• How children visualise cities of today and tomorrow

    How do children see urban inequalities and the transformation of cities? What would they change in their neighbourhoods? What kind of cities do they wish for? periferiasdibujadas is an ongoing project that works collaboratively with other groups to createspaces for children in different places across Europe to research, narrate and intervenein their urban contexts. The children’s images explore issues affecting cities today,such as access to housing, racism, gentrification and the impact of tourism, and showtheir visions for more liveable and just cities.

    https://padlet.com/periferiasdibujadas/how-children-visualise-cities-of-today-and-tomorrow-vjw8kyzgxbka5io0
    #enfants #enfance #villes #cartographie #cartoexperiment #cartographie_sensible #cartographie_participative #quartiers #periferiasdibujadas #tourisme #racisme #gentrification #habitat #Albayzín #Grenade #Espagne

    ping @reka

  • Five Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Child Influencers - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/us/takeaways-instagram-child-influencers.html

    JBy Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller

    Feb. 22, 2024

    Instagram does not allow children under 13 to have accounts, but parents are allowed to run them — and many do so for daughters who aspire to be social media influencers.

    What often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children, an investigation by The New York Times found.
    Read the investigation here.
    A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men
    Feb. 22, 2024

    Thousands of so-called mom-run accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement.

    Nearly one in three preteens list influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. But health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.

    The pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their daughter’s images. These are some key findings.
    Parents are the driving force behind the accounts. Some offer the sale of photos, exclusive chat sessions and even the girls’ worn leotards to mostly unknown male followers.

    The child influencers can earn six-figure incomes from monthly subscriptions and other interactions with followers, according to interviews. Some can demand $3,000 from companies for a single post. Big followings look impressive to brands and bolster chances of getting discounts, products and other financial incentives, and the accounts themselves are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm with greater visibility on the platform.
    As the accounts gain followers, they also draw a higher proportion of males. Interacting with the men opens the door to abuse.

    One calculation performed by an audience demographics firm found 32 million connections to male followers among the 5,000 accounts examined by The Times. In addition, an analysis using image classification software from Google and Microsoft indicates that suggestive posts are more likely to receive “likes” and comments.

    Some of the male followers flatter, bully and blackmail girls and their parents to get racier images, and some have been convicted of sex crimes. The Times monitored separate exchanges on Telegram, the messaging app, where men openly fantasize about sexually abusing the children they follow on Instagram and extol the platform for making the images so readily available.
    Editors’ Picks
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    “It’s like a candy store 😍😍😍,” one of them wrote. “God bless instamoms 🙌,” wrote another.
    Account owners who report explicit images or potential predators to Instagram are typically met with silence or indifference.

    Meta, Instagram’s parent company, found that 500,000 child Instagram accounts had “inappropriate” interactions every day, according to an internal study in 2020 quoted in legal proceedings. The platform’s policy prohibits convicted sex offenders, and the company said it removed two accounts after The Times pointed them out.

    In a statement, Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, said that parents were responsible for the accounts and their content and could delete them anytime. “Anyone on Instagram can control who is able to tag, mention or message them, as well as who can comment on their account,” he added, noting a feature that allows parents to ban comments that contain certain words.
    Some parents refuse to give in to creepy “bullies,” but others regret ever opening an account.

    A mother in Australia, whose daughter is now 17, said she worried that a childhood spent sporting bikinis online for adult men had scarred her. She warned mothers to avoid her mistakes. “I’ve been stupidly, naïvely, feeding a pack of monsters, and the regret is huge,” she said. But a mother in Alabama said parents couldn’t ignore the reality of this new economy. “Social media is the way of our future, and I feel like they’ll be behind if they don’t know what’s going on,” she said.
    Though rare, there have been criminal prosecutions against parents accused in child sexual abuse cases.

    Even the most unsettling images of sexualized child influencers tend to fall into a legal gray area. To meet the federal definition of so-called child pornography, the law generally requires a “lascivious exhibition” of the anal or genital area, though courts have found the requirement can be met without nudity or sheer clothing.

    #Média_sociaux #Instagram #Enfants #Pedopornographie #Exploitation_sexuelle

  • Les #Enfants traumatisés par les conflits de guerre
    https://www.obsarm.info/spip.php?article640

    À l’heure où de nombreux enfants, et leurs parents bien entendu, sont sous les bombes à Gaza, en Ukraine, et dans d’autres contrées, ce livre court mérite le détour. Zygmunt L. Ostrowski est pédiatre, ex-conseiller de l’Organisation mondiale de la Santé, et président de l’ADE (en anglais, Association for Studies on Nutrition and Child Developpement), une ONG humanitaire. Cette ONG humanitaire a travaillé sur de nombreux conflits, sur de nombreux enfants traumatisés. Elle s’appuie sur « (...) #Fiches_de_lecture

    / #Guerres, Enfants, #Actions_contre_la_guerre, #La_trois

  • Immigration en Europe : la France à la manœuvre pour autoriser la rétention des enfants dès le plus jeune âge
    https://disclose.ngo/fr/article/immigration-en-europe-la-france-a-la-manoeuvre-pour-autoriser-la-retention

    La France a œuvré dans le plus grand secret, pour obtenir l’autorisation d’enfermer des mineurs, sans limite d’âge, dans des centres construits aux frontières de l’Europe. Cette disposition inscrite dans le Pacte sur la migration et l’asile, qui sera voté au printemps par le Parlement européen, pourrait violer la Convention internationale des droits de l’enfant. Lire l’article

  • Stage « Tournez dans un film de cinéma muet » 2024

    Pour les enfants, adolescents et adultes confondus, « Le Bateau Ivre » (organisme de formation depuis 1998) propose deux sessions du Stage de Mime « Tournez dans un film de cinéma muet » à Paris (75009) pendant 4 jours de 14 à 17h en avril 2024. https://www.silencecommunity.com/events/event/view/48629/stage-%C2%AB%C2%A0tournez-dans-un-film-de-cinema-muet%C2%A0%C2%BB-

    #Paris #ÎleDeFrance #stage #formation #tournage #enfants #adolescents #adultes #cinéma #mime #pantomime #mimique #ArtisteMime #muet #CinémaMuet #film #CourtMétrage #laussat #pillavoine #avril #lbi2324

  • Et les critères diagnostiques du DSM-5 :

    A. Un mode persistant d’inattention et/ou d’hyperactivité-impulsivité qui interfère avec le fonctionnement ou le développement, caractérisé par (1) et/ou (2) :
    1. Inattention : Six (ou plus) des symptômes suivants persistent depuis au moins 6 mois, à un degré qui ne correspond pas au niveau de développement et qui a un
    retentissement négatif direct sur les activités sociales et scolaires/professionnelles :
    N.B. : Les symptômes ne sont pas seulement la manifestation d’un comportement opposant, provocateur ou hostile, ou de l’incapacité de comprendre les tâches ou
    les instructions. Chez les grands adolescents et les adultes (17 ans ou plus), au moins cinq symptômes sont requis.
    a. Souvent, ne parvient pas à prêter attention aux détails, ou fait des fautes d’étourderie dans les devoirs scolaires, le travail ou d’autres activités (p. ex. néglige ou ne remarque pas des détails, le travail est imprécis).
    b. A souvent du mal à soutenir son attention au travail ou dans les jeux (p. ex. a du mal à rester concentré pendant les cours magistraux, des conversations ou la lecture de longs textes).
    c. Semble souvent ne pas écouter quand on lui parle personnellement (p. ex. semble avoir l’esprit ailleurs, même en l’absence d’une source de distraction évidente).
    d. Souvent, ne se conforme pas aux consignes et ne parvient pas à mener à terme ses devoirs scolaires, ses tâches domestiques ou ses obligations professionnelles (p. ex. commence des tâches mais se déconcentre vite et se laisse facilement distraire).
    e. A souvent du mal à organiser ses travaux ou ses activités (p. ex. dificulté à gérer des tâches comportant plusieurs étapes, dificulté à garder ses affaires et ses documents en ordre, travail brouillon ou désordonné, mauvaise gestion du temps, échoue à respecter les délais).
    f. Souvent, évite, a en aversion, ou fait à contrecœur les tâches qui nécessitent un effort mental soutenu (p. ex. le travail scolaire ou les devoirs à la maison ; chez les grands adolescents et les adultes, préparer un rapport, remplir des formulaires, analyser de longs articles).
    g. Perd souvent les objets nécessaires à son travail ou à ses activités (p. ex. matériel scolaire, crayons, livres, outils, portefeuilles, clés, documents, lunettes, téléphones mobiles).
    h. Se laisse souvent facilement distraire par des stimuli externes (chez les grands adolescents et les adultes, il peut s’agir de pensées sans rapport).
    i. A des oublis fréquents dans la vie quotidienne (p. ex. effectuer les tâches ménagères et faire les courses ; chez les grands adolescents et les adultes, rappeler des personnes au téléphone, payer des factures, honorer des rendez-vous).
    2. Hyperactivité et impulsivité : Six (ou plus) des symptômes suivants persistent depuis au moins 6 mois, à un degré qui ne correspond pas au niveau de développement et qui a un retentissement négatif direct sur les activités sociales et scolaires/professionnelles :
    N.B. : Les symptômes ne sont pas seulement la manifestation d’un comportement opposant, provocateur ou hostile, ou de l’incapacité de comprendre les tâches ou les instructions. Chez les grands adolescents et les adultes (17 ans ou plus), au moins cinq symptômes sont requis.
    a. Remue souvent les mains ou les pieds, ou se tortille sur son siège.
    b. Se lève souvent en classe ou dans d’autres situations où il est supposé rester assis (p. ex. quitte sa place en classe, au bureau ou dans un autre lieu de travail, ou dans d’autres situations où il est censé rester en place).
    c. Souvent, court ou grimpe partout, dans des situations où cela est inapproprié
    (N.B. : Chez les adolescents ou les adultes cela peut se limiter à un sentiment d’impatience motrice.)
    d. Est souvent incapable de se tenir tranquille dans les jeux ou les activités de loisir.
    e. Est souvent « sur la brèche » ou agit souvent comme s’il était « monté sur ressorts » (p. ex. n’aime pas rester tranquille pendant un temps prolongé ou est alors mal à l’aise, comme au restaurant ou dans une réunion, peut être perçu par les autres comme impatient ou dificile à suivre).
    f. Parle souvent trop.
    g. Laisse souvent échapper la réponse à une question qui n’est pas encore entièrement posée (p. ex. termine les phrases des autres, ne peut pas attendre son tour dans une conversation).
    h. A souvent du mal à attendre son tour (p. ex. dans une ile d’attente).
    i. Interrompt souvent les autres ou impose sa présence (p. ex. fait irruption dans les conversations, les jeux ou les activités, peut se mettre à utiliser les affaires des autres sans le demander ou en recevoir la permission ; chez les adolescents ou les adultes, peut être intrusif et envahissant dans les activités des autres).
    B. Plusieurs symptômes d’inattention ou d’hyperactivité-impulsivité étaient présents avant l’âge de 12 ans.
    C. Plusieurs symptômes d’inattention ou d’hyperactivité-impulsivité sont présents dans au moins deux contextes différents (p. ex. à la maison, à l’école, ou au travail ; avec des amis ou de la famille, dans d’autres activités).
    D. On doit mettre clairement en évidence que les symptômes interfèrent avec ou réduisent la qualité du fonctionnement social, scolaire ou professionnel.
    E. Les symptômes ne surviennent pas exclusivement au cours d’une schizophrénie ou d’un autre trouble psychotique, et ils ne sont pas mieux expliqués par un autre trouble mental (p.ex., trouble de l’humeur, trouble anxieux, trouble dissociatif, trouble de la personnalité, intoxication par, ou sevrage d’une substance).

