So far this year, more than 644,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea. Of these, just over a third – 34 per cent – are women and children who are particularly vulnerable to abuse as they transit Europe, UNHCR said.

“Refugee and migrant children moving in Europe are at heightened risk of violence and abuse, including sexual violence, especially in overcrowded reception sites, or in many locations where refugees and migrants gather, such as parks, train stations, bus stations and roadsides,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a news conference in Geneva.

“From testimony and reports we have received there have been instances of children engaging in survival sex to pay smugglers to continue their journey, either because they have run out money, or because they have been robbed,” she added.

Fleming noted that unaccompanied children can be particularly vulnerable as they lack the protection and care of an adult. They may also be placed in detention in some countries, including with adults, posing great risks to them, she said.

Refugee and migrant women travelling on their own are also at heightened risk as they move through Europe, sometimes at night, along insecure routes or staying in places that lack basic security. Many reception centres are overcrowded, and lack adequate lighting and separated spaces for single women and families with children.

UNHCR is appealing to all concerned national authorities in Europe to take measures to ensure the protection of women and girls, including through providing adequate and safe reception facilities.

The refugee agency is also calling to all authorities, as a matter of urgency, to find alternatives to the detention of children. UNHCR and partners are working to prevent and address immediately family separations, as women and girls on their own face enhanced risks.

Together with partners, UNHCR are working with authorities to ensure access to information, to enhance the identification of persons with specific needs, including unaccompanied children, and their referral to appropriate services, to provide psychosocial support and to enhance reception areas, including through the provision of safe spaces.

We are treating the medical consequences of the journey, including hypothermia and dehydration, but also acute conditions requiring medical evacuation such as septic shock, pneumonia and wounds inflicted by abuse and violence. We are trying to improve living conditions for people stranded in Greece, Italy, FYROM and Serbia. But all of our work amounts to filling the gaps left by states unwilling or unable to fulfil their responsibilities.

Many people are fleeing war, oppression and torture. Others are fleeing poverty, persecution and human rights violations. All want a safer and better life. But their exit routes are growing scarcer, while refugee hosting countries such as Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan become more overburdened. The world is faced with the worst displacement crisis since World War II. The conflict in Syria shows no sign of abating. Yet Europe is closing its borders.

Categorisations of ’migrants; , ’refugees’ or ’asylum seekers’ do not adequately or fairly describe the reality that pushes people to embark on long and dangerous journeys. Every person has a story to tell about why they were forced to risk their lives to reach Europe. When people need medical care, food, water and shelter, they should receive this assistance regardless of their legal status.

When your ministers gather this Monday for yet another summit on the so-called ‘migration crisis’, bear in mind that the decisions adopted in previous summits have so far largely failed to improve the situation. Some measures have made the situation worse: fences and forced fingerprinting only push people to choose more clandestine and dangerous routes. Lives continue to be lost at sea, in the back of lorries and in make shift camps where people live in unacceptable conditions in the heart of the European Union. It is time to put an end to these policies of deterrence. They have turned a foreseeable and manageable influx of people fleeing for survival into a policy-made human tragedy on Europe’s beaches, borders, train platforms and motorways. They are jeopardising the right to seek asylum. The current approach of ’non-reception’ and closed borders is causing death, injury and chaos.

Europe is faced with an increasing number of people seeking assistance and protection. These people are only a small portion of the millions who are fleeing intolerable suffering. No matter the obstacles, they will continue to come. They have no other choice. The current policies are untenable in the face of this situation. The only way Europe can prevent a worsening crisis on its territory is to replace the smugglers by providing a safe, legal and free alternative. We ask you to provide safe passage. Legal crossing of sea and land borders must be authorised for asylum seekers into and inside the EU. All forms of legal avenues allowing refugees to reach Europe must be put in place urgently. Efficient solutions to relocate asylum seekers from one EU member state to another must be found. Effective access to coherent asylum procedures and assistance should be provided at entry points, throughout Europe and along migratory routes. Swift registration and access to temporary protection should be provided upon arrival. Legal migration pathways must be created. Dignified reception conditions must be offered to all.

Make this life vest redundant. Provide humane, dignified and safe alternatives.

Sincerely,

Dr. Joanne Liu

International President

Médecins Sans Frontières

“As the African Union is taking a larger role in the continent’s mediation and peacekeeping operations, it had become essential to make our partnership stronger,” said Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

Her office and the Peace and Security Department of the AU Commission signed an agreement on 17 September, in partnership with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), to step up measures to protect children from armed violence.

