A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminilization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV

Each year in the United States, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, queer, questioning and gender non-conforming (LGBT) people and people living with HIV come in contact with the criminal justice system and fall victim to similar miscarriages of justice.According to a recent national study, a startling 73% of all LGBT people and PLWH surveyed have had face-to-face contact with police during the past five years.1 Five percent of these respondents also report having spent time in jail or prison, a rate that is markedly higher than the nearly 3% of the U.S. adult population whoare under some form of correctional supervision (jail, prison, probation, or parole) at any point in time.In fact, LGBT people and PLWH, especially Native and LGBT people and PLWH of color, aresignificantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system, from policing, to adjudication,to incarceration. Yet their experiences are often overlooked, and little headway has been madein dismantling the cycles of criminalization that perpetuate poor life outcomes and push already vulnerable populations to the margins of society.The disproportionate rate of LGBT people and PLWH in the criminal system can best be understoodin the larger context of widespread and continuing discrimination in employment, education, socialservices, health care, and responses to violence

Unaccompanied minors seeking for protection in the European Union: will a fair and adequate asylum system ever see the light?

SUMMARY 1. Introduction. – 2. Coping with an “Enhanced Vulnerability”: the Case of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Minors. – 3. Accommodating Migrants and Promoting the Development of the Host Country: Two Birds with One Stone? – 4. The Protection of Asylum Seeking Minors in Europe: an Overview. – 4.1. The Protection of Unaccompanied Minors Under the European Convention on Human Rights. – 4.2. The European Union: the Quest to Accommodate and Protect Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Minors. – 5. Rethinking the Common European Asylum System to Provide an Effective Response to the Migration Challenge. – 5.1. The Current Deficiencies of the CEAS and the Struggle to Ensure the Protection of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Minors. – 5.2. Reforming the CEAS to Foster the Best Interest of the Child: a (Possible) Step Forward. – 6. New Proposals, Old Problems: Will an Adequate Asylum System Ever See the Light?

Getting Kids Out of Harm\u27s Way: The United States\u27 Obligation to Operationalize the Best Interest of the Child Principle for Unaccompanied Minors

The government estimates by the end of the fiscal year over 90,000 children will enter the United States. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 58% of these children were forcibly displaced and are potentially in need of international protection. However, in U.S. immigration law unaccompanied children are often seen as illegal migrants and law enforcement prioritizes their “alien” status over their status as children. As the crisis escalates, many of these children are being housed at emergency shelters in icebox-cold cells – nicknamed hierleras, Spanish for freezers, with no access to food or medical care, while DHS attempts to establish which children may have an available sponsor in the United States to be released to and initiates removal proceedings against each child without valid immigration status. The only protections for these children are discrete and narrow forms of immigration relief. Such relief depends on if someone such as an attorney identifies the available relief and assists the child with the application process. Yet, children are not entitled to government-funded counsel and must proceed before an immigration judge alone. For other children there is no available immigration relief; but they have witnessed unspeakable horrors and have been the victims of violence and abuse, yet there is no answer to their calls for help. They are not simply migrants crossing international borders; they are emblematic of an international humanitarian crisis rapidly unfolding in Central America. The current crisis on the border has underscored the profound structural deficiencies in our federal agencies to meet the needs of unaccompanied immigrant children – as children. This essay contributes to the ongoing discussion on how to best handle the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border this summer. Specifically, the essay argues that the United States must provide a solution that both keeps the children in need of international protection out of harm’s way, and is grounded in international human rights law and practice. The best interest of the child principle must be operationalized in all U.S. government responses for children through a congressionally created interagency “Child Protection Corps.” Further, U.S. immigration protections need to flexible enough to create an avenue for a child to remain in this country, if it is not in the best interest for the child to return to his or her home country. Specifically, DHS should consider exercising its administrative prerogatives such as prosecutorial discretion and humanitarian parole to provide children in need of protection with a safe haven. Overall, this essay seeks to specify discrete steps for Congress and the executive branch to take in addressing significant structural gaps in the federal government’s capacity to provide for the best interest of each child in need of international sanctuary

Psy-expertise, therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development