    Des marqueurs biologiques ? Non :

    Il n’existe pas de marqueurs biologiques permettant le diagnostic du TDAH. Pris dans leur ensemble, en comparaison avec leurs pairs, les enfants ayant un TDAH présentent une augmentation des ondes lentes à l’électroencéphalogramme (Barry et al. 2003), un volume total du cerveau réduit à l’imagerie par résonance magnétique (Castellanos et al. 2002) et possiblement un retard de maturation corticale dans le sens postérieur-antérieur (Shaw et al. 2007), mais ces constatations ne participent pas au diagnostic. Dans les cas rares où il existe une cause génétique connue (p. ex.
    syndrome de l’X fragile, syndrome de délétion 22q11), la présence d’un tableau clinique de TDAH devra aussi faire poser le diagnostic de ce trouble.

    Facteurs de risque génétiques ? Malgré les pirouettes sophistiques, non plus :

    Bien que plusieurs gènes spécifiques aient été corrélés avec le TDAH (Gizer et al. 2009), ce ne sont des facteurs causaux ni nécessaires ni sufisants.

    https://psyclinicfes.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/dsm-5-manuel-diagnostique-et-statistique-des-troubles-
    #psychanalyse #enfants_terribles

  • La fausse épidémie de TDAH de Patrick Landman, in Etudes 2018/11 (Novembre)

    Au fur et à mesure des éditions du DSM, le TDAH s’est vu diminuer les seuils d’inclusion : avant sept ans, puis avant douze ans. On a également allégé les restrictions au diagnostic : le dernier allègement est la comorbidité possible avec les troubles autistiques. Et le TDAH a été adapté aux effets escomptés du médicament, avec une focalisation sur l’attention cible du méthylphénidate, au détriment de l’hyperactivité sur laquelle le médicament agit beaucoup moins. Toutes ces modifications ont permis un élargissement considérable du marché. La théorie non prouvée du dommage cérébral minimum s’est transformée en une autre théorie non prouvée : « Le TDAH n’est plus dans le DSM-5 un trouble du comportement, mais un trouble neuro-développemental. »
    (...)
    Dans les versions qui précédaient le DSM-5 actuel, le TDAH était considéré comme un trouble du comportement. Depuis cette cinquième version du DSM, le TDAH est intégré dans le vaste ensemble des troubles neuro-développementaux. Qui dit neuro-développemental dit participation cérébrale. Or qui sont les enfants étiquetés TDAH ? La plupart d’entre eux appartiennent à la catégorie très floue des enfants « ingérables », ingérables par les parents qui sont en souffrance, ingérables par l’école soumise à des conditions de travail très compliquées, ingérables par la société en général. Naturaliser sans preuve scientifique une catégorie pathologique sans spécificité, sans distinction claire avec la norme et surtout pourvue de corrélations fortes avec la condition sociale, peut présenter des risques potentiels éthiques et même politiques.

    https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=ETU_4254_0053
    #psychanalyse #enfants_terribles

  • Le modèle neuropsychiatrique du TDAH de Jean-Claude St-Onge, in Canal Psy 113/114|2015

    L’imagerie médicale montre des différences entre les cerveaux des TDAH et des enfants de groupes témoins. Cependant, il est impossible de savoir à quoi attribuer ces différences, car la plupart des sujets TDAH participant aux études étaient médicamentés et la vaste majorité d’entre eux étaient porteurs de deux, voire trois ou quatre diagnostics. Par ailleurs, en 2012 le groupe de travail en imagerie médicale de l’APA, signalait que ces différences quantitatives ne sont pas assez importantes ni assez spécifiques pour servir de marqueur biologique (First, 2012).

    Plusieurs de ces études présentent des failles. Une étude de l’Institut national de santé mentale des États-Unis, d’une durée de 10 ans, soutenait que le cerveau des TDAH serait de 3 % à 4 % plus petit. Or, les enfants TDAH, qui n’étaient pas médicamentés, avaient deux ans de moins que les enfants qui en étaient exempts, et on sait que la taille du cerveau est en corrélation avec la masse corporelle (Leo, 2003).

    Les régions du cerveau liées au TDAH ne sont pas les mêmes et les résultats des études sur une même région sont contradictoires. Certains spécialistes pensent que le cortex préfrontal, qui serait le siège du raisonnement, de la mémoire de travail, du contrôle des impulsions, fonctionnerait différemment. Or, certaines études ont identifié une diminution de l’activité dans le cortex préfrontal, d’autres n’ont constaté aucune différence et au moins une autre a remarqué une augmentation de l’activité (Leo, 2003).

    https://publications-prairial.fr/canalpsy/index.php?id=1481
    #psychanalyse #enfants_terribles

  • Pesticides : « Nous, chercheurs et chercheuses, dénonçons une mise au placard des connaissances scientifiques »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/02/07/pesticides-nous-chercheurs-et-chercheuses-denoncons-une-mise-au-placard-des-

    En 2021 et en 2022, nous avons présenté les conclusions de trois synthèses des connaissances scientifiques sur les impacts des produits phytopharmaceutiques (« pesticides ») et les solutions alternatives. Conduits dans le cadre du plan Ecophyto à la demande du gouvernement pour éclairer sa prise de décision, ces travaux, coordonnés par l’Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (Inserm), l’Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (Inrae) et l’Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (Ifremer) sont inédits par la centaine d’experts mobilisés et les plus de 11 000 publications analysées.

    Nos expertises scientifiques collectives ont démontré l’ampleur des impacts des #pesticides sur la #santé humaine et l’#environnement, et mis en évidence des alternatives agroécologiques capables de répondre aux enjeux environnementaux tout en préservant la production agricole. Nos travaux ont aussi identifié les verrous socio-économiques et institutionnels qui limitent le déploiement des alternatives, et les leviers pour les dépasser. Nos conclusions ont alimenté des travaux parlementaires soulignant le besoin de renforcer le plan #Ecophyto, car il n’a pas permis de réduire l’usage des pesticides. Pourtant, le gouvernement a choisi de suspendre ce plan pour apaiser le conflit avec une partie du monde agricole.
    Nous, chercheurs et chercheuses, manifestons ici notre inquiétude face à cette décision, symptomatique du traitement disjoint des enjeux agricoles et environnementaux. Nous dénonçons une mise au placard des connaissances scientifiques et réaffirmons la nécessité d’une politique multisectorielle d’envergure et de long terme, en faveur d’une #agriculture économiquement viable et respectueuse de la santé et de l’environnement.

    Enjeux de santé publique et animale

    Tous les milieux (sols, #eau, #air), même éloignés des zones d’application, sont contaminés par des pesticides. Des liens existent entre pesticides et santé humaine chez les #agriculteurs, les autres professionnels manipulant ces produits, et les #enfants exposés pendant la grossesse : maladies respiratoires, troubles cognitifs, maladie de Parkinson, troubles du développement neuropsychologique et moteur, cancers. L’usage généralisé de pesticides favorise les résistances chez les organismes qu’ils sont censés éliminer – compromettant l’efficacité des produits à plus long terme – et chez des organismes responsables de maladies – soulevant de nouveaux enjeux de santé publique et animale.
    Les pesticides contribuent à l’effondrement de la #biodiversité : déclin des invertébrés terrestres (vers de terre, insectes…) et aquatiques, des oiseaux, etc. Ils altèrent certains processus naturels, tels que la #pollinisation, la régulation des ravageurs et des maladies des cultures. Or, ces services que la biodiversité rend gratuitement aux agriculteurs leur sont essentiels pour gagner en durabilité et en autonomie.

    Des solutions existent pour protéger les cultures autrement : semer des mélanges variétaux, cultiver plusieurs espèces dans un même champ, allonger les #rotations ou encore pratiquer l’#agroforesterie. Toutes ces pratiques concourent à contrôler les ravageurs et les maladies des cultures.

    Par exemple, les associations de cultures aident à contrôler les adventices, tandis que les #haies, bandes fleuries et #prairies abritent des oiseaux, des chauves-souris, des araignées et des insectes auxiliaires de culture qui se nourrissent des ravageurs et pollinisent les plantes cultivées. La littérature scientifique signale la baisse de l’usage des pesticides dans les systèmes qui mettent en œuvre ces pratiques.
    De plus, un paysage avec une diversité de cultures et au moins 20 % de végétation non cultivée (haies, prairies, bosquets…) offre des refuges à la biodiversité tout en limitant la dispersion des pesticides. Un autre levier d’action est l’amélioration de l’évaluation des risques liés aux pesticides, notamment en s’appuyant sur les connaissances scientifiques robustes les plus récentes, en renforçant la surveillance postautorisation et en continuant à se fonder sur l’expertise des agences de sécurité sanitaire.

    Les agriculteurs supportent une très grande part du poids des réglementations, alors que leurs choix de pratiques sont contraints par les filières en amont et en aval : #semenciers, conseil agricole, #industries_agroalimentaires, #grande_distribution… En dehors de la certification « Agriculture biologique », les initiatives pour produire de façon rentable sans pesticides de synthèse sont marginales.
    Pour opérer un changement à large échelle, l’ensemble des maillons des filières doit évoluer. Cette évolution doit s’accompagner d’une meilleure évaluation et d’une meilleure répartition des coûts et des bénéfices des pratiques agricoles. Alors que les coûts de l’usage des pesticides sont essentiellement supportés à bas bruit par les contribuables (dépenses de santé, coûts de dépollution…), les cobénéfices de pratiques respectueuses de l’environnement et de la santé restent insuffisamment rémunérés aux agriculteurs.

