Civilian Death Toll Soars in the Gaza Strip | AP

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Israeli aircraft struck crowded areas in the Gaza Strip and killed a senior militant with a missile strike on a media center Monday, driving up the Palestinian death toll to 100, as Israel broadened its targets in the 6-day-old offensive.

Despite being the initial aggressor, the Israeli military insists its strikes target only militants — with surgical precision — and they say they’re hitting those targets. But reports coming out of the the Gaza Strip tell a completely different story. The Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, and civilian casualties are inevitably mounting.

Escalating its bombing campaign over the weekend, Israel began attacking homes of activists in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. These attacks have led to a sharp spike in civilian casualties, killing 24 civilians in just under two days and doubling the number of civilians killed in the conflict, a Gaza health official said.

On Monday Israel dropped two bombs on the police headquarters, completely destroying the building. According to Israel, the police headquarters was a legitimate target; considered part of the Hamas security apparatus, and it was a surgical strike, but the Israeli missiles blew out all the windows of homes nearby. There’s a reason the Isreali military attacks at night. With such a ferocious explosion, anybody on the street would likely have been killed.

Israeli military sources said the IDF caused severe damage to dozens of targets Monday, including underground rocket launchers, a training facility, a police station and an ammunition storage facility. They said Israel also targeted and hit a vehicle used for carrying weapons as well as 50 smuggling tunnels.

Hamas fighters have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in the current round of fighting, including 95 on Monday, among them one that hit an empty school. Schools in southern Israel have been closed since the start of the offensive Wednesday. Twenty-nine (29) rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile battery, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Rockets landed in open areas of Beersheva, Ashdod, Asheklon.

The rising toll came as Egyptian-led efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas got into gear.

Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi has said repeatedly that he’s hopeful a ceasefire agreement can be reached quickly, but a source close to the Hamas delegation in Cairo told CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward on Monday morning that, thus far, the talks had hit a brick wall.

Ward says part of the reason for the impasse may be that Hamas is making some big demands in exchange for stopping its rocket attacks on Israel — it wants an end to Israel’s five year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Israel is unlikely to budge on due to fears that it would lead to an influx of weapons to militants inside Gaza.

While Israel and Hamas were far apart in their demands, both sides said they were open to a diplomatic solution — and prepared for further escalation if that failed.

The leader of Hamas took a tough stance, rejecting Israel’s demands that the militant group stop its rocket fire. Instead, Khaled Mashaal said, Israel must meet Hamas’ demands for a lifting of the blockade of Gaza.

“We don’t accept Israeli conditions because it is the aggressor,” he told reporters in Egypt. “We want a cease-fire along with meeting our demands.”

An Israeli official said Israel hoped to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis as well and signaled Egypt was likely to play a key role in enforcing any truce.

“We prefer the diplomatic solution if it’s possible. If we see it’s not going to bear fruit, we can escalate,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomatic efforts underway.

The official said Israel doesn’t want a “quick fix” that will result in renewed fighting months down the road. Instead, Israel wants “international guarantees” that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt’s neighboring Sinai peninsula for militant activity.

A poll published in the Haaretz daily on Monday showed widespread support in Israel for the offensive. It said that 84 percent of the public supports the operation, with 12 percent opposed. At the same time, it said just 30 percent of the public supports a ground invasion of Gaza. The poll, conducted by the Dialog agency, surveyed 520 people and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Overall, the offensive that began Wednesday killed 100 Palestinians, including 53 civilians, and wounded some 840 people, Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra said. Among the wounded were 225 children, he said.

On the Israeli side, three civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded. The rocket-defense system has intercepted hundreds of rockets bound for populated areas.

In Monday’s violence, an Israeli air strike on a high-rise building in Gaza City killed Ramez Harb, a senior figure in Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the Al Quds Brigades, the group said in a text message to reporters. A number of foreign and local news organizations have offices in the building, which was also struck on Sunday. A passer-by was also killed, medics said.

Thick black smoke rose from the building. Paramedics said several people were wounded.

Islamic Jihad, a smaller sister group to Hamas, said it believed Harb was the target of the strike.

Israel has killed dozens of wanted militants in surgical strikes throughout the operation, the result, officials say, of intelligence gathered from its collection of high-flying drones overhead and a network of informants.

Before dawn Monday, a missile struck a three-story home in the Gaza City’s Zeitoun area, flattening the building and badly damaging several nearby homes. Shell-shocked residents searching for belongings climbed over debris of twisted metal and cement blocks in the street.

Egypt is trying to broker a cease-fire with the help of Turkey and Qatar. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and a delegation of Arab foreign ministers were expected in Gaza on Tuesday.

A senior Egyptian official told The Associated Press that Hamas and Israel were each presenting Egypt with their conditions for a cease-fire.