Children in an Urban Tanzania

One in four children being born in today‟s Tanzania is likely to be growing up in an urban area. It is projected to be one in three in the short time span of one generation. Tanzania is more urban than it perceives itself and official figures disclose. Urban Tanzanians feel emotionally rooted in their villages of origin rather than in the cities and towns where one quarter of the total population lives. Urbanisation figures fail to account for extensive high density areas just because they are not officially classified as urban. Despite a persisting rural self-representation, Tanzania is one of the fastest urbanising countries in one of the world‟s fastest urbanising regions. The nearly half urban population aged 0-18 may well be the first truly urbanised generation in the history of the nation.\ud As urbanisation is rapidly transforming the physical, social and economic landscape of the country, how has Tanzania equipped itself to provide adequate water, sanitation, health care, education, protection services to meet the fundamental needs and rights of a swelling number of urban children and communities? National policy and programmatic frameworks still broadly target rural poverty, perceived as the nation‟s core development challenge. Urban poverty, growing alongside urban affluence, remains mainly unaccounted for and, as a result, unaddressed. The condition of poor and marginalised urban groups escapes official urban figures. Standard urban-rural disaggregation generates statistical averages that overshadow sub-municipal disparities. Also poverty lines tend to underestimate actual poverty. Based on mere consumption levels, they disregard living conditions, thus leaving unaccounted for several necessities that poor households are normally forced to acquire through cash purchases in a monetised urban economy. As a result, urban poverty is broadly overlooked and poor urban children, lost in skewed official estimates and tucked away in peripheral unplanned urban fringes, risk remaining invisible in development policy and investments. In-depth analysis based on sub-municipal data is urgently needed to accurately measure urban poverty in its multiple dimensions of income poverty, inadequate access to basic services and powerlessness.\ud The assumption underpinning the limited attention that has been paid to urban poverty is that of an urban advantage. Undoubtedly, cities enjoy an edge over rural areas. Urbanisation drives the development of a whole nation. High population concentration, economies of scale, proximity and agglomeration make cities engines of growth. They offer greater avenues for livelihood and education, and should be expected to afford children better opportunities for survival, growth and development than rural areas. Better economic resources and political visibility hold a potential to offer higher incomes and enhance the scope for the government and the private sector to fund services and infrastructure. Density, favouring economies of scale, promises to favour delivering of essential services.\ud Children, adolescents and youth are attracted to city life, aspiring to access better jobs, higher education and a richer cultural life. Urban areas are also hubs of technological innovation, social exchange and mass communication. Urban children can draw from resources that are denied to rural peers.\ud The urban advantage, however, is being eroded. Provision of social services and infrastructure is failing to keep pace with growing demand being generated by urbanisation.\ud  Availability of basic services, expected to be markedly higher in urban centres as compared to remote rural areas, has been declining. Decreasing urban access to improved sources of drinking water over the past decade epitomises this trend. The traditional urban – rural social sector performance gap has been narrowing against most indicators in the areas of education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation. In some cases gaps have been actually bridged and rural areas are even outperforming urban centres.\ud 7\ud  As urban social sector performance is declining, it is likely that it is the poor, underserviced communities to remain unreached. Although statistical averages prevent any level of sub-municipal analysis, limited data available on access to basic services and health and education outcomes in low-income urban communities suggests that the urban poor may be faring even worse than their rural counterparts.\ud  Urbanisation growth is projected to continue in the future. If the present scenarios are not going to be addressed now, they are likely to deteriorate further. As density increases and unplanned settlements become more congested, investments in social facilities and infrastructure can only be expected to become costlier, both financially and socially.\ud If not properly leveraged, the potential advantage that cities offer can turn into a disadvantage. A concentration of children in areas where services and infrastructure are lacking is a major disadvantage. Children residing in overcrowded and degraded settlements characterised by poorly managed sanitation systems, inadequate provision of safe water, inefficient solid waste management are faced with one of the most life-threatening environments possible – with climate change posed to increase vulnerability further. Such a disadvantage can be daunting in a situation where the overwhelming majority of urban dwellers reside in unplanned settlements, which in Tanzania‟s primate city, Dar es Salaam, are estimated to accommodate over 80 percent of the population, one of the highest proportions in Sub-Saharan Africa.\ud Availability and access are not synonymous. In most cities, availability of basic services does not translate necessarily into access. Higher quality and availability of services needs to be equally distributed across social classes and space to achieve equal access by all citizens. The difference between successfully exploiting the urban advantage and passively reeling under the urban disadvantage can be made by the way access to resources is managed. A competent, accountable and equitable system of local governance can make that difference. Good local governance can help overcome the disparities that still bar access by the poor to safe water and sanitation, quality education, adequate health care and nutrition, affordable transport, secure land tenure and decent housing. Accountable local authorities, proactive communities and enabled children are the key actors in a local governance process leading to the creation of cities friendly to children.\ud Young people are already participating in local governance processes. They are active in children‟s municipal councils, children‟s school councils and other similar institutions. Avenues for child participation needs to be strengthened and opened to all children, not only in institutional settings, but also in families and communities having primary responsibility for children‟s well being. Cities and communities provide the most relevant scale for genuine children‟s participation, where young people can effectively engage in addressing the problems that directly affect them.\ud Though universal human rights and global development goals are set at the international and national levels, it is ultimately in a myriad of local Tanzanian communities that they are expected to be fulfilled – in the family, the school, the ward and ultimately the city. The city government offers an ideal platform for converging a plethora of sectoral interventions independently targeting children and delivering them holistically, at the local level where children live. The horizon of children is local. Within the local dimension, children‟s goals and rights can be met and monitored by duty bearers who have primary responsibility for their fulfilment. If development goals and human rights are not implemented locally, they are likely to remain abstract declarations of intent and sterile. Local authorities, communities, families and children together can transform today‟s child unfriendly urban settings into child-friendly cities – as cities friendly to children are friendly to all