“A significant number of children affected by armed conflict live on the African continent. With this agreement, my Office will work even more closely with the African Union and UNICEF to respond to their plight,” Ms. Zerrougui said.

Among the areas of collaboration outlined in the document, the AU, with UN support, agrees to include the protection of children in all its peace and security activities.

The agreement also calls for the development of a joint programme of work to align domestic legislation with regional and international child rights, as well as to develop guidelines on protection of children.

In addition, improved and harmonized training programmes in child protection will be developed for countries contributing troops to AU peace missions.

“We welcome this collaboration to ensure that protecting children is central to the work of the African Union,” said El-Ghassim Wane, Director of the Department of Peace and Security at the AU Commission.

“We know that we cannot succeed in building a prosperous and just future for the continent if we do not do everything in our collective power to protect them from the scourge of violence and war,” Mr. Wane added.

Addressing the 24th Session of the Human Rights Council, which began last week in Geneva, Ms. Zerrougui noted that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed Action Plans to end the recruitment and use of children, as well as sexual violence against children.

The Transitional Government of Somalia signed a similar Action Plan as well as another one to end killing and maiming of children, the first time a Government made such a commitment.

In early September, a story emerged about an 8-year-old girl who bled to death on her wedding night after she was raped by her new husband, who is in his 40s. Since then, activists across the region have been discussing on various social media platforms how to combat the practice of child marriage.

A new Human Rights Watch video documents the psychological and physical harm that child marriage causes to girls. In the video, a father expresses his regret at having chosen to give up his two young daughters to marriage, and two members of the religious community and a Nobel Laureate speak about the need to abolish the practice.

“Thousands of Yemeni girls have their childhood stolen and their futures destroyed because they are forced to marry too young,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Yemeni government should end this abusive practice.”

Members of the Rights and Freedoms Committee in the country’s National Dialogue Conference should recommend prohibiting child marriage during its final plenary session in September 2013, Human Rights Watch said.

When the committee charged with drafting a new constitution as part of the transitional period is convened, it should consider including an 18-year age minimum in the new constitution Human Rights Watch warns, adding that if no minimum age is included, parliament should pass a law setting the minimum age at 18.

The Friends of Yemen should at its meeting in New York consider increasing support for programs that boost girls’ and women’s access to education, reproductive health information and services, and protection from domestic violence, both in cities and rural areas, Human Rights Watch added.

Tawakkol Karman, the Yemeni activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, has criticized the transitional government’s failure to ban child marriage. She told Human Rights Watch that: “[Yemen’s] popular, peaceful revolution came about for the sake of fixing these societal problems. It didn’t happen just to solve political problems, but also to address societal problems, the most important being child marriage.”

A 2011 Human Rights Watch report documented severe and long-lasting harm to Yemeni girls forced by their families to marry, in some cases when they were as young as 8. Human Rights Watch spoke to 34 Yemeni girls and women. They said that marrying early meant that they lost control over their lives, including the ability to decide whether and when to bear children. They said that it had cut short their education, and some said they had been subjected to marital rape and domestic abuse.

There is no legal minimum age for girls to marry in Yemen and the only legal protection for girls is a prohibition on sexual intercourse until the age of puberty. In some cases documented by Human Rights Watch, however, girls were married before their first menstrual period and were raped by their husbands.

Yemen’s transitional authorities have failed to seriously address child marriage, Human Rights Watch said. The transition period, which began after Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down from the presidency under popular pressure in February 2012, will culminate with presidential and parliamentary elections in February 2014. As part of the transition, the six-month long National Dialogue Conference began on March 18. During the conference’s second plenary in June, it passed 363 directives, but not a single one referred to the practice of child marriage.

Yemeni government and United Nations data from 2006 shows that approximately 14 percent of girls in Yemen are married before age 15, and 52 percent are married before age 18.

Yemen has backtracked on protecting girls from forced marriage. In 1999, Yemen’s parliament, citing religious grounds, abolished the legal minimum age for marriage for girls and boys, which was then 15.

Yemen is party to a number of international treaties and conventions that explicitly – or have been interpreted to – prohibit child marriage and commit governments to take measures to eliminate the practice, including the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriage.

UN treaty-monitoring bodies that oversee implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child have recommended a minimum age of 18 for marriage.

“The protesters in Change Square in 2011 risked their lives to demand equal rights for all Yemenis, and girls should be no exception,” Gerntholtz said. “Child marriage is a violation of their human rights and should be ended.”

