Three US women are being allowed to leave Haiti with children they have adopted, from an orphanage in Haiti that has provided children for adoption in the past, after the women were stopped at the border Saturday 20 February. US officials have backed the women, saying the paperwork was done correctly, after angry Haitians questioned the validity of their documents. The incident follows tensions over children leaving the country after members of a US religious group were arrested in January for trying to leave the country with a group of children.
Links to other sites: CNN, Fergus Falls Daily Journal,Minnesota, USA
The number of deaths is rising from a Nato bombing mission that killed at least 33 civilians. The air strike was against a suspected “insurgent” convoy but many women and children were found among the dead.
Geneva UN and Red Cross groups work on sanitation, health problems
Installing a water reservoir in the women's prison at Petion-Ville. (photo: ©2010 ICRC/M. Kokic/ht-e-00577)
Work for cash, UNDP programme, Haiti 2010 (photo: ©2010 UNDP on flickr)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The arrest of 10 Americans accompanying a busload of children being illegally carried out of Haiti and into the Dominican Republic 30 January by a US religious organization has raised fears that children may be separated from members of their family who survived the 12 January earthquake in the country. Two Geneva-based groups, the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and the Geneva office of Unicef, are active in the fight to ensure that children do not become victims of a new Haitian disaster, child trafficking, whether they are orphans or not.
The arrests come as fears are reportedly rising among Haitians of the ancient loup-garou, similar to a werewolf but a predator of children’s spirits, according to the Washington Post.
ICRC’s tracing service, usually deployed in times of conflict, is working closely with the Haitian Red Cross to re-establish family links. Working with lists provided by hospitals and first aid stations, the workers collate information to get families back together. ICRC says almost 1,500 people have been able to make “safe and well” phone calls. So far, it has a list of 25,600 names on its site www.icrc.org/familylinks.
The UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) concentrates on reuniting children with their families.
Title: Report presented: “L’Ecole et l’élève d’origine étrangère”
Location: Geneva, Haute Ecole, social work (HES-GE)
Link out: Click here
Description: Authors Geneviève Mottet and Claudio Bolzman present their new book, which looks at foreign children in the Geneva school system since 1960, followed by discussion with the public.
Start Time: 12:15
Date: 2010-01-19
End Time: 13;30
Four successive archbishops of Dublin, over a period of 30 years, “routinely” covered up child sexual abuse by priests in their diocese, an Irish government report published Thursday 26 November shows. Dermot Ahern, the Irish justice minister responsible for the “Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin”, said it documented “a scandal on an astonishing scale.” The Irish state is also blamed for not ensuring that all were treated equally under the law and “allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.” Police are accused of actively colluding with Church officials and priests on a regular basis to cover up crimes from 1974-2004, the period covered by the study. This is the third major Irish investigative report in 10 years into abuse by Church clergy.
Links to other sites: Boston Globe, Guardian, UK, Irish Times and Irish Department of Justice statement
Some of the heaviest snow in decades in norther China has killed 38 people, mainly in road accidents, but four of the dead are children who died when school cafeterias caved in, in Hebei and Henan provinces. The children’s deaths raises anew the question of safety in school building throughout the country. The government has said shoddy building, sometimes due to corruption, played a role in the deaths of thousands of children when schools collapsed in Sichuan during a major earthquake in 2008.
Links to other sites: BBC, China Daily
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland registered 2,567 cases of dogs biting humans in 2008, a number that was very close to that for 2007, records published 15 October show. More than 200 varieties of dogs were involved in the incidents. Children are more frequently targets than adults and have the most serious injuries because dogs tend to bite them on the head and neck. CHildren were attacked in the dog’s home in 43 percent of cases and in public areas in 51 percent of cases. Doctors, veterinarians and cantonal officials have been obliged to report dog biting incidents since 2006.
Title: Kayak and VTT camp for children
Location: Goumois, Jura
Link out: Click here
Description: Camp during October school break, in the French Jura, week of 19 October
Start Date: 19 Oct 2009
End Date: 25 Oct 2009
Playboy owner and magazine Hugh Hefner, 83, has filed for divorce from the wife he married in 1989 and from whom he has been separated since 1998. Kimberly Conrad, 47, is described by Reuters as “the estranged wife who many people forgot he had ever married.” They stayed married for the sake of their two sons, at her request, he told TMZ.com, a celebrity website. He has asked in the divorce papers for Conrad’s support to be set at $20,000 a month. Since the two separated Hefner has lived with their children in a house next door to the Playboy Mansion, where he recently installed two 19-year-old twins as his girlfriends, in classic Hefner style. Daily Mail, UK
Update 3 July 06:15 Debbie Rowe, mother to performer Michael Jackson’s two oldest children, implied in a 90-minute interview with US television network NBC that she intends to fight for custody of the children but her lawyer later softened that, after media reports, saying that she is undecided. BBC
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva area media are sending out the alert that too many drivers are well over the speed limit in the 30 kph zones in city centres and around schools, with two accidents in a week that have put three children from Geneva in hospital, with serious injuries. Tuesday 30 June a 7-year-old boy was the latest accident victim when he was hit by a truck next to a pedestrian crossing on the rue Dancet near Plainpalais.