    Rôle-clé des politiques publiques

    Le succès de la politique agricole commune [PAC] pour moderniser l’agriculture au sortir de la seconde guerre mondiale témoigne du rôle-clé des politiques publiques dans une transition d’envergure. Garantir durablement la sécurité alimentaire en préservant les écosystèmes est possible à condition de se doter de politiques cohérentes qui gèrent simultanément les enjeux sanitaires, agricoles, environnementaux et alimentaires.
    Ces politiques doivent tenir compte des effets du #changement_climatique. Les rendements des systèmes intensifs sont d’ailleurs plus affectés par les épisodes de sécheresse ou d’inondations que ceux des systèmes diversifiés.

    Ces politiques doivent concerner l’ensemble des filières agricoles et alimentaires, de la réorientation de la sélection variétale à la création de débouchés rémunérateurs pour les systèmes vertueux. Elles doivent accompagner les agriculteurs dans la transition en favorisant les relations entre recherche, conseil et pratique. Enfin, elles doivent inciter à l’évolution des comportements alimentaires vers des régimes favorables à la santé et à l’environnement.
    L’objectif de réduction de l’usage de pesticides est atteignable sans opposer agriculture et environnement. Sans nier les imperfections du plan Ecophyto, nous estimons que sa mise en pause est un signal à l’encontre de cet objectif. Le moment n’est-il pas opportun pour construire des politiques publiques audacieuses appuyées sur les connaissances scientifiques ?

    Premiers signataires : Cécile Chevrier, épidémiologiste, Inserm ; Xavier Coumoul, toxicologue, université Paris Cité ; Clémentine Fritsch, écotoxicologue, CNRS ; Vincent Martinet, économiste, Inrae ; Wilfried Sanchez, écotoxicologue, Ifremer ; Aude Vialatte, agroécologue, Inrae.

    #alimentation #économie #science #maladies_respiratoires #troubles_cognitifs #maladie_de_Parkinson #troubles_du_développement_neuropsychologique_et_moteur #TDN #cancers #écologie #agroécologie

  • The Senate blasts tech CEOs over child safety
    https://www.platformer.news/thursday-newsletter

    Each time a reluctant tech CEO is dragged before Congress to answer questions about the harms that take place on their platforms, I strive to keep an open mind. Perhaps this will be the time, I tell myself, that we hear a productive discussion on the much-needed reforms that tech companies are often too slow to implement.

    But while Congress is generally more educated on tech subjects today than it was when the backlash began in 2017, the hearings still play out much as they did at the beginning: with outraged lawmakers scolding, questioning, and interrupting their witnesses for hours on end, while bills that might address their concerns continue to languish without ever being passed. With so little of substance accomplished, the press can only comment on the spectacle: of the loudest protesters, the harshest insults, and the tensest exchanges.

    After five hours of combative testimony, Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety appears destined to be remembered mostly as a tech hearing like any other: long on talk, and short of much hope that it will lead to a bill being passed.

    All that said, I still worry that both the Senate and the CEOs are falling into the trap of techno-solutionism. There’s no doubt that tech companies can and should reduce harm by working to reduce the spread of bullying, harmful content, CSAM, and extortion.

    But it would be a mistake to lay the broader teen mental health crisis at the feet of tech companies alone. As researcher danah boyd, who has long studied children and social media, wrote this week in a piece criticizing the Kids Online Safety Act

    For all the hearing’s flaws, I do believe tech companies should face pressure to limit the harm on their platforms. Recent revelations from the state attorneys general lawsuit against Meta have laid out in disturbing detail the extent to which the company identified risks to young people and did too little to reduce them.

    But we shouldn’t view the platforms in a vacuum, either. Whatever platforms do to support teens won’t change the fact that mental health care remains broadly inaccessible, dozens of school shootings take place every year, and teens continue to suffer the traumatic effects of living through a global pandemic.

    Tech companies may indeed have teens’ blood on their hands, as Graham told Zuckerberg. But we should never forget that Congress does, too.

    #Médias_sociaux #Enfants #Spectacle

  • Conversations and insights about the moment. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/30/opinion/thepoint#tech-hearings-transparency

    Zeynep Tufekci
    Feb. 1, 2024, 1:02 p.m. ETFeb. 1, 2024
    Feb. 1, 2024

    Zeynep Tufekci

    Opinion Columnist
    We Need Information, Not Apologies, From Tech Companies

    At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday on online child sexual exploitation, perhaps the most dramatic moment came when Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, turned around and stood up to face parents holding up photos of their children who had died by suicide after sexual abuse or extortion via a social media platform.

    “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said to them.

    Here, reasonable voices might intervene. An unbearable tragedy, certainly, they might say, but such tragedies have occurred before social media came along. Let’s not lose proper historical and individual context when talking about the mental health and well-being of children, they might point out.

    All of that is technically correct, but fundamentally wrong. And one senator got to the heart of it.

    “Platforms need to hand over more content about how the algorithms work, what the content does and what the consequences are, not at the aggregate, not at the population level, but the actual numbers of cases so we can understand the content,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. He said he was sponsoring a bill with that requirement, setting new standards for disclosure and transparency, and posed the question forthrightly for Zuckerberg and the C.E.O.s of TikTok, Snap, X and Discord:

    “Is there any one of you willing to say now that you support this bill?”

    The answer was … silence. Crickets. Not one C.E.O. would commit. “Mr. Chairman, let the record reflect a yawning silence from the leaders of the social media platforms,” Coons noted, with resignation.

    The platforms have nearly absolute immunity as an industry. Thanks to Section 230, they generally cannot be sued and held liable for tragic events even if they were facilitated by their product; they get to keep all the profits made from these products. And yet when the public asks for meaningful transparency and data — so that it’s not just an appeal to emotion that results in legislation — the public is told, basically, to pound sand.

    We wouldn’t accept this from any other industry, and we should not accept it from technology companies. And that’s the most important point anyone should make until legislators start passing bipartisan bills that force meaningful transparency on these companies, which could finally allow proper accountability and reasonable oversight.

    #Zeynep_Tufekci #Facebook #Enfants

  • Meta Rejected Efforts to Improve Children’s Safety, Documents Show - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/technology/meta-childrens-safety-documents.html

    Hours before Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, was set to testify on Wednesday about child safety online, lawmakers released internal documents showing how his company had rejected calls to bulk up on resources to combat the problem.

    In 90 pages of internal emails from fall 2021, top officials at Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, debated the addition of dozens of engineers and other employees to focus on children’s well-being and safety. One proposal to Mr. Zuckerberg for 45 new staff members was declined.

    The documents, which are being released in full for the first time, were cited in a lawsuit last year by 33 state attorneys general who accused Meta of getting young users hooked on its apps. They contradict statements from company executives, including the head of global safety and the head of Instagram, who testified in congressional hearings on child safety during that period that they prioritized the well-being of their youngest users and would work harder to combat harmful content on their platform.

    Mr. Zuckerberg, who will be testifying before Congress on Wednesday for the eighth time, is in the hot seat to defend Meta’s lack of investment in child safety amid rising complaints of toxic and harmful content online, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who released the emails with Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee.

    “The hypocrisy is mind-boggling,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview. “We’ve heard time and time again how much they care and are working on this but the documents show a very different picture.”

    Ce passage est vraiment fun. L’irresponsabilité élevée comme mode d’existence.

    A major line of questioning on Wednesday is expected to focus on how apps verify users’ ages, since the company bars users younger than 13.

    At the hearing, Mr. Zuckerberg plans to suggest that Apple bear the responsibility for verifying ages via its App Store, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to encourage legislation that will require teenagers to seek parental approval for downloading apps.

    #Facebook #Enfants #Toxicité

  • Robin Myers sur X :
    https://twitter.com/robin_ep_myers/status/1752486974315700527

    Comment distraire un enfant de Gaza dont la blessure nécessite d’être suturée sans anesthésie ?

    Lui demander quel est son meilleur ami ? Et s’il était mort ?

    Quel est son plat favori ? Mais quand a-t-il mangé pour la dernière fois ?

    Quelle est sa matière préférée à l’école ? Il n’y va plus depuis 3 mois.

    #Gaza #enfants #génocide #sionisme

  • Les experts de l’#ONU exhortent la #France à protéger les #enfants contre l’#inceste et toutes les formes d’#abus_sexuels | #OHCHR
    https://www.ohchr.org/fr/press-releases/2024/01/un-experts-urge-france-protect-children-incest-and-all-forms-sexual-abuse

    Les experts ont constaté que, selon les allégations, les enfants sont victimes d’abus sexuels ou courent un risque élevé d’abus sexuels de la part de leurs #pères ou d’auteurs présumés contre lesquels il existe des preuves crédibles et troublantes d’abus sexuels incestueux.

    « Malgré ces allégations, et en l’absence d’enquête adéquate, ces enfants sont placés sous la garde des pères contre lesquels les allégations sont faites, et les #mères sont sanctionnées pour enlèvement d’enfant pour avoir essayé de protéger leurs enfants », ont-ils déclaré.

    « Alors que la France a répondu à ces allégations, les enfants concernés restent sous la garde des auteurs présumés », ont déclaré les experts. « Nous sommes particulièrement préoccupés par la manière dont le #tribunal_des_affaires_familiales a permis à l’auteur présumé d’accuser la mère d’aliénation parentale afin de miner les allégations d’abus sexuels sur les enfants et détourner l’attention des abus présumés auxquels ils soumettent leurs partenaires et leurs enfants. »

    Ils ont exhorté les autorités à respecter le "#principe_de_précaution" et le "#principe_de_diligence_raisonnable" en matière de #protection_de_l'enfance, en particulier pendant les procédures judiciaires, afin de permettre une approche préventive dans les cas d’incertitude et de complexité.

    L’opinion de l’enfant doit être recherchée et respectée, et l’#intérêt_supérieur_de_l'enfant doit être la considération première avant que les décisions de garde ne soient prises en faveur de l’un des parents, ont-ils déclaré.

    « Il est essentiel de sensibiliser les responsables de l’application de la loi et de la justice et de renforcer leur capacité à surveiller et à traiter efficacement les violations des droits de l’homme dont sont victimes ces enfants et leurs mères », ont-ils déclaré.