“I hope that by the end of the day we will receive a final signal of what can be achieved,” said the official, who is familiar with the indirect negotiations. He said Israel and Hamas are both looking for guarantees to ensure a long-term stop to hostilities. The official says Egypt’s aim is to stop the fighting and “find a direct way to lift the siege of Gaza.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the indirect negotiations.

The rising toll was likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.

But Mashaal said Gazans were prepared to keep fighting.

“Gaza’s demand is not a halt to war. Its demand is for its legitimate rights,” including a stop to Israeli attacks, assassinations and a lifting of the blockade, Mashaal said.

Reprint Source: Israel Airstrike Hits Al Aqsa, Hamas TV Station, In High-Rise In Downtown Gaza City -By Hamza Hendawi, Maggie Michael (Cairo) & Zeina Karam (Beiruit) | HuffPost/AP

Related: Israel Targets Gaza Militants Homes, Sending Civilian Death Toll Soaring Amid Frantic Diplomacy | CBS/AP

Hamas Kills 6 Suspected Israeli Collaborators -By Karin Laub & Ian Deitch | HuffPost/AP

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*The author of this blog made few minor, but necessary, changes to the article to reflect the most recent data available. She also removed language that was factually dubious or words that suggest a western media bias towards its allies.

 

Another Day, Another Massacre In Syria (Video)

Activists say another massacre has taken place in Syria just days after nearly 100 people were killed in Houla.

This time, at least 86 people are said to have been killed by pro-Assad militias in and around al-Qubayr in Marzaf district in Hama province.

Al Jazeera’s Tarek Bazley reports.

 

Child Actors Shame Mexico’s Politicians with Mockumentary| MSNBC (Video)

MEXICO CITY — A video “mockumentary” that shows children as kidnappers, corrupt cops and drug traffickers has sparked a fierce debate in violence-torn Mexico, with some people calling it a needed wake-up call while others described it as political manipulation or even child abuse.

Kids playing the role of businessmen, criminals and corrupt officials are seen robbing, paying bribes and shooting it out in a mock Mexico made up entirely of children, all to the deceptively laid-back tune of the 1970s ballad “Una Manana,” or “One Morning.”

Produced by a foundation supported by private companies and universities and distributed over the Internet,the video ends with a direct message to the candidates in the Mexico’s July 1 presidential race

A little girl faces the camera and says: “If this is the future that awaits me, I don’t want it. Enough of working for your political parties instead of for us. Enough of cosmetic changes.”

 

‘Discomforting Kids’
Dubbed “Ninos Incomodos,” roughly “Discomforting Kids,” the four-minute video opens with a pudgy kid-businessman waking up in the morning dragging on a cigarette, and closes with a kiddie-version of alleged drug lord Edgar Valdez, aka “La Barbie,” being dragged off to an overcrowded jail full of children by junior cops.

Little girls carrying purses scream and scurry for cover as boys their own age spray machine guns from huge SUVs and assault-rifle toting little cops run to detain them at gunpoint.

Despite the video’s grim images of knife-wielding, migrant-smuggling, gun-toting kids, all the major candidates had praise for it. Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called it “well done, it’s tough but it’s the truth.”

Earlier, the candidate of the former governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, Enrique Pena Nieto, wrote in his Twitter account: “I support the message of Discomforting Kids. I hear it all the time on the campaign trail; that ‘time is running out.’ It’s time to renew hope and change Mexico.”

Josefina Vazquez Mota, the candidate of President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, tweeted that “the video of Discomforting Kids is a call that can’t be ignored. I accept the challenge, I want to join you.”

Excerpt, read:  Money, Drugs, Guns & Gangs: Child Actors Shame Mexico’s Politicians with Mockumentary | MSNBC

 

Incarcerated Childhood: US Kids Prosecuted as Adults | RT News

America’s prisons are overflowing, but many who are kept behind bars, are just children. Thousands of youths are tried as adults in the U.S. every year – and some are given life sentences in the country’s harshest jails. Many then find themselves becoming victims of sexual violence, and suicide.

 

Killing of Syrian Children Provokes Outrage | Al-Jazeera

The United Nations says hundreds of Syrian children have been tortured and killed since anti-government protests began in March.

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh met one family whose teenage boy went missing after attending a rally. The family has since fled across the border to al-Mafraq, in Jordan, where they are seeking justice for the brutal killing of their son.

 

Children Gold Mining in Mali | HRW

(Bamako)– At least 20,000 children work in Malian artisanal gold mines under extremely harsh and dangerous conditions, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Malian government and international donors should take action to end child labor in artisanal mines, Human Rights Watch said. Artisanal miners rely on low-tech methods and often organize informally.