The first accident occurred 25 June in the St Jean district, a story broken by GenevaLunch, whose reporter Jared Bloch was one of the parents at an end-of-year primary school party that ended in tragedy: a brother and sister left the fete and were hit by a car on the crosswalk in front of the school.
Related: 20 Minutes, Tribune de Geneve (Fre)
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) - The family of a 13-year-old boy in Geneva has decided to go public with the details of his accidental death from strangulation in the hope that it will save other young people from the same fate. The Tribune de Genève 6 June carries a lengthy and disturbing interview with the parents and older brother of Florent, who died 28 May after tying a scarf around his neck.
Police and fire officials in Mexico are investigating a blaze that took the lives of at least 31 young children in a Mexican day care centre in Hermosillo. The centre is next to an automobile warehouse that may have had an electrical short circuit. The Los Angeles Times reports that “Dozens more children were injured in Friday’s blaze, and Mexican authorities said some would be transferred to a special pediatric burn unit at Shriners Hospital for Children in Sacramento for treatment. Other injured children were being treated in hospitals in Hermosillo, the capital of the border state of Sonora, across from Arizona.”
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A proposal by the Federal Council could mean a deduction of up to CHF1,000 per month for parents who pay for childcare, and a new tax schedule for parents. It would go a long way towards reducing tax discrimination against couples with children, whether they live together or not, the council argues. Federal tax revenues would be reduced by CHF600 million per year.
The proposal now goes to the Parliament.
Robyn Gibson Monday filed for divorce from her husband, actor Mel Gibson, in a court in Los Angeles, California, citing irreconcilable differences. The two have been separated since shortly after his arrest in July 2006 for drunken driving. Robyn Gibson asked for joint custody of their 10-year-old child; six other children are all over age 18. Mel Gibson’s fortune, an estimated $900 million according to the Sydney Morning Herald, would be shared equally under California law, since the couple, married in 1981 before his acting career took off, hah no pre-nuptial agreement.
Geneva, Switzerland (RSR, Fre) – RSR reports that the president of ARFEC-APG, a charity that helps families of children with cancer, is wanted by the group to answer questions about CHF1 million that appears to be missing. The man, whose name is not given by the radio station, is reported to be living in Tunisia.
Geneva, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – Fifteen children under the age of 12 were hospitalized and treated for sexual abuse by other children at the HUG (university hospitals) in 2008. but doctors there say they are seeing only a portion of cases. In an interview with Giancarlo Mariani at 20 Minutes they were unable to provide an estimate for the number of children being sexually abused, but they did say they are seeing several new kinds of cases.
An airplane carrying children from California to a ski vacation in Butte, Montana, crashed Sunday as it neared the airport, apparently killing all 17 aboard. Reuters
A jury in Alabama in the US convicted Lam Luong, 37, on four counts of murder Thursday 19 March. Luong pleaded guilty to throwing his four children off of a Gulf Coast bridge after a marital dispute that occurred a week before the murders in January 2008. Luong’s sentencing, a complex process, begins Friday 20 March. Jurors will have to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The judge is not bound to the decision of the jury, however, and automatic appeals are mandatory in murder convictions. CNN
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) - “Zizi sexuel, l’expo,” an exhibition at Geneva’s Palexpo 2 April-28 June, uses a popular French cartoon character called Titeuf to portray the natural curiosity and confusion that children feel when confronted with questions about love and sex. More than 20,000 students from the Lake Geneva region have been invited to the exhibit.
Title: Engi, singer of the water (theatre for kids and adults)
Location: Nyon, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: Theatre for kids and adults. Suggested ages, 4 and up.
Date: 11 Mar 2009
Title: Lecture and workshop: Puzzling behaviors of some children
Location: Canton Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Troubling child behaviors explored, explained and discussed. At Webster’s University.
Date: 24 Feb 2009
Title: Children’s pottery class
Location: Bassins, Argile vivante (+41 079 647 26 19)
Description: Discover pottery, for children, in French, mornings for ages 4-7 and afternoons for ages 8+.
Start Time: 9:00
Date: 16 Feb 2009
End Time: 16:00
CNN carries a story about the impact of the past 10 days’ bombings in Gaza on the next generation of Palestinians, with the seeds of future violence probably being sown, according to specialists interviewed by the US television network.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A child in Switzerland costs his or her parents CHF500-1,100 a month in direct costs, although the cost of an only child rises to CHF1,819. Mothers spend about 60 hours a week on the family and domestic chores, fathers about 32 hours a week.
