicitation. Adult victims generally originated in the southern part of the country, and were recruited by traffickers with the promise of jobs abroad. During the year authorities noticed an increase in cases of forced labor involving victims between the ages of 30 and 40. Women between the ages of 18 and 25 were more likely to become victims of trafficking for sexual purposes than any other age group or gender. Children were more likely to become victims of trafficking if they came from orphanages, single parent homes and/or lived in a dysfunctional family environment (e.g. families with financial difficulties, abuse, or alcoholism). Trafficking victims endured poor, cramped living conditions. Traffickers ensured the victims' compliance through threats, violence, and the confiscation of travel documents. Government officials reported that small groups of Romanian citizens were the most common operators of trafficking rings; several domestic prostitution rings were also known to be active in trafficking victims into, through, and from the country. In recent years the number of women and minors involved in trafficking has increased; most of these individuals acted as recruiters. Most victims were trafficked through or out of the country under seemingly legal means. Traffickers used employment agencies and travel companies as fronts for their activities. It was not difficult for traffickers to obtain legal work papers for the victims they intended to traffic. It was relatively easy for young women to legally secure visas for work as waitresses or domestics in destination countries; however, once out of the country and removed from any support structure, such women were extremely vulnerable to becoming trafficking victims. Most women trafficked for sexual exploitation were recruited by persons they knew or by newspaper advertisements. A friend or relative frequently made the initial offer, often telling the victim that she would obtain a job as a baby sitter or waitress. The crimes commonly associated with human trafficking, such as rape and false imprisonment, rarely occurred within the country's borders; rather, such abuses began when the victim who had been deceived about the nature of the work, arrived in the destination country. The law provides for five to 15 years' imprisonment for trafficking in minors or for multiple victims; if a victim suffers serious bodily harm or health problems; or if the trafficking is done by a public servant during his or her official duties. A sentence of five to 25 years is mandated for trafficking that leads to the death or suicide of the victim. These penalties are increased by two to three years if the trafficker belongs to an organized crime group and by five years if coercion is applied against minors. Under 2005 revisions to the law, victims of trafficking who are arrested for prostitution or begging cannot be prosecuted for these offenses. In practice, however, victims were frequently not recognized as victims of trafficking upon arrest and were therefore treated as criminals. Only after a period of investigation were they typically declared "victims." [...]
