http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/9292430

Egypt : charged with being children : Egyptian police abuse of children in need of protection

"Egyptian police routinely arrest and detain children they consider 'vulnerable to delinquency' or 'vulnerable to danger.' These children have not committed any criminal offense, and in many cases the very basis for their arrest--that they are begging, homeless, truants, or mentally ill--shows that they are in need of protection and assistance rather than punishment. In place of care they are subjected to police beatings and sexual abuse and violence; detained in unsanitary and dangerous conditions for days or weeks, often with adult criminal detainees who abuse them; and denied adequate food, water, bedding, and medical care. The categories 'vulnerable to delinquency' and 'vulnerable to danger,' set forth in Egypt's Child Law ostensibly to protect vulnerable children, have become a pretext for mass arrest campaigns to clear the streets of children, to obtain information from children about crimes, to force children to move on to different neighborhoods, and to bring children in for questioning in the absence of evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The number of such arrests has sharply increased since 2000. There were more than 11,000 arrests of children on these charges in 2001 alone, accounting for one quarter of all arrests of children in Egypt that year. In many cases they are victims of abuse even before their arrest, having suffered violence in the home, been subjected to exploitive and hazardous labor conditions, or been denied education because their families could not afford to pay for their school fees, books, and uniforms.Concerted action to end abuses associated with the arrest and detention of children under these categories of the Child Law is lacking in part because children and their guardians have few avenues for effective legal recourse. Public prosecutors generally order children released without investigating police abuse and with only a cursory review of their cases. In many instances parents don't learn their child has been arrested until the child's release; in other cases police simply return the child to the street. This report, based on interviews with thirty-seven children and numerous government officials and child welfare experts, details the serious violations sketched above in the Greater Cairo area, encompassing the governorates of Cairo, Giza, and al Qaylubiya. Information from nongovernmental organizations working with children in other cities has established that the problem is not limited to Cairo, but persists in other urban areas. The widespread and systematic nature of the abuses we found highlight the need for structural reform in how the Egyptian government addresses children in need of protection or in conflict with the law."--Summary.

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