Slavery and human trafficking international law and the role of the World Bank

This paper reviews the international legal framework applicable to the World Bank and member states on contemporary forms of slavery, in particular, trafficking. The Palermo trafficking protocol is specially analyzed. Moreover, the paper refers to the preventive framework constituted by human rights obligations, particularly those of international labor law. The World Bank's mandate appears to permit preventive action. The articles expressly refer to the goal of improving conditions of labor. On one hand, the Bank's present practice includes work in areas linked to human rights, which reveals tacit agreement by member states. In addition, human rights obligations have been widely accepted by the international community, though implementation is poor. Moreover, poverty causes vulnerability to slavery-like practices, and they perpetuate poverty. A modest set of recommendations and areas in which further research is needed are included. The paper encourages mainstreaming the issues analyzed strategically in the Bank's core operations (concerning processes and results), with country-led and country specific efforts, identifying the issues important for poverty reduction and growth.Human Rights,Population Policies,Child Labor,Gender and Law,Post Conflict Reconstruction

Parameters of Child Protective Services in the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors

The purpose of this Note is to critique the current paradigm in place for resolving the sex trafficking of youth in Washington and compare it to the current model utilized in Minnesota. The Minnesota model should be used to provide a framework for Washington to revise its current model because Washington’s current model allows for sexually exploited youth to be funneled in and out of the criminal justice system, limiting the chances for trafficked victims to reach out to members of the community for assistance. These changes could ultimately increase the opportunities for trafficked youth and position them in the best situation possible to leave their exploiters. By embracing a more involved Child Protective Service agency, Washington would increase its chances of identifying exploited youth. An increase in identification of exploited youth would also allow services to target subjugated youth, allowing victims of child sex trafficking to access safe and supportive housing, effective intervention methods, medical care, and other supportive services. Part I of this Note provides a portrait of the type of youth most commonly victimized by traffickers and exploiters and uses this portrait, in turn, to display the need for a more involved Child Protective Service agency. Part II provides background on the current safe harbor laws currently used in several states’ criminal justice programs. This section details which actions prove useful and which prove more detrimental to the proposed goal of preventing youth trafficking. This includes Washington’s implementation of its own safe harbor laws. Part III outlines the many deficiencies involved in the current Washington model. Part IV outlines the model used in Minnesota to combat the trafficking of youth. Minnesota’s “No Wrong Door” policy provides a comprehensive framework to stave off future instances of sexual exploitation. Part V discusses the implementation of the Minnesota model, along with some alternatives and additions geared exclusively to Washington, to be used to strengthen current sexual exploitation prevention efforts in Washington. This framework will provide a much more comprehensive program that will be far more effective in combating the pervasive and shameful practice of sexually exploiting minors. The program promotes a safe and useful resource for sexually exploited youth to find security, reassurance, and service programs necessary for their recovery

Crossing Borders Alone: The Treatment of Unaccompanied Children in the United States

Children who travel unaccompanied to the United States experience not only the trauma of family separation and the frequently predatory behavior of the traffickers who bring them, but also harsh treatment by an immigration bureaucracy that often incarcerates them with little access to legal counsel or professional support