    « Des mesures urgentes doivent être prises pour remédier à la situation pénible dans laquelle les enfants et leurs mères sont affectés par l’absence de prise en compte adéquate de leurs besoins », ont déclaré les experts.

    #justice

  • La production de l’évidence hétérosexuelle chez les enfants | #Kevin_Diter, dans Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 2023/4
    https://www.cairn.info/revue-actes-de-la-recherche-en-sciences-sociales-2023-4-page-20.htm
    Une présomption hétérosexuelle omniprésente et diffuse

    La perception de l’évidente #hétérosexualité des #enfants apparaît tout d’abord dans la manière dont les pères, les mères, les professeur·es et animateur·rices définissent et caractérisent les relations entre enfants : quand un·e enfant joue, parle, rigole avec un·e enfant du même sexe, cet échange est aussitôt pensé et défini comme une relation amicale. Il s’agit de deux ou plusieurs meilleur·es copains ou copines qui « aiment passer du temps ensemble », « se raconter leur vie », « faire les 400 coups » ou « se chamailler pour un oui ou un non, avant de se réconcilier » [...]. À l’inverse, lorsque deux enfants de sexe différent s’amusent ou restent simplement à proximité, sans montrer de faux signes d’agacement ou sans faire semblant de se repousser, la relation perd son caractère amical. Elle est immédiatement requalifiée par les adultes, puis par les autres enfants assistant à la scène, comme une relation amoureuse, et ce de façon d’autant plus vive si le garçon et la fille sont en « tête à tête » et restent relativement à l’écart de leurs copains et copines respectif·ves.

    Cette redéfinition amoureuse des relations garçons-filles s’effectue même lorsque les enfants ne sont pas d’accord avec la labélisation proposée et estiment être dans une relation purement amicale.

    [...]

    La présomption hétérosexuelle des enfants se donne ensuite plus directement à voir dans les discussions parents-enfants, ou plus précisément les discussions mères-enfants, lorsqu’elles et ils abordent ensemble la question de leurs « vraies amours », c’est-à-dire de leurs #amours adolescentes et adultes, de leur mariage à venir, voire de la conception des enfants. [...]

    Quand je demande aux mères et aux pères (qui sont toutes et tous hétérosexuel·les) s’il leur arrive d’évoquer lors de ces échanges les amours entre deux filles ou entre deux garçons, les réponses sont souvent identiques. Elles oscillent entre le « trop petits pour comprendre, on verra ça plus tard » et le « non » franc et massif [...].

    Enfin, la présomption hétérosexuelle ressort de manière flagrante au moment de la Saint-Valentin ou à la fin des vacances, quand les adultes organisent des activités « romantiques », comme les boums, dont le but premier et présenté comme tel est de permettre aux enfants « d’aller à la rencontre de leurs amoureuses », et plus généralement, lors des slows, de « mélanger un peu les filles et les garçons » et de « voir des petits couples se former » pour reprendre les expressions amusées des animateurs et animatrices qui encadrent les activités dansantes. Lors de ces évènements, l’hétérosexualité – et l’ordre du genre sur lequel elle repose et qu’elle participe à légitimer – sont « hyper-ritualisées  » [...].

    Une homosexualité possible et pensable uniquement « à la troisième personne »

    Tous les exemples [d’#homosexualité] pris par les enfants renvoient à des ami·es ou à des membres de la famille de l’âge de leurs parents (qui ont tous et toutes des enfants et qui ont donc fait preuve d’un véritable amour). L’homosexualité ne semble pas relever du champ du possible pour les enfants elles- et eux-mêmes. Cette mise à distance du monde enfantin de l’homosexualité est particulièrement saillante quand je leur demande si elles et ils pourraient être amoureux/ses d’un·e enfant du même sexe. Elles et ils me répondent immédiatement et sans aucune hésitation par la négative [...]. En d’autres termes, un effet de troisième personne émerge de leurs commentaires : si l’homosexualité entre dans le champ du possible et du pensable des enfants, et peut leur apparaître légitime, elle ne l’est pas pour elles et eux. Elle l’est uniquement pour d’autres personnes, des personnes relativement éloignées d’elles et eux puisqu’appartenant au seul monde des adultes. Cette mise à distance enfantine peut s’expliquer par le fait que les histoires de couple ou d’amour homosexuels que les filles et les garçons connaissent ne concernent généralement que des adultes et sont mentionnées sous le sceau du secret, signalant et renforçant leur caractère anormal pour les enfants. 

    De vraies amitiés entre filles et garçons

    Plusieurs enfants soutiennent, malgré les moqueries dont elles et ils ont pu parfois faire l’objet, que l’« amitié avec les garçons, ça existe vraiment » (Céline, CM1...), « [qu’] on peut être copain avec une fille, sans qu’elle soit notre amoureuse » (Clément, CM2...), concédant toutefois que « c’est quand même vachement rare ». Elles et ils prennent le plus souvent pour exemple des #amitiés hétérosexuées qui se sont développées dans le cadre domestique ou lors de vacances, loin des regards moqueurs et des risques de rappel à l’ordre hétérosexuel de la part de leurs camarades d’école ou des professionnel·les de l’enfance. Ces amitiés se tissent le plus souvent avec les copains/copines de leur(s) frère(s) ou sœur(s) aîné·e(s) ou avec les enfants des ami·es de leurs parents, qui ont tous et toutes pour point commun de ne pas avoir le même âge. Cette différence d’âge, tout comme la coprésence imposée de l’enfant de l’autre sexe (puisque ce sont les autres membres de la famille qui l’ont convié·e au domicile), permettent aux amitiés filles/garçons de se développer sereinement dans la mesure où elles endiguent, voire suppriment, tout soupçon d’amour naissant. Les enfants des deux sexes qui jouent ensemble ne peuvent être des amoureux puisqu’ils et elles n’ont pas choisi d’être réuni·es. Ils et elles le sont, contre leur gré, du fait de l’intervention de personnes extérieures. De même, l’écart d’âge rend le développement de toute relation amoureuse impossible en raison de la distance (sociale) qui sépare les « grand·es » des « petit·es ». Ces dernier·ères seraient trop éloigné·es, trop différent·es pour qu’un sentiment plus fort qu’une simple camaraderie n’émerge .

    #homophobie #sexisme

  • Une directrice d’école de Toulouse convoquée au rectorat pour avoir aidé des familles sans-abri - France Bleu
    https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/societe/une-directrice-d-ecole-de-toulouse-convoquee-au-rectorat-pour-avoir-aide-

    La directrice de l’école Simone-Veil, dans le quartier de la Reynerie à Toulouse, est convoquée ce vendredi pour « mise à l’abri d’une famille dans l’école ». Depuis décembre, plusieurs établissements ont aidé des parents et enfants qui dormaient dans la rue. (...)

    Une convocation difficile à avaler pour les enseignants du collectif « Jamais sans toit dans mon école », qui a initié ces actions avec des parents d’élèves depuis plusieurs semaines dans plusieurs écoles toulousaines. D’ailleurs, depuis mercredi 10 janvier, deux nouvelles familles sont accueillies le soir au sein de l’école Michoun, dans le quartier de la Roseraie. L’une d’entre elles est composée de huit enfants, qui dormaient dehors avec leurs parents, ou dans une voiture.

    #logement #solidarité #répression #sans-abri #enfants #école

  • Plus exposés mais aussi plus fragiles, les jeunes enfants des ménages modestes sont les plus affectés par la #pollution_de_l’air

    La Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques (DREES) publie une étude sur les inégalités de santé chez les jeunes enfants en lien avec la pollution de l’air. Au-delà des différences d’exposition, qui sont en défaveur à la fois des jeunes enfants des ménages les plus aisés et des ménages les plus modestes, il existe de fortes disparités de vulnérabilité vis-à-vis de la pollution de l’air. 10 % des enfants concentrent l’essentiel des effets observables lors d’une augmentation de l’exposition à la pollution de l’air avant leur premier anniversaire, via le recours aux soins en lien avec certaines pathologies respiratoires. Plus souvent dans un moins bon état de santé à la naissance, ils ne sont pas répartis de façon égale sur l’échelle de niveaux de vie des parents : parmi ces enfants les plus affectés, le dixième le plus modeste est 1,6 fois plus représenté que le dixième le plus aisé.

    L’exposition à la pollution de l’air est plus élevée chez les enfants les plus aisés et les plus modestes

    En France métropolitaine, ce sont les jeunes enfants vivant dans les ménages les plus aisés et dans les ménages les plus modestes qui sont les plus exposés à la pollution de l’air due aux particules fines de moins de 2,5 micromètres. D’une part, la pollution atmosphérique se concentre dans les villes, où les plus aisés résident plus souvent. D’autre part, les moins aisés vivent plus souvent, au sein des aires d’attraction des villes, dans les communes les plus polluées : au sein de ces espaces, ce sont les enfants des ménages les plus modestes qui sont les plus exposés du fait de leur localisation (graphique).

    Les enfants modestes, plus fragiles à la naissance et plus souvent hospitalisés en urgence pour asthme et bronchiolite

    Alors que les enfants nés prématurément représentent 9,1 % des naissances parmi les 10 % les plus modestes de la cohorte étudiée, ils représentent 6,1 % des enfants parmi les 10 % les plus aisés. Ainsi, les enfants les plus modestes ont un risque 1,5 fois plus élevé de naître prématurément que les plus aisés. En outre, parmi les enfants nés à terme, les plus modestes nécessitent en moyenne plus de soins lors de leur séjour de naissance. Avant leur troisième anniversaire, 1,4% des enfants sont admis à l’hôpital en urgence pour asthme sur la période étudiée (2008-2017). Cela représente environ 11 000 enfants nés chaque année qui sont touchés avant leur trois ans. En ce qui concerne les enfants les plus modestes, ils sont 1,9 % à être admis à l’hôpital en urgence pour asthme avant leur troisième anniversaire, contre 1,2 % des plus aisés, soit un risque multiplié par 1,6. Concernant les hospitalisations en urgence pour bronchiolite avant le deuxième anniversaire, qui concernent 3,6 % des enfants soit de l’ordre de 28 000 enfants nés chaque année, les différences sont encore plus marquées, avec un risque doublé pour les plus modestes par rapport aux plus aisés (graphique). En revanche, les délivrances de médicaments contre l’asthme en pharmacie de ville, qui concernent un peu plus d’un quart des enfants, sont bien moins fréquentes chez les plus modestes que pour les dixièmes de niveaux de vie intermédiaires à élevés. En l’absence de mesure directe de l’état de santé respiratoire, la consommation des médicaments contre l’asthme peut être interprétée à la fois comme le marqueur d’une pathologie respiratoire, aiguë ou chronique, mais également comme un indicateur de la qualité de sa prise en charge, puisqu’il existe des différences d’accès, de recours et d’observance des traitements.