The 108-page report, “A Poisonous Mix: Child Labor, Mercury, and Artisanal Gold Mining in Mali,” reveals that children as young as six dig mining shafts, work underground, pull up heavy weights of ore, and carry, crush, and pan ore. Many children also work with mercury, a toxic substance, to separate the gold from the ore. Mercury attacks the central nervous system and is particularly harmful to children.

“These children literally risk life and limb”, said Juliane Kippenberg, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They carry loads heavier than their own weight, climb into unstable shafts, and touch and inhale mercury, one of the most toxic substances on earth.”

Of 33 child laborers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, 21 said that they suffered from regular pain in the back, head, neck, arms, or joints. Children also suffer from coughing and respiratory disease. One boy about six years old described the pain he felt when digging shafts with a pickaxe for hours on end. Another boy said that “everything hurts” when he comes home after a day’s work underground.

Most children work alongside their parents to supplement the little income adult miners get from selling gold to local traders. Other children migrate to the mines by themselves, and end up being exploited and abused by relatives or strangers who take their pay. Some girls are sexually abused or engage in sex work to survive. Children come to the mines from other parts of Mali, as well as from Guinea, Burkina Faso, and other neighboring countries.

Mali’s government adopted a National Action Plan for the Elimination of Child Labor in June 2011. The plan was an important step, but implementation has been delayed and the government has taken little action on the ground, Human Rights Watch said. There are no regular labor inspections in artisanal mines, and a ban on hazardous child labor, considered a worst form of child labor, has not been enforced. Under both Malian and international law, hazardous labor, which would include working in mines and with mercury, is prohibited for anyone under age 18.

The government has also largely failed to make education accessible and available for child laborers in mines, many of whom never go to school. Schools are often far away, charge fees, and do not encourage children who have migrated from elsewhere to attend. When child laborers do attend school, they often struggle to keep up.

“Mali has strong laws on child labor and on compulsory and free education, but unfortunately, the government has not fully enforced them,” Kippenberg said. “Local officials often benefit from artisanal gold mining and have little interest in addressing child labor.”

The government has done nothing to stop the use of mercury by child laborers and should immediately develop a strategy to address the health effects of mercury on child and adult miners, Human Rights Watch said. Mercury poisoning results in a range of neurological conditions, including tremors, coordination problems, vision impairment, headaches, memory loss, and concentration problems. The toxic effects of mercury are not immediately noticeable, but develop over time. Most artisanal miners are unaware of mercury’s health effects.

Children work in an artisanal gold mine, Kéniéba cercle, Mali. © 2010 International Labour Organization/IPEC

 

Much of the gold from Mali’s artisanal mines is bought by small traders who supply middle men and trading houses in Bamako, the country’s capital. Most of the 12 Malian traders interviewed by Human Rights Watch showed little concern about child labor and health risks from mercury use. One trader said that “our idea is that we just earn money.” The president of the Mali Mining Chamber, a representative body for the mining sector, even denied there was any child labor in artisanal gold mines.

Figures obtained by Human Rights Watch from the Malian Ministry of Mines put the amount of artisanally mined gold exported per year at around four metric tons, worth around US$218 million at November 2011 prices. Most of this gold is exported to Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, Dubai in particular.

Human Rights Watch has been able to contact three international companies that have bought gold from Mali’s artisanal mines. Kaloti Jewellery International, based in Dubai, and a Belgian company, Tony Goetz, shared with Human Rights Watch the due diligence procedures they use to make sure the gold they buy comes from legitimate sources. Kaloti stopped buying gold from Mali’s artisanal mines after learning about Human Rights Watch’s findings. Decafin, a Swiss company, said it acts at the end of a supply chain composed of at least four intermediaries and has no contact whatsoever with the producing companies or the Malian government. However, the company said that it questions suppliers about the origin of the gold and work conditions and that it would seek further information from the Mali Mining Chamber.

“If businesses have not done so yet, they need to put in place procedures to ensure their gold has not been mined by children,” Kippenberg said. “They should also work with the government and international agencies to eliminate child labor in the mines. Boycott is not the answer.”

Child labor in artisanal gold mining is common in many countries worldwide, particularly within West Africa’s gold belt, which spans Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. Mali is Africa’s third largest gold producer.

There are currently no simple alternatives to the use of mercury in artisanal gold mining, but its quantities can be greatly reduced, and its effects much better controlled, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). For example, containers called retorts should be used to capture the mercury vapor, and amalgamation in residential areas should be halted. Industrial gold mines rely on more costly and complex technology without mercury, but use cyanide.

Learn more: Children Gold Mining in Mali | HRW

Video Courtesy NBC Rock Center

 

Schools as Battlegrounds: Protecting Education From Attack | HRW (Video)

In conflicts around the world, schools, students, and teachers are under attack. When schools are destroyed or students and teachers are threatened, children often drop out of school and don’t come back. Others continue amid violence and fear. Sometimes lives are lost; education is always a casualty.

