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A Nigerian woman and her four children were expelled from Israel on Saturday. The children, aged two to seven, were at Givon Prison in Ramle with their mother for nearly a month and a half. Two other girls, aged one and a half and three and a half years, are in the same prison with their mother, a clandestine immigrant from Ethiopia.
The deportation of the Nigerian woman was revealed by Yanir Kozin in the daily Maariv. The revelation has led to a debate in the Knesset and criticism from politicians, but Israel has imprisoned children for years and authorities have been criticized in this regard by the State Comptroller and the Committee. child rights. Since 2011, hundreds of children have been imprisoned under conditions described as harsh and in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Until 2011, the Population and Immigration Authority avoided deporting women and their children, preferring to deport fathers, so that women and children would follow men. In 2011, the Authority began evicting families. The detention of juveniles behind bars occurred after they had crossed the border with Egypt or that they were in Israel illegally with their families, who were put in jail until their expulsion.
Nir Keidar
Between 2007 and 2012, the Prison Service detained 1,547 illegal minors in their institutions. According to the 2013 State Comptroller's Report, 97 minors aged an average of three years and five months were deported prior to July 2012. Prior to their deportation, they were detained at the Yahalom Detention Center in Beijing. Ben Gurion International Airport. Immigration Authority.
A report published in 2014 by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the hotline for refugees and migrants and the United Nations Refugee Agency showed the conditions in which children were incarcerated with their parents. "We were placed in a room that was not very clean, with a window closed.This was suffocating," says A., a mother who was locked up with her baby in 2014. "I am Had no soap to wash the bottle of the baby or hot water to prepare food.I knocked on the door, asking for hot water.It took some time I washed my son in the sink with cold water. "
D. is another woman imprisoned with her baby that year: "I had almost no more milk replacer." I asked the guards, I begged them. Wait until the supplies arrive.I waited a long time but to my disappointment, they did not buy any milk.I asked again when they would bring some. from them he said that he would ask the boss.I could not wait and asked another guard, telling him that I needed it right away.He m & # 39; 39, said to write what I needed.I asked for the preparation, yogurt and mineral water.I waited another 24 hours and n & rsquo; I did not have any milk or yogurt, only mineral water, then I reduced the amount of milk that I gave to my baby. "
The report notes that "the goals targeted by the imprisonment of children in Israel can be achieved by other, less harmful means. Despite this, the imprisonment of children has become the first default option used by the state to combat children who have no legal status. "
ACRI attorney Oded Feller told Haaretz that "we can not accept the indefinite incarceration of children and parents in Israeli jails." It is not necessary to be an expert to know that this is destructive, and it is not a coincidence if international law determines that incarceration of children should always be the last resort. "In recent years , the Authority of Population and Immigration has been presented with alternatives, but despite harsh criticism from the controller and committees of the Knesset, the authority refuses to consider these options . "
The 2013 Comptroller's Report notes that the state must act in a manner that leaves no doubt that it follows the guidelines of the UN convention that determine that "l & # 39; Incarceration of a child is only a last resort, used for very short periods. "The controller wrote that the authority" should conduct a thorough review of the alternatives offered in order to create a bank of options that would be examined in each particular case. This is only when there is no alternative that the detention center should be used. "
There is no need to be a psychologist for children to understand that detention and incarceration are dangerous and harmful to children "writes Rotem Ilan, project manager for children at ACRI, in an article of 2015. "The literature indicates serious and irreversible damage caused by detention, incarceration and deportation to children's physical and mental health, as well as their normal development." In 2014, human rights groups and the psychology department of Tel Aviv University in this case. He showed the extreme distress and post-traumatic stress caused to parents and children subjected to such treatment.
In response, the Population and Immigration Authority stated that the case was under review. Regarding the number of children incarcerated, Haaretz was asked to ask the prison service, which sent us back to authority. "The incarcerated person is still the adult.We are doing everything we can to improve the conditions in our facilities," said the authority. "We are not responsible for conditions in penitentiaries."
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