    Des recours aux soins respiratoires plus fréquents chez les enfants surexposés à la pollution dans leur première année de vie

    La simple comparaison d’enfants plus exposés à la pollution de l’air que les autres de par leur lieu de vie sur des données observationnelles ne permet d’établir qu’une coïncidence entre cette exposition en moyenne sur l’année et le fait d’être traité pour soins respiratoires. Afin de pouvoir donner une interprétation causale aux estimations de l’effet d’une surexposition à la pollution atmosphérique, deux groupes de jeunes enfants sont ici comparés, un groupe « surexposé » et l’autre « sous-exposé » (l’appartenance à chaque groupe n’étant pas déterminé de façon univoque par le lieu de vie). L’assignation des enfants au groupe « fortement exposé » repose sur leur exposition dans leur première année de vie à un nombre plus important de jours avec une inversion thermique qu’habituellement dans leur commune de résidence, phénomène météorologique ayant pour conséquence l’accumulation des polluants atmosphériques, notamment, mais pas seulement, les PM2,5 et donc par une sur-exposition à la pollution de l’air de ces enfants « fortement exposés » (voir précaution méthodologique).

    Sur la période 2008-2017, environ 28 000 enfants de chaque génération sont hospitalisés pour bronchiolite avant leurs deux ans et 11 000 pour asthme avant leurs trois ans. Si l’on pouvait diminuer l’exposition moyenne annuelle aux principaux polluants atmosphérique d’environ 1 % sur la première année de vie, ce qui revient à préserver les enfants de moins de un an d’une quinzaine de jours d’augmentation ponctuelle importante de leur exposition à ces polluants, alors de l’ordre de 2 000 cas hospitalisés de bronchiolites, 1 800 cas hospitalisés d’asthmes et 6 100 prises en charge d’enfants avec des délivrances de médicaments anti-asthmatiques seraient évités.
    Les enfants les plus affectés par un surcroît de pollution de l’air font plus souvent partie des plus modestes

    La vulnérabilité à la pollution de l’air est vraisemblablement variable d’un enfant à l’autre, ce qu’occultent ces comparaisons globales. Concernant les hospitalisations en urgence pour bronchiolite et la délivrance de médicaments contre l’asthme, les effets importants, détectables statistiquement, seraient concentrés dans un groupe représentant 10 % des enfants, le groupe des enfants les plus affectés par la pollution de l’air. Que ce soit en termes d’hospitalisations en urgence pour bronchiolite ou de délivrance de médicaments anti-asthmatiques, les enfants les 10 % les plus affectés présentent plus souvent un état de santé défavorable à la naissance et font également plus souvent partie des plus modestes. Pour ce qui est des hospitalisations pour bronchiolite, ces disparités sont particulièrement marquées : les enfants les plus affectés par un surcroît de pollution de l’air dans leur première année sont avant tout des enfants dont l’état de santé à la naissance est moins favorable : 18,7 % sont nés prématurément, contre 5,9 % parmi les 50 % les moins affectés. Ces enfants appartiennent aussi 1,9 fois plus souvent au dixième de niveau de vie le plus modeste, qui représente 17,4 % des enfants les plus affectés.

    https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/publications-communique-de-presse/etudes-et-resultats/plus-exposes-mais-aussi-plus-fragiles-les

    #pollution #pauvreté #air #France #enfants #enfance #inégalités #statistiques #chiffres #santé #inégalités_de_santé #vulnérabilité #pathologies_respiratoires #asthme #bronchiolite #hospitalisation

    • Pollution de l’air : la double peine pour les enfants de familles pauvres

      Un rapport de la Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques publié jeudi 4 janvier alerte sur les effets de la pollution de l’air sur les enfants. Ceux des familles les plus modestes sont les premières victimes des particules fines.

      LeLe titre de la publication est éloquent. « Plus exposés à la pollution de l’air, les jeunes enfants des ménages modestes, plus fragiles, sont les plus affectés », annonce la dernière étude de la Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques (Drees) parue le 4 janvier. Le département des études du ministère de la santé met en évidence de « fortes disparités de vulnérabilité » vis-à-vis de la pollution de l’air.

      L’étude se concentre sur les particules fines de moins de 2,5 micromètres de diamètre, dites PM2,5. Celles-ci peuvent être émises directement dans l’air par l’industrie, les transports routiers ou par des sources naturelles comme les feux de forêt. 40 000 décès prématurés par an leur sont imputables, a établi Santé publique France. Sans compter les très nombreuses personnes atteintes de pathologies liées à ces contaminations de l’air.

      En cas de hausse de la pollution, 10 % des enfants concentrent l’essentiel des effets sanitaires observables « avant leur premier anniversaire », notamment par des consultations médicales, en lien avec certaines pathologies respiratoires. Parmi eux, les enfants issus des milieux les plus modestes sont davantage représentés.

      La Drees précise que les jeunes enfants des ménages les plus modestes et ceux des ménages les plus aisés résident dans les grandes aires urbaines en France métropolitaine, précisément là où l’air est le plus pollué. Les plus modestes vivent souvent dans les communes les plus polluées. « 10 % des enfants les plus modestes ont, l’année de leur naissance, une exposition moyenne aux particules fines supérieure de 0,5 microgramme par mètre cube à celle des 10 % d’enfants les plus aisés. »

      Cette étude et ses conclusions précises s’inscrivent dans le sillage d’autres publications et confirment l’ampleur du problème. En 2021, un rapport conjoint du Réseau Action Climat (RAC) et de l’Unicef était consacré au sujet. On pouvait y lire que « les inégalités environnementales entre les enfants commencent dès la conception en période in utero, se cumulent et persistent à la naissance puis pendant l’enfance ».

      Séverine Deguen est chercheuse indépendante sur la question des inégalités environnementales et l’une des autrices du rapport du RAC et de l’Unicef. Elle se réjouit aujourd’hui que ce sujet fasse l’objet d’études spécifiques de la part du ministère de la santé et aimerait que la pollution de l’air soit considérée comme un vrai problème de santé publique.

      La chercheuse n’est pas surprise des conclusions de l’étude et rappelle que les enfants de milieux modestes subissent ce qu’elle nomme « une double peine ». Ils doivent affronter la pauvreté de leurs familles et toutes ses conséquences de privations matérielles, et de surcroît subir des problèmes de santé résultants de leur exposition accrue à la pollution de l’air.

      Et eux n’ont pas d’échappatoire, contrairement aux foyers les plus riches. « Les personnes aisées ont des conditions de vie qui font que leur travail ne les expose pas davantage à des nuisances environnementales. Et elles peuvent y échapper, par exemple partir davantage en vacances », développe-t-elle.

      Les inégalités s’observent en réalité dès la naissance. Les nourrissons dont les parents sont pauvres commencent leur vie en moins bonne santé, sans lien direct avec la pollution, que ceux des milieux favorisés. Ces enfants ont aussi par exemple plus de chance de naître prématurément, ce qui les fragilise davantage face à ces maladies.
      Hospitalisations plus nombreuses

      Ce qui est confirmé par les chiffres des hospitalisations consécutives à des problèmes respiratoires. Chaque année, 11 000 enfants de moins de 3 ans sont hospitalisés pour de l’asthme. Ceux issus des foyers les plus pauvres sont 1,9 % à être admis à l’hôpital en urgence pour cette pathologie respiratoire avant leur troisième anniversaire, contre 1,2 % des plus aisés, « soit un risque multiplié par 1,6 », précise la Drees.

      28 000 enfants de moins de 2 ans sont hospitalisés pour bronchiolite. Là, le risque d’être hospitalisé en urgence avant le deuxième anniversaire est « doublé pour les plus modestes par rapport aux plus aisés ».

      Les enfants de foyers modestes sont aussi vulnérables à la pollution de l’air du fait de certains logements, ajoute la chercheuse. La précarité énergétique subie par certaines familles les conduit à vivre avec de l’humidité ou des moisissures sur les murs et une moindre qualité de l’air intérieur.

      « Souvent, les enfants souffrent davantage d’asthme, de bronchites et d’allergies, souligne Séverine Deguen. En général, ces problèmes restent circonscrits au lieu de vie mais vont venir complètement exploser à la moindre exposition supplémentaire à la pollution de l’air. »

      Réduire la précarité énergétique en rénovant les logements concernés reste un levier efficace et concret, défend encore la chercheuse, pour aplanir ces inégalités de santé et environnementales. Pour la Drees, la réduction de 1 % de l’exposition des enfants à la pollution de l’air pourrait éviter jusqu’à 2 000 cas de bronchiolites et 1 800 cas d’asthme nécessitant une hospitalisation.

      https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/050124/pollution-de-l-air-la-double-peine-pour-les-enfants-de-familles-pauvres

    • Les enfants pauvres, premiers à souffrir de la pollution de l’air

      Le ministère de la Santé a publié jeudi 4 janvier une étude révélant les inégalités environnementales qui frappent les enfants les plus modestes en France. Ces derniers sont les plus affectés par la pollution de l’air et cumulent l’ensemble des facteurs de risque : leurs lieux de vie sont plus exposés et situés à proximité des sources de pollutions, leur accès au soin est également dégradé.

      En conséquence, ils sont les premiers à souffrir de la détérioration de la qualité de l’air. Les enfants surexposés ont plus de risques d’être hospitalisés en urgence pour bronchiolite et pour asthme, rappelle l’étude. Plus fragiles à la naissance, les enfants issus de famille modestes sont également les plus enclins à subir des complications respiratoires.
      1 200 enfants morts prématurés en Europe

      Selon les données de l’étude, 10 % des enfants concentrent l’essentiel des effets sanitaires détectables lors d’une hausse de la pollution, et la majorité d’entre eux vivent dans les milieux les plus pauvres. « Ces enfants ne sont pas répartis de façon égale sur l’échelle de niveaux de vie des parents : parmi ces enfants les plus affectés, le dixième le plus modeste est 1,6 fois plus représenté que le dixième le plus aisé », soulignent les auteurs du rapport.