Resources:

• Children’s Rights Division Education & Conflict | HRW

• Schools as Battlegrounds: Protecting Students, Teachers, and Schools from Attack | HRW

• UNESCO Report on Education Under Attack 2010

• Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack

• Other Human Rights Watch Resources

 

UK Toughens Female Genital Mutilation Laws –By Hugh Muir | Guardian UK

New guidelines to target families that take young girls abroad to undergo female genital mutilation are being sent to prosecutors by the government.

Ministers want to encourage more action against those who inflict the brutal procedure on their children and relatives amid concerns that the current approach serves as little deterrent.

Female genital mutilation is an illegal procedure in the UK with those convicted risking 14 years’ imprisonment. The Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003 also allows for the prosecution of British citizens who breach the provisions of the act and perform the procedure abroad.

But while the law seems strict on paper, it seems to have limited effect in practice. Campaigners say 22,000 girls are at risk each year. However, MPs were this week told that there has yet to be a single conviction, despite 100 investigations being carried out over two years by the Met. By contrast the French authorities have successfully prosecuted in 100 cases.

Fears are currently acute because the long school summer holidays are when many girls are flown to Africa, the Middle East and parts of the far east, oblivious to what has been planned for them.

Outlining the new approach to the House of Commons, the Home Office minister Jeremy Wright said: “There are a number of things we can do. We should look not only to punish those who are responsible for committing these offences but to improve the guidance available to prosecutors so that they can prosecute more often. If there are difficulties with prosecuting, they might be to do with the types of information and understanding that crown prosecutors need to have and later this summer the CPS will therefore be issued with new guidelines to assist.”

Excerpt, read:  Female Genital Mutilation Laws To Be Toughen Against Families –By Hugh Muir | Guardian UK

 

 

United Nations Expands Listing Criteria to Protect Children in Armed Conflict Zones

New York City- On July 12, The United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1998 (2011), recognizing schools and hospitals as safe havens for children, called for all parties to conflict that attack such facilities to be held accountable and that they be added to the list published annually by the United Nations of those who commit grave violations against children.

The list, contained in the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict, already names those parties which commit violations such as the recruitment of child soldiers, killing or maiming of children, and rape or other forms of sexual violence against children.

Office of the Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict | United Nations

 

Haiti Still Ailing From Child ‘Slavery’ Epidemic –By Keller & Weiss | The Grio

Fourteen-year-old Rose Manette Sully lives a twisted Cinderella tale. She works from dawn to dusk as a maid for her master. She sleeps on the floor of a tent.

The lanky teen is far from an isolated case in Haiti. She’s just one among tens of thousands of child servants in Haiti who endure what the United Nations calls a modern form of slavery.

Underaged domestic help is everywhere in Port-au-Prince’s tent cities, which formed after last year’s devastating earthquake and remain because of the glacial pace of reconstruction. The January 2010 quake caused many more of these young indentured servants to be put to work. And now, their lives are harder than ever before, experts said.

Before the earthquake, child servants lived and worked in Port-au-Prince’s homes. Today, many, like Rose Manette, serve their masters in tents.

With the nation’s entire infrastructure in disrepair — schools and neighborhoods destroyed — fewer of these children are going to school, and neighbors less frequently look out for their welfare, according to Nicole Muller César, founder of the Institute for Human and Community Development, a school in Port-au-Prince for slave children.

The children also face higher risks of being neglected and abused.

 

“Now, because of the tent situation, they are more exposed,” she said. “Anybody can do anything to them, without having someone say ‘Stop! You cannot do that.’”

With the birth rate tripling after the quake, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the number of these children, known as restaveks (from the French “to stay with”), could grow in the coming years as more families struggle to feed their children.

Haiti’s president-elect Michel Martelly, the right-wing pop star who takes office this weekend, has pledged to make public education free in Haiti, but so far he has made no promise to otherwise help these child servants.

The children haven’t received much attention from international aid groups, either.They are everywhere, and nowhere, in a sense: They may as well be invisible.

Some never reunite with their mothers, and they often don’t get loving physical contact from the adults they live with. ‘Owners’ are often unaffectionate, even if the host family is the child’s aunt or other biological relative, César said.

“They don’t have a life,” she said. “And nobody seems to care because it’s okay, it’s no problem, we’re used to the system.”

Restaveks often eat different food from other children in a household, wear cheaper clothes and are often not allowed to play with their peers.

In Haiti, “there’s nothing lower than a ‘restavek’ child except a dog,” said Glenn Smucker, a cultural anthropologist and consultant.

Excerpt, read: Haiti Still Ailing From Child ‘Slavery’ Epidemic –By Karen Keller & Jennifer Weiss | The Grio
Click Here to View a Slideshow of ‘Restaveks’ — One of Haiti’s Horrors