The crackdown comes just days after Ban renewed his call for all sides in Egypt to reconsider their actions in light of new political realities and the imperative to prevent further loss of life.

“The Secretary-General regrets that Egyptian authorities chose instead to use force to respond to the ongoing demonstrations,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

While the UN is still gathering precise information about today’s events, the statement said it appears that hundreds of people were killed or wounded in clashes between security forces and demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of deposed President Mohamed Morsy.

Ban extended his condolences to the families of those killed and his wishes for a full and speedy recovery to those injured. “In the aftermath of today’s violence, the Secretary-General urges all Egyptians to concentrate their efforts on promoting genuinely inclusive reconciliation,” his spokesperson said.

“While recognizing that political clocks do not run backwards, the Secretary-General also believes firmly that violence and incitement from any side are not the answers to the challenges Egypt faces,” he continued.

Ban knows that the vast majority of the Egyptian people are weary of disruptions to normal life caused by demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, and want their country to go forward peacefully in an Egyptian-led process towards prosperity and democracy, the statement added.

Given the country’s rich history and diversity of views and experiences, it is not unusual for Egyptians to disagree on the best approach forward, it further noted.

“What is important, in the Secretary-General’s view, is that differing views be expressed respectfully and peacefully,” the spokesperson said, adding that to Mr. Ban’s regret, “that is not what happened today.”

Egypt has been undergoing a democratic transition following the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak two years ago in the wake of mass protests. Last month, renewed protests – in which dozens of people were killed and wounded – led to the Egyptian military deposing Morsy. The Constitution was then suspended and an interim government set up.

The July 26, 2013, killing of Abdulasalam Elmessmary, was the first of a political activist since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted. The assassination appeared to signal a new turn in the violence with potentially serious implications for Libya’s stability. The other victims include two judges and at least 44 serving members of the security forces, most of whom had held positions in Gaddafi’s government. At least six were high-ranking officers under Gaddafi.

“What started as assassinations of members of the police, internal security apparatus, and military intelligence has been further aggravated by the killing of judges and a political activist,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “The failure to hold anyone accountable highlights the government’s failure to build a functioning justice system.”

According to cases documented by Human Rights Watch, political assassinations in Benghazi and Derna peaked in the second half of 2012, and again in January and July 2013. While there have been reports of assassinations in other parts of the country, they have mostly been centered in the east.

Human Rights Watch interviewed relatives, friends or witnesses of eight of the victims. Relatives told Human Rights Watch that as far as they could determine, Libyan law enforcement officials had not conducted comprehensive investigations. They said law enforcement agents did not investigate at the crime scene, summon any potential witnesses, or provide information to the families about their investigations.

Law enforcement officials acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that they had not concluded any of the investigations despite trying to conduct investigations into the assassinations. They said they lacked sophisticated means to investigate, faced many obstacles due to the prevailing security situation, and lacked the means to summon witnesses without the use of force.

No groups or individuals have claimed responsibility for the assassinations. The only person known to have been arrested escaped.

On July 23, Interior Minister Mohammad Khalifa al-Sheikh said at a news conference that “people with a past criminal record,” were behind the killings. He said that some of their identities were known but could not be revealed since the information was classified, and that the government was investigating and collecting information.

On July 28, Justice Minister Salah al-Marghani said the government was determined to bring to justice “those responsible for the assassinations” in Benghazi and Derna. He said the government would consider accepting the support of an international forensics team.

“Myriad armed groups and criminals with various agendas are benefiting from a weak and dysfunctional law enforcement system where they can kill even police and judges with impunity,” Stork said. “Unless the government takes urgent steps to actually turn its own pledges into action and make building its police and criminal investigation units a priority, there is a real risk of a further surge in violence.”

“We are seriously concerned over reported acts of killings, torture, arbitrary detention, gender-based violence, enforced disappearances, ‘mob justice’ and the pervasive climate of insecurity and the absence of the rule of law which have prevailed in the country in the last five months,” the human rights experts said, urging authorities to take immediate steps to put an end to all human rights violations and ensure there is no impunity for the perpetrators.

Violence erupted this past December in CAR – which has been marked by decades of instability and fighting – when the Séléka rebel coalition launched a series of attacks. A peace agreement was reached in January, but the rebels again seized the capital, Bangui, in March, forcing President François Bozizé to flee. At present, CAR is governed by a National Transitional Council headed by Michel Djotodia and a transitional government formed in June.