      Au total, 11 000 enfants nés chaque année sont touchés avant leurs 3 ans par de l’asthme et 28 000 enfants sont affectés par une bronchiolite avant le deuxième anniversaire. Les enfants les plus modestes ont 1,6 fois plus de risques d’être touchés par de l’asthme que les plus aisés et 2 fois plus de risques pour la bronchiolite.

      En revanche, les délivrances de médicaments contre l’asthme en pharmacie de ville, qui concernent un peu plus d’un quart des enfants, sont bien moins fréquentes chez les plus modestes que pour les dixièmes de niveaux de vie intermédiaires à élevés.

      En Europe, la pollution de l’air tue chaque année au moins 1 200 enfants et adolescents prématurément.

      https://reporterre.net/Les-enfants-les-plus-pauvres-sont-les-plus-touches-par-la-pollution-de-l

  • [En direct] L’Unicef fait état d’un nombre « sans précédent » d’enfants tués en #Cisjordanie
    https://www.rfi.fr/fr/moyen-orient/20231228-en-direct-la-situation-sanitaire-se-d%C3%A9t%C3%A9riore-%C3%A0-gaza-un-

    L’Unicef a fait état d’un nombre record d’enfants tués en Cisjordanie en 2023 : dans les douze dernières semaines, 83 #enfants ont été tués. 124 enfants palestiniens et 6 enfants israéliens ont été tués dans des violences liées au conflit entre Israël et Palestine depuis début 2023.

  • Trieste capolinea: diventare adulti lungo la rotta balcanica
    https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/aree/Italia/Trieste-capolinea-diventare-adulti-lungo-la-rotta-balcanica-229074

    Trieste, città di frontiera, è l’ultima fermata della rotta balcanica. Nel 2023 i dati hanno registrato un incremento degli arrivi dei minori non accompagnati. Cosa vuol dire crescere lungo la rotta balcanica? Cosa succede una volta arrivati a Trieste? Un’analisi

  • When the Coast Guard Intercepts Unaccompanied Kids

    A Haitian boy arrived on Florida’s maritime border. His next five days detained at sea illuminate the crisis facing children traveling to the U.S. alone and the crews forced to send them back.

    Tcherry’s mother could see that her 10-year-old son was not being taken care of. When he appeared on their video calls, his clothes were dirty. She asked who in the house was washing his shirts, the white Nike T-shirt and the yellow one with a handprint that he wore in rotation. He said nobody was, but he had tried his best to wash them by hand in the tub. His hair, which was buzzed short when he lived with his grandmother in Haiti, had now grown long and matted. He had already been thin, but by January, after three months in the smuggler’s house, he was beginning to look gaunt. Tcherry told his mother that there was not enough food. He said he felt “empty inside.”

    More strangers, most of them Haitian like Tcherry, continued to arrive at the house in the Bahamas on their way to the United States. One day police officers came with guns, and Tcherry hid in a corner; they left when a man gave them money. The next time he and his mother talked, Tcherry lowered his bright, wide-set eyes and spoke to her in a quieter voice. “It was like he was hiding,” his mother, Stephania LaFortune, says. “He was scared.” Tcherry told her he didn’t want to spend another night on the thin mattress in the front room with scuffed pink walls. She assured him it would be over soon. A boat would take him to Florida, and then he would join her in Canada, where she was applying for asylum. LaFortune texted Tcherry photos of the city where she lived. The leaves had turned brown and fallen from the trees. Still, she was there, and that’s where Tcherry wanted to be. He waited another week, then two, then three.

    Tcherry didn’t laugh or play for months on end, until one day in February, when two sisters, both Haitian citizens, were delivered to the house. One was a 4-year-old named Beana. She wore a pink shirt and cried a lot. The other, Claire, was 8. She had a round face and a burn on her hand; she said that at the last house they’d stayed in, a girl threw hot oil on her. Claire did everything for her sister, helping her eat, bathe and use the bathroom. Like Tcherry, the girls were traveling to join their mother, who was working at a Michigan auto plant on a temporary legal status that did not allow her to bring her children from abroad. Their clothes were as dirty as his. Sometimes Tcherry and Claire watched videos on his phone. They talked about their mothers. “I am thinking about you,” Tcherry said in a message to his mother in early February. “It has been a long time.”

    Finally, nearly four months after Tcherry arrived at the house, one of the men in charge of the smuggling operation woke him and the two girls early in the morning. “He told us to get ready,” Tcherry recalls. With nothing but the clothes they wore, no breakfast or ID, they were loaded into a van and were dropped off at a trash-lined canal just outside Freeport, Bahamas. In the muck and garbage, more than 50 people stood waiting as a boat motored toward them. “Not a good boat,” Tcherry told me, “a raggedy boat.” But nobody complained. The 40-foot vessel tilted from the weight as people climbed aboard and pushed into the two dank cabins, sitting shoulder to shoulder or standing because there was no more space. Tcherry felt the boat speeding up, taking them out to sea.

    For almost 12 hours they traveled west, packed together in cabins that now smelled of vomit and urine. In the lower cabin, a baby was crying incessantly. A heavily pregnant woman offered up the last of her package of cookies to the child’s mother to help soothe the infant. Tcherry was thirsty and exhausted. Not far from him, he heard a woman say that the children’s parents must be wicked for sending them alone into the sea.

    The passengers had been promised they would reach U.S. shores hours earlier. People were starting to panic, sure that they were lost, when passengers sitting near the windows saw lights, at first flickering and then bright — the lights of cars and buildings. “That is Florida,” a young man said as the boat sped toward shore. Tcherry pulled on his sneakers. “If I make it,” he thought, “I will spend Christmas with my family.”

    But as quickly as the lights of Florida came into view, police lights burst upon them. A siren wailed. People screamed, a helicopter circled overhead and an officer on a sheriff’s boat pointed a long gun toward them. Uniformed men climbed on board, yelled orders and handed out life jackets. The group of 54 people was transferred to a small Coast Guard cutter. As the sun rose over Florida just beyond them, a man with a tattoo on his arm of a hand making the sign of the benediction began recording a video on his phone. “As you can see, we are in Miami,” he said. “As you can see, we are on a boat with a bunch of small children.” He intended to send the video to relatives waiting for him on land, and he urged them to contact lawyers. But his phone was confiscated, and the video was never sent.

    The Coast Guard frames its operations in the sea as lifesaving work: Crews rescue people from boats at risk of capsizing and pull them from the water. But the agency, which is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, also operates as a maritime border patrol, its ships as floating holding facilities. Since the summer of 2021, the Coast Guard has detained more than 27,000 people, a number larger than in any similar period in nearly three decades. On a single day in January, the agency’s fleet of ships off the Florida coast collectively held more than 1,000 people. The public has no way of knowing what happens on board. Unlike at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is closely monitored by advocates, the courts and the press, immigration enforcement at sea takes place out of public view.

    The Coast Guard routinely denies journalists’ requests to witness immigration patrols, but in early March, I learned that several days earlier, a boat carrying dozens of Haitians had been stopped so close to land that they were first chased down by the Palm Beach County sheriff’s marine unit. Among them were three unaccompanied children: two young sisters and a 10-year-old boy. In the months afterward, I obtained a trove of internal Coast Guard documents, including emails and a database of the agency’s immigration interdictions, and I tracked down Tcherry, Claire and Beana and 18 people traveling with them. Many of them told me about the five days they spent detained on Coast Guard ships — an experience, one man said, “that will remain a scar in each person’s mind.”

    People intercepted at sea, even in U.S. waters, have fewer rights than those who come by land. “Asylum does not apply at sea,” a Coast Guard spokesperson told me. Even people who are fleeing violence, rape and death, who on land would be likely to pass an initial asylum screening, are routinely sent back to the countries they’ve fled. To try to get through, people held on Coast Guard ships have occasionally taken to harming themselves — swallowing sharp objects, stabbing themselves with smuggled knives — in the hope that they’ll be rushed to emergency rooms on land where they can try to claim asylum.

    The restrictions, combined with the nearly 30-year spike in maritime migration, created a crisis for the Coast Guard too, leading to what one senior Coast Guard official described in an internal email in February as “war-fighting levels of stress and fatigue.” Coast Guard crew members described to me their distress at having to reject desperate person after desperate person, but the worst part of the job, several said, was turning away the children who were traveling alone. From July 2021 to September 2023, the number of children without parents or guardians held by the Coast Guard spiked, a nearly tenfold increase over the prior two years. Most of them were Haitian. “The hardest ones for me are the unaccompanied minors,” one crew member told me. “They’re put on this boat to try to come to America, and they have no one.”

    The treatment of children is perhaps the starkest difference between immigration policy on land and at sea. At land borders, unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada cannot simply be turned back. They are assigned government caseworkers and are often placed in shelters, then with family members, on track to gain legal status. That system has its own serious failings, but the principle is that children must be protected. Not so at sea. U.S. courts have not determined what protections should extend to minors held on U.S. ships, even those detained well within U.S. waters. The Coast Guard says that its crew members screen children to identify “human-trafficking indicators and protection concerns including fear of return.” A spokesperson told me that “migrants who indicate a fear of return receive further screening” by Homeland Security officials.

    But of the almost 500 unaccompanied children held on the agency’s cutters in the Caribbean and the Straits of Florida between July 2021 and early September 2023, five were allowed into the U.S. because federal agencies believed they would face persecution at home, even amid escalating violence in Haiti, including the documented murder and rape of children. One other child was medically evacuated to a hospital in Florida, and six were brought to land for reasons that the internal Coast Guard records do not explain. The rest were delivered back to the countries they left, and it’s often unclear where they go once they return. Some have nowhere to stay and no one to take care of them. On occasion, they are so young that they don’t know the names of their parents or the country where they were born. One official from an agency involved in processing people delivered by the U.S. Coast Guard to Haiti told me “it is an open secret” that the process can be dangerously inconsistent. “Children leave the port,” the official said, “and what happens to them after they leave, no one knows.”

    Stephania LaFortune had not wanted to send her 10-year-old son on a boat by himself. She knew firsthand how perilous the journey could be. In May 2021, before the boat she had boarded made it to a Florida beach, some of the passengers jumped into the water to wade through the heavy waves. “They almost drowned,” she told me when I met her in Toronto. LaFortune waited on the beached vessel until U.S. Border Patrol officials came to detain her. In detention, she claimed asylum and was soon released. For months, she searched for other ways to bring Tcherry to her, but LaFortune ultimately determined she had no alternative.

