In September 2011, a delegation of nine lawyers from the UK, including a
former attorney general and Court of Appeal judge, visited Israel-Palestine to
investigate the treatment of children in Israel’s military judicial system. The
resulting report – Children in Military
Custody – published in June 2012, found that Israel’s military detention of
children violated at least six articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of
the Child and two articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Eight months later, UNICEF came out with its own report – Children
in Israeli Military Detention – which concluded that "the ill-treatment of
children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be
widespread, systematic and institutionalized." In response to these findings,
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that it would "study the conclusions and
work to implement them through on-going cooperation with UNICEF."
Two years on, Military
Court Watch (MCW) has published a report that reviews progress made in
implementing the UK report’s 40 recommendations and finds that just 5 percent
have been substantially implemented. While there have been a number of
noteworthy developments during the past two years, including: a reduction in the
time in which children must be brought before a military court judge for the
first time; and the introduction of a pilot scheme to issue summonses in lieu of
night-time arrests; children continue to report being ill-treated and denied
basic legal rights. Following a review of developments and an analysis of 105
testimonies, MCW’s findings include:
1. More children than last year report being tied and blindfolded upon
arrest;
2. More children than last year report being transported on the metal floor
of vehicles; and
3. More children than last year report being subjected to physical
violence.
While there has been a slight decrease in the number of children arrested at
night following the introduction of the pilot scheme to issue summonses, 67
percent of these summonses were served in the middle of the night by the
military. And while it is the case that slightly more children are now being
informed of their rights, 78 percent of children are not told of their right to
remain silent and 90 percent are prevented from consulting with a lawyer prior
to questioning. At the conclusion of the interrogation stage, more children than
ever before are being shown, or made to sign, documentation written in Hebrew
and taken before military courts that still boast an overall conviction rate
above 99 percent.
Since officials at the Foreign Ministry announced that they would be looking
at ways to implement the recommendations contained in both the UK and UNICEF
reports, the task of doing so has been delegated to the chief military
prosecutor in the West Bank, himself a resident of a West Bank settlement built
in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention – the same Convention that
establishes the jurisdiction of the military courts. This fact alone raises a
question mark over how genuine the civilian and military authorities are about
implementing real and lasting change in accordance with international law.