Join #nowaytotreatachild campaign co-leaders from Defense for Children International - Palestine and American Friends Service Committee for a webinar.
Online via Zoom – Register here
CONTACT Brad Parker • info@nowaytotreatachild.org
AFSC, partners, and communities across the U.S. are coming together between December 10 and December 18 for AFSC's National Days of Action to #FreeThemAll. During the days of action, AFSC will hold protests at prisons, jails, detention centers, ICE offices, state houses, and city halls to demand the immediate release of people from incarceration.
For this webinar, we'll be joined by the special guests below to learn more about the underlying issues and urgent need for action.
Lewis Webb, Jr., Healing Justice Director - New York, American Friends Service Committee
Kristin Kumpf, Director of Human Migration and Mobility, American Friends Service Committee
Peniel Ibe, Policy Associate, American Friends Service Committee
Background
Approximately 2.9 million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank, of which around 45 percent are children under the age of 18.
Palestinian children in the West Bank, like adults, face arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment under an Israeli military detention system that denies them basic rights.
Since 1967, Israel has operated two separate legal systems in the same territory. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers are subject to the civilian and criminal legal system whereas Palestinians live under military law.
Israel applies civilian criminal law to Palestinian children in East Jerusalem. No Israeli child comes into contact with the military courts.
Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections. Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year.
Children typically arrive to interrogation bound, blindfolded, frightened, and sleep deprived.
Children often give confessions after verbal abuse, threats, physical and psychological violence that in some cases amounts to torture.