    The first time LaFortune left Tcherry, he was 3 years old. Her husband, a police cadet, had been shot in his uniform and left to die in a ditch outside Port-au-Prince, and LaFortune, fearing for her life, departed for the Bahamas. Tcherry stayed behind with his grandmother. Four years later, as violence began to flare again, Tcherry’s mother finally made good on her promise to send for him. She arranged for him to fly to the Bahamas, where she had remarried and had a baby girl. But Tcherry was in the Bahamas not even a year when LaFortune told him that she would be leaving again — not because she wanted to, she assured her sobbing son, but because she had seen how Haitians were harassed and deported, and she simply didn’t believe there was real opportunity there. Tcherry’s stepfather and his younger half sister, who were Bahamian citizens, joined LaFortune months later. She arranged for Tcherry to live with relatives, promising to send for him as soon as she could.

    LaFortune’s asylum case in Florida dragged on, so she and her husband and daughter traveled over land to Canada, where they hoped they could get legal status more quickly. While they waited for a decision in their asylum case, the relative Tcherry was staying with said he could no longer take care of a growing boy by himself. After begging others to take her son, LaFortune found a woman she knew back in Haiti who said she was planning to make the trip to Florida herself with her own children. For $3,000, the woman said, she could take Tcherry with them. LaFortune sent the money. The woman took Tcherry to the smuggler’s house and did not return for him.

    That house, and the one where Tcherry was moved next, were filled with Haitians fleeing the crisis that began in July 2021, when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a team of mostly Colombian mercenaries hired through a Miami-area security company. The U.S. Justice Department has accused nearly a dozen people, some based in the United States, of setting the assassination in motion. As the Haitian state crumbled, proliferating gangs, many with ties to the country’s political elite, burst from the neighborhoods they’d long controlled and began terrorizing Port-au-Prince and swaths of the rest of the country. Kidnapping, extortion, the rape of women and children, and the torching of homes and neighborhoods became routine weapons of fear. Thousands have been murdered, and in June the United Nations estimated that nearly 200,000 have been internally displaced. Haitians able to gather the resources have left however they can. Many have traveled over land to the Dominican Republic or by air to South and Central America. And thousands have boarded boats bound for the beaches of Florida.

    The people on the vessel with Tcherry had reasons, each as urgent as the next, for being there. There was a 31-year-old street vendor whose Port-au-Prince neighborhood had been taken over by gangs; she said that when she tried to flee north by bus, men with guns forced her and other women off the bus and raped them. A man from a district in the north said he’d been beaten more than once by thugs sent by a political boss he’d opposed; both times they threatened to kill him. A man who worked as a Vodou priest in Port-au-Prince said he left because he needed money for his sick daughter, and gangs were confiscating his wages. The pregnant woman who helped comfort the crying baby said she had been kidnapped and raped; she was released only after her family sold land and collected donations to pay for her ransom. Two women were traveling with their daughters, but Tcherry, Claire and Beana were the only young children traveling alone.

    Tcherry sat on the deck of a Coast Guard cutter called the Manowar along with the rest of the group, exhausted, scared and confused. Nobody had explained to him what would happen next. Crew members in blue uniforms finally gave them food, small plates of rice and beans, and began to search their belongings and run their photos and fingerprints through federal immigration and criminal databases. Tcherry and the sisters followed the orders of a crew member with blond hair, cut like the soldiers in movies Tcherry had seen, to sit in the shaded spot under the stairs to the bridge.

    On the stern of the cutter, a man in his early 30s named Peterson sat watching the children. He had crossed paths with them weeks earlier in one of the houses; seeing they were hungry, he had brought them extra slices of bread and even cut Tcherry’s hair. Claire reminded him of his own young daughter in Haiti. Peterson had not wanted to leave his child, but gangs had recently taken control of roadways not far from his home in the coastal city of Saint-Marc. He had not earned a decent wage for many months, not since he lost his job as a driver at a missionary organization. He had decided to leave for the United States so he could send money back to Haiti for his daughter, who remained behind with her mother.

    Now it occurred to Peterson that his connection to Tcherry and the girls could work to his advantage. Surely the Coast Guard wouldn’t return children to Haiti, he thought. Surely they wouldn’t separate a family. “I thought that there might be an opportunity for me to get to the U.S.,” he told me. He approached Tcherry, Claire and Beana and told them they should tell the crew he was their uncle.

    Peterson’s small kindness in the smuggler’s house had given Tcherry reason to trust him. When it came time for the blond-haired crew member, Petty Officer Timothy James, to interview the children, Peterson stood close behind. With the help of another Haitian man who spoke some English, Peterson told James that he was their uncle. James asked the children if it was true. Tcherry and Claire, both timid, their eyes lowered, said it was. Beana was too young to understand. James handed her a brown teddy bear, which the crew of the Manowar keeps on board because of the growing number of children they detain, and sent the children back to the stern.

    But no more than a couple of hours later, Peterson changed his mind. He’d noticed that the pregnant woman had been evaluated by Florida EMTs, and he moved over to offer her a deal: If she would tell the crew he was her husband and let him join her if they brought her to land, his brother in Florida, who already paid $6,000 for his place on this boat, would make sure she was compensated. “I helped her understand that that is something she could profit from,” he says. The woman agreed, and Peterson, who now needed to tell the truth about the children, divulged to a crew member that he was not their uncle. “I was just trying to help if I could,” he said.

    James crouched down beside the children again and told them not to lie. “Why did you leave your home to go to the United States,” he read off a questionnaire. “To go to my parents,” Tcherry replied. To Tcherry, the questions seemed like a good sign. He was unsure whether he could trust these crew members after the officer on the sheriff boat pointed a long gun at them the night before. “I thought they were going to shoot me,” Tcherry says. But James calmly directed the children to sit in the one shaded place on the boat, and gave them cookies and slices of apple. “He was nice,” Tcherry says — the nicest anyone had been since Peterson brought them bread in the house.

    James kept reading the form. “What will happen when you get there?” he asked. Tcherry looked up. He latched onto the words “when you get there” and took them as a promise. He asked James when they would be on land. James said the same thing he told everyone on the boat: that the decision was not up to him, that he was just doing his job. Tcherry was convinced James would send him and Claire and Beana to their mothers. He thought of the story his mother had told him about his father’s murder, his body in a ditch by the road, and of his last memory of Haiti, when he passed through a gang checkpoint on the way to the airport. “I saw bandits approaching toward us, and he had a gun pulled,” Tcherry told me. “My heart started beating fast, and I thought he was going to shoot.” He was overwhelmed with relief that he would never have to go back there.

    A boat came to bring someone to land. But it was not there to pick up Tcherry or the other children. A Coast Guard medical officer had reviewed the pregnant woman’s vitals and made a decision that because she “may go into labor at any moment,” she would be brought to a hospital in Palm Beach County accompanied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Before she was taken away, Peterson said the woman told him she would not claim to be married to him after all. She didn’t want a stranger on her baby’s birth certificate. She offered to say she was his cousin. “I knew that being the cousin would not be enough,” Peterson recalls, “and I have to say that I lost hope.”

    The pregnant woman disappeared on a small boat toward land. Those left on the stern began to talk among themselves, asking why the baby, who had barely stopped crying, and the other children had been left aboard the cutter. They said they could not keep going like this, eating only small portions of scarcely cooked and saltless rice and beans, unable to bathe and forced to urinate and defecate in a toilet seat attached to a metal box with a tube off the side of the open deck. They decided they would rise in unison and protest, and they passed the word from one to the next. At around 9 p.m., dozens of people began to yell toward the bridge demanding interpreters, lawyers or just to know what would become of them. From the bow where he stood, James heard faint yelling, and then the voice of the officer in charge over the loudspeaker. “They’re starting an uprising on the fantail,” he said. “I need you back there.”

    Timothy James came from a conservative family in a conservative little town in the mountains of North Carolina. He and his wife held handguns aloft in their wedding photos, and his first job after dropping out of college was as a sheriff’s deputy at the jail. James joined the Coast Guard in 2015. “My main goal,” he told me, “was to chase down drug runners and catch migrants” — two groups that were more or less the same, as far as he understood.

    He’d been on the job no more than a few weeks before his expectations were upended. “I had no idea what I was talking about,” he told me. There was much less “running and gunning, catching bad guys” than he’d anticipated. Instead, the people he detained would tell him their stories, sometimes with the help of Google Translate on his phone, about violence and deprivation like he had never contemplated. People described what it was like to live on $12 a month. There were children and grandmothers who could have been his own, and young men not so unlike him. They were not trying to infiltrate the country as he’d thought. They were running because “they didn’t have another option,” he says.

    James and his colleagues learned the lengths people would go to try to get to land. Since last fall, people detained on cutters have pulled jagged metal cotter pins, bolts and screws from the rigging and swallowed them, apparently trying to cause such severe injury that they’d be taken to a hospital. Last August, near the Florida Keys, three Cuban men were reported to the Coast Guard by a passing towboat operator; most likely fearing they would be brought back to Cuba, they stabbed and slashed their legs with blades and were found in puddles of blood. In January, a man plunged a five-inch buck-style knife that he’d carried onto a cutter into the side of his torso and slashed it down his rib cage. The crew taped the knife to the wound to stop him from bleeding out as he fell unconscious. Most of these people were delivered to Customs and Border Protection and rushed to hospitals on land, where they probably intended to claim asylum. By the time James began working as operations officer on the Manowar last summer, he and other crew members started every leg at sea by scouring the decks for anything that people might use to harm themselves. (According to a DHS spokesperson, “medical evacuations do not mean that migrants have a greater chance of remaining in the United States.”)

    People detained on cutters have in rare cases threatened to harm Coast Guard members or others they’re traveling with. In January, a group the Coast Guard detained pushed crew members and locked arms to stop their removal to another cutter, according to an internal record. That same month, a group of Haitians held children over the side of a boat, “threatening to throw them overboard and set them on fire” if the Coast Guard came closer. Weeks later, a group of Cubans brandished poles with nails hammered into them and tried to attack an approaching Coast Guard boat. Conflicts between crew and those they detain have escalated to the point that Coast Guard members have shot people with pepper balls and subdued others with stun maneuvers.