“There have been a number of killings, sometimes in retaliation for incidents of ‘mob justice’ against members of the Séléka coalition. Some 46 cases are allegedly documented,” said the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns. “I call for a thorough, transparent and independent investigation of all suspected cases of arbitrary executions to identify and bring to justice those responsible.”

The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, warned that “torture seems to be widespread in the country,” and called on authorities to make sure that every allegation of torture or of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is investigated by law enforcement officers.

Rashida Manjoo, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, stressed that there have been numerous cases of sexual abuse and rape reported in all of the localities that Séléka combatants have passed through.

“The State has a responsibility to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons,” Ms. Manjoo said. “Women and girls must be provided with access to medical, psychological, social and other assistance as well as to effective mechanisms of justice and to just and effective remedies for the harm that they have suffered.”

The UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances said it had also received allegations that a number of civilians as well as officers and soldiers of the official army (FACA) had been abducted by armed Séléka groups. On 14 April, a staff sergeant of the amphibious battalion and a first class soldier of the ex-presidential guard were reportedly arrested and brought to an unknown destination.

“Any act of enforced disappearance is an offence to human dignity and no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify this heinous crime,” the Working Group underscored.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

According to casualty figures released today by UNAMI, a total of 1,057 Iraqis were killed and another 2,326 were wounded in acts of terrorism and violence in July.

The number of civilians killed was 928 (including 204 civilian police), while the number of civilians injured was 2,109 (including 338 civilian police). A further 129 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed and 217 were injured.

“The impact of violence on civilians remains disturbingly high, with at least 4,137 civilians killed and 9,865 injured since the beginning of 2013,” the Acting Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq, Mr. Gyorgy Busztin, warned.

“We haven’t seen such numbers in more than five years, when the blind rage of sectarian strife that inflicted such deep wounds upon this country was finally abating. I reiterate my urgent call on Iraq’s political leaders to take immediate and decisive action to stop the senseless bloodshed, and to prevent these dark days from returning.”

Baghdad was the worst-affected governorate in July with 957 civilian casualties (238 killed and 719 injured), followed by Salahuddin, Ninewa, Diyala, Kirkuk and Anbar (triple-digit figures).

Babil, Wasit and Basra also reported casualties (double-digit figures).

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General in a statement urged Iraqi political leaders to address the legitimate grievances of all Iraqi communities by entering into a serious dialogue with a spirit of compromise, and by passing overdue legislation without further delay.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq undertakes monitoring of the impact of armed violence and terrorism on Iraqi civilians in accordance with its mandate.

“Disturbing images of children taken during street protests indicate that, on some occasions, children have been deliberately used and put at risk as potential witnesses to or victims of violence,” Philippe Duamelle, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, said in a statement.

“Such actions can have a long-lasting and devastating physical and psychological impact on children,” he noted.

“We call on all Egyptians and political groups not to exploit children for political ends, and to protect them from any potential harm.”

The crisis in the country escalated earlier this month, resulting in the Egyptian military deposing President Mohamed Morsy amid widespread protests in which dozens of people were killed and wounded. The Constitution was then suspended and an interim Government set up.

Amid the political unrest in Egypt, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, have repeatedly called on authorities to ensure respect for the rule of law and international human rights standards.

They have also supported the right of all Egyptians to hold peaceful protests, while also urging all sides to act with maximum restraint.

“More areas were becoming inaccessible due to increased fighting,” WFP spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs told reporters in Geneva, adding that the agency is also having difficulty reaching parts of Al Hasakeh in the northeast.

Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian Government and opposition groups seeking to oust President Bashar Al-Assad as many as 100,000 people have been killed, almost 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries and a further 4 million have been internally displaced.

As of yesterday, WFP had dispatched food for 2.4 million people, short of the July goal.

Byrs said WFP was “extremely concerned about the developing situation in Homs,” where it is believed that several thousand people are trapped in some parts of the old city.

The situation in the Homs district of Waa’er, where almost 300,000 internally displaced people had taken refuge, was still tense she said, but WFP had managed to dispatch and distribute the July monthly allocation of food rations through partners.

Meanwhile, there are still 400,000 people at risk of food shortages in Idlib, and 1.2 million hard to reach persons in Rural Damascus.

Difficulties were also being reported by non-governmental organization (NGO) partners in both transport and speed of distribution in certain locations. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent for example, had called for additional supplies for 28,000 people in Aleppo, including ready to eat rations, high energy biscuits and flour.

WFP is currently monitoring the situation and potential population displacement to meet their immediate basic needs, but resources are running low. Ms. Byrs said WFP needs $763 million to assist seven million Syrians until the end of the year.