THE United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children.

Around 140 countries are signatories to the convention, including the state of Israel. The government of Israel has been criticised however by Unicef for stating that it is not applicable to children in the West Bank, which it has occupied since June 1967.

In the eyes of the convention anyone under the age of 18 should be treated as a child, yet this is not the case for Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli military in the West Bank.

According to the Israeli Prison Services, the number of children held in the Israeli prison system between February and November 2017 amounted to an average each month of some 310, of whom 60 were between the ages of 12 and 15.  

The state of Israel is believed to be the only country in the world in which an estimated 500-700 children are prosecuted in military courts each year.

These figures are similar to those quoted in the June 2012 independent report Children in Military Custody, produced by a group of lawyers which included the Right Honourable Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Judge of the Court of Appeal, and Baroness Patricia Scotland QC, a specialist in children and family law.  

Their visit, which took place under the Conservative government, was funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The British report said that while the age of criminal responsibility for Palestinian and Israeli children was the same at 12 years, the minimum age for custodial sentences for the two was not.  

For Israeli children the age was 14 while for Palestinian children it was 12.  Again although it was generally the case that Israeli children had the right to have their parents present during questioning, the Palestinian children did not.  

Similarly there were vast differences in other aspects of the treatment of Palestinian and Israeli children. 

The length of time a Palestinian child might be held before seeing a judge was eight days in comparison to 12-24 hours for the Israeli child.  

There were big discrepancies in the length of time a child might be held in detention without charge — some 188 days for the Palestinian, in contrast to 40 days for the Israeli child.

However one of the most shocking aspects of the treatment of Palestinian children by the Israeli military is that of the whole process of arrest and detention reported by Defence for Children International — Palestine (DCI-P).  

According to its latest report, of the 137 affidavits collected during 2017 of West Bank children detained and prosecuted under Israeli military courts, some 74.5 per cent endured some form of physical violence following arrest and 62 per cent were verbally abused, intimidated or humiliated.

Additionally of these 137 children, 26 were held in solitary confinement for an average period of 12 days and one was held for 23 days.  

This is in complete contravention of the convention on the Rights of the Child to which the Israeli government is a signatory.

In a DCI-P report of 2011 the list of abuses included blindfolding, strip-searching, physical violence, extracting confessions during interrogation, documents presented in Hebrew (a language most Palestinian children would not know, at least in written form), transfer on floor of vehicles, hand ties and other abuses.

On July 8 2013, replying to a letter written by Kiri Tunks on behalf of Action for Palestinian Children and co-signed by Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC and Lisa Nandy MP, the then Conservative minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office responsible for the area, Alistair Burt MP said: “I share your concerns about the treatment of Palestinian  children in Israeli prisons.”  

The letter went on to explain the representations that have been made, but the truth is that little change has taken place.

The findings in the British lawyers’ report were largely echoed by those contained in the Unicef report Children in Israeli Military Detention produced in February 2013. They produced 40 and 38 recommendations respectively. None of which have been implemented.

Tragically this matter has not gone away and it was for that reason that 138 members of Parliament signed the early day motion (EDM 563) tabled on November 20 2017 by Richard Burden on the Military Detention of Palestinian Children by Israeli Authorities.  

Among the Labour Party signatories were Hilary Benn, Chris Bryant, Kate Hoey, Clive Lewis, Grahame Morris, Laura Pidcock, Dennis Skinner, Andy Slaughter and Stephen Twigg.  

Conservative Party signatories include Crispin Blunt and Peter Bottomley. Members of the Liberal Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, Green Party and the Independent member for North Down also signed.

The plight of Palestinian children held in military detention by the Israeli authorities has not improved since the two reports were written.  

In addition to those challenges, children in the refugee camps supervised by the United Nations relief and works agency face a major threat to their education with US President Donald Trump’s threat to cut UNWRA funding by $350 million.  

If implemented, it could lead to half a million Palestinian children in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon being without schools. An estimated 30,000 teachers, doctors, nurses and other staff would lose their jobs.

These children, already living in the most difficult circumstances, face an even bleaker future. As a first step, ask your MP to sign EDM 563.

The situation is critical and set to become worse. Standing by and doing nothing should not be an option.

If you are attending the National Education Union Conference in Brighton then make a start by coming to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe meeting on Monday April 2, at 5.45 pm in the Syndicate Room inside the Brighton Conference Centre where you will hear reports from the 2017 and 2018 union delegations who, among other activities, visited schools in the West Bank. 

Bernard Regan is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and was a member of the NEU 2018 delegation.