    James tensed as he heard the order over the loudspeaker. He thought of the crowd-control techniques he’d learned to immobilize someone, and stepped down the side walkway toward the stern. In front of him were dozens of angry men and a few women, yelling in Haitian Creole. James hesitated and then walked forcefully up to the group, his hands pulled into his sides as if he were ready to throw a punch. Instead, he took a knee. He gestured to the men around him to come join him. He spoke into a cellphone in English, and on the screen he showed them the Google Translate app: “You’ve got to tell everybody to calm down,” it read in Creole. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

    Before they could respond, five other crew members came down the stairs, plastic zip ties and batons hanging from their belts. Tcherry was sitting under the stairs, beside Claire and Beana, who had not let go of the teddy bear. “Shut up, shut up,” one of the crew told the protesters as he stepped in front of Tcherry. “One of them said he was going to pepper-spray their eyes and handcuff them,” Tcherry says. James told his colleagues to wait. The yelling in English and Creole grew louder. A man to Tcherry’s left began to scream and roll on the ground, and then he rolled partway under the handrail. A crew member grabbed the man by the back of the pants and hauled him up. James secured his wrist to a post on the deck. “Nobody’s dying on my boat today,” James said.

    Above Tcherry, another crew member stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs. He held a shotgun and cocked it. James claims that the gun was not loaded, but the threat of violence had its intended effect. The protesters stepped back and went quiet.

    James kept speaking into the phone. “What do you want?” he asked the men.

    “If we go back, we’re dead,” one man replied. They said they could not endure being on the boat much longer.

    “If it were up to me, we’d be taking you to land,” James said. “But it is not up to us.” There was a process to seek protection, he told them. “But what you’re doing now is not that process.”

    Coast Guard crews do not decide who will be offered protection and who will be sent back. Their responsibility is only to document what the agency calls “manifestation of fear” (MOF) claims. The Coast Guard instructs them to make note of such claims only when people proactively assert them or when they observe people exhibiting signs of fear, such as shaking or crying. They are not supposed to ask. That may help explain why the agency has logged only 1,900 claims from more than 27,000 people detained in this region between July 2021 and September 2023. Fewer than 300 of those came from Haitians, even though they make up about a third of people held on cutters. Officials in the Coast Guard and in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told me that Haitians face a systemic disadvantage in making a successful claim for protection: Almost no one working on Coast Guard boats can speak or understand Creole. (The Coast Guard told me it has access to contracted Creole interpreters aboard cutters.)

    Regardless of the person’s nationality, the process is nearly always a dead end. Each person who makes a claim for protection is supposed to be referred to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer, who conducts a “credible fear” screening by phone or in person on a cutter. Between July 2021 and early September 2023, USCIS approved about 60 of the approximately 1,900 claims — around 3%. By contrast, about 60% of asylum applicants on land passed a credible-fear screening over roughly the same period. Unlike on land, people who are denied on ships have no access to courts or lawyers to appeal the decision. And the few who are approved are not sent to the United States at all. Should they choose to proceed with their claims, they are delivered to an immigration holding facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, where they are evaluated again. They’re told they should be prepared to wait for two years or more, until another country agrees to take them as refugees. Only 36 of the people with approved claims agreed to be sent to Guantánamo. The State Department says there are currently no unaccompanied minors held at the Migrant Operations Center at Guantánamo, but a recent federal contract document says that the facility is prepared to accept them.

    The Manowar crew had been tasked by the local Coast Guard office with logging any requests for protection. But the night after the protest had been too chaotic and exhausting for them to do so. In the morning, a larger cutter with more supplies arrived. The people detained on the Manowar would be transferred to that boat. Before they departed, James told them that anyone who intended to seek protection should seek help from the crew on the next boat. “Tell them, ‘I’m in fear for my life,’ just like you told me,” he said. “You tell whoever is processing you that specific thing.”

    But subsequent crews logged no such claims, according to records I obtained. One man told me that, in response to his plea for protection, an officer on the next boat wrote a note on a piece of paper, but nobody ever followed up. Another said that an officer told him their claims would be heard later. But there were no more interviews. “We had no opportunity,” a woman in the group says. When I asked the Coast Guard about this, a spokesperson told me the agency meticulously documents all claims. “Since we do not have a record of any of those migrants communicating that they feared for their lives if returned to Haiti, I cannot say that they made MOF claims while aboard,” he said.

    Tcherry fell asleep on the larger cutter and woke at around dawn to commotion. He saw an EMT pressing on the chest of a middle-aged woman who lay several yards away from him. She had been moaning in pain the night before. The crew member keeping watch had found her dead, her nose and mouth covered in blood. Another Haitian woman began to sing a hymn as the EMT performing CPR cried. A small boat took the woman’s body away and then returned for another man who had been complaining of pain and could not urinate. “I thought they would take us to land after the woman had died,” Tcherry says. “I thought they would let us go.” But that afternoon, he was transferred to yet another cutter that pulled away from Florida and into the high seas. Tcherry finally understood he was being sent back.

    The Coast Guard was first deployed as a maritime border-patrol agency to stop an earlier surge of migration from Haiti. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan made a deal with Jean-Claude Duvalier, the Haitian dictator, that allowed the Coast Guard to stop and board Haitian boats and deliver those detained directly back to Haiti. They would be processed on Coast Guard cutters, far from lawyers who could review their cases. The order, advocates argued at the time, undermined U.N. refugee protections and a U.S. refugee-and-asylum law that Congress passed just the year before. “This effort to push borders into the world’s oceans was new, and it marked a perverse paradigm shift,” Jeffrey Kahn, a legal scholar at the University of California, Davis, wrote recently.

    A decade after the Reagan agreement, as Haitians again departed en masse following a military coup, the George H.W. Bush administration further buttressed the sea wall. Bush signed an order that said federal agencies had no obligation to consider asylum claims from Haitians caught in international waters, no matter the evidence of danger or persecution. Lawyers and activists protested, calling the maritime regime a wholesale abdication of human rights doctrine. But the Bush order still stands. By the mid-1990s, its reach expanded to nearly anyone of any nationality caught in the sea, whether out in international waters or a couple of hundred feet from the beach.

    Pushing migrants and refugees away from the land borders to avoid obligations under law has now become common practice. In the United States, consecutive policies under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have attempted to cast whole swaths of the land south of the border as a legal no-man’s land like the ocean. They have outsourced deterrence, detention and deportation to Mexico and Central America. Trump and Biden have sought to bar people from seeking asylum if they don’t first try to apply for protection in countries they pass through on their way to the United States. Europe, for its part, has pushed people coming by boat through the Mediterranean back to North African shores, where countries have imposed brutal regimes of deterrence.

    None of those measures have prevented the latest wave of migration from the Caribbean. In January, amid a generational spike in Haitians and Cubans held on their cutters, the Coast Guard acknowledged that crew members were reaching a breaking point. “We are in extremis,” a senior official wrote to colleagues in a widely circulated internal email in January. “I know you and your teams are pushed beyond limits.” The head of the Coast Guard for the eastern half of the United States, Vice Adm. Kevin Lunday, wrote in February to colleagues that two outside experts had told him their crews were under extreme stress similar to the levels experienced in “sustained combat operations.”

    Coast Guard members told me they had become accustomed to retrieving corpses from capsized boats, worn down by water or gnawed on by sharks. It was not uncommon to walk down a stairway or into a bunk room and come upon a crew member sobbing. Crew members waited months for mental health appointments, and the agency was talking openly about suicide prevention. “I don’t see how the current level of operations is sustainable,” Capt. Chris Cederholm, the commander of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Miami, wrote to colleagues, “without the breaking of several of our people.” Some were struggling with what one former crew member called a “moral dilemma,” because they had begun to understand that the job required them to inflict suffering on others. “We hear their stories, people who say they’d rather we shoot them right here than send them back to what they’re running from,” one Coast Guard member says. “And then we send them all back.”

    Tim James told me he tried to take his mind off the job by lifting weights and frequenting a cigar bar where service members and cops go to talk about “the suck,” but he soon realized he needed more than weights or whiskey to reckon with the mounting stress, even despair. “I go home, and I feel guilty,” he told me, “because I don’t have to worry about somebody kicking in my front door, you know, I don’t have to worry about the military roaming the streets.” He sought mental health support from a new “resiliency support team” the agency created. But James had not been able to shake the memories of the children he detained, particularly one 7-year-old Haitian girl with small braids. She’d been wearing shorts and a tank top, her feet were bare and she smiled at James whenever their eyes caught. “My mom is dead,” she told James with the help of an older child who spoke a little English. “I want to go to my auntie in Miami.”

    In the girl’s belongings the crew found a piece of paper with a phone number she said was her aunt’s. After James interviewed her, they sent her unaccompanied-minor questionnaire to the district office in Florida, and they waited for instructions on what to do with her. Out on the deck, James couldn’t help hoping she’d be taken to shore, to her aunt. But late in the morning the next day, the crew received a list from an office in Washington, D.C., of the people to be sent back. The girl was on the list. James cried on the return trip to port. One of his own daughters was about the girl’s age. “I can’t imagine sending my 7-year-old little kid across an ocean that is unforgiving,” James told me, nearly in tears. “I can’t imagine what my life would be like to have to do that.”

    That was just weeks before he encountered Tcherry, Claire and Beana. So when Peterson admitted the children were alone, the news came as a blow. “It’s a pretty hard hit when you think the kids have somebody and then it turns out that they really don’t,” James told me. He could see that Tcherry thought he would be making it to shore. “To see the hope on his face and then have to kind of turn around and destroy that is tough,” James told me. He never learns what becomes of the people he transfers off his cutter: that the pregnant woman gave birth in a hospital to a healthy boy and has an asylum case pending; that the body of Guerline Tulus, the woman who died on the cutter of what the medical examiner concluded was an embolism, remains in a Miami morgue, and that authorities have not identified any next of kin. He does not know what happened to the three children after they were sent back, but many months later, he says, he still wonders about them.

    Tcherry followed Claire and Beana up a rickety ramp in the port of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, past a seized blue and yellow cargo ship into the Haitian Coast Guard station. The ground was littered with plastic U.S. Coast Guard bracelets that previous groups of people had pulled off and thrown to the ground. Officials from the Haitian child-protection authority and the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration watched as Tcherry and the rest of the group disembarked. “They looked scared and they said they were hungry,” a veteran official at IBESR, the Haitian child-protection agency, who was working at the port that day told me. “As a Haitian, I feel humiliated,” he says, “but we can’t really do anything about it. We’ve resigned ourselves.” To him, the people the Americans offloaded in Haiti always looked half dead. “It seems to me that when those children fall in their hands, they should know how to treat them. But that’s not the case.”

    Tcherry’s throat hurt and his legs were weak. He had never felt such tiredness. He ate as much as he could from the warm plate of food the UN provided. Slumped over on a bench