Little beings....even smaller rights

New Gutenberg, just written last week by yours truly. I'm back on an well-trodden path; children's rights. The Council of Europe launched the latest four year plan this week, and this was my bit to tell the world.

The very next day the Guardian reported that 40 kids had been granted £2m compensation because the British government imprisoned them. For absolutely no identifiable reason. Many of them had been tortured, imprisoned and abused in the countries they were fleeing from. They just got more of the same.

This a long and stony path. 1996 saw me running the press room at the first World Congress against Sexual Exploitation. Nobody knew much about it at the time. In the meantime, the whole issue became mega. Paedos were the target du jour, with News of the World editor Rebekah Wade (then Brooks) making her mark as the baddie hunter who roused the crowd against the innocent. Scores of Catholic priests were outed as abusers; internet grooming took over from the man with a mac and sweeties in the park.

Oh how clever and sophisticated we are now. We look after kids, have international treaties to protect them, question our right to smack them, give them education and opportunities and the chance to build a better life.

Oh yeah?

Here I am 16 years later working with Roma girls who are expected to get married when they are barely out of puberty, thrown out of schools and stigmatised; reading reports about kids kept in prison.... and still hearing the same stories - children and young people fear violence, daren't speak about sex abuse and face a grim future created by the greed and mendacity of their elders.

Yes, it's us adults that need to get our act together. It's easy to chuck money at a problem, or react with anger. But come on, what are we doing?

Small person still equals smaller rights, it seems.

On journalists and judges

the Human Rights maze?

What is the point of justice if it remains behind closed doors? An obvious question, you might think. After all, what is the alternative to openness? Kangaroo courts, show trials and Josef K dying “like a dog”?

For journalists, the idea that courts are transparent is likely to raise a hollow laugh at best. Most journalists – especially in the UK – have been brought up to see the court doors as a barrier to be beaten down in search of a good story. At the same time, judges and lawyers know very well that justice can only be served in neutral, disinterested, circumstances, and that an unruly press can constitute one of the greatest threats to the purity of their deliberations and decisions. As usual, the truth lies somewhere between.

On reporting the Roma

“Local residents up in arms at gypsy camp”. Thus began my first Roma story, a baby journalist reporting from a land of shrunken hopes and varied and variegated prejudices.

We didn’t mean it. We didn’t know any better. For us, these people were gypsies; people who seemed to delight in occupying the nearest piece of waste ground and burning tyres to their heart’s content. It wasn’t so long back that pubs had put out signs “No Blacks, Irish, Travellers or Dogs”. They’d managed to let the Irish and the Blacks in by then, and there were definitely a lot more mongrels hanging around their owners’ knees in the hope of a stale crisp or two. But the “travellers”? No, not welcome anywhere.

Nothing much changes. These past few months have felt like a wormhole into the past as I work with my colleagues to put paid to that old racism. The reason: Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to send Roma back from France to Romania and Bulgaria; swiftly followed by a huge debate that has raged on in all corners of Europe.

One thing has changed though. My total, appalling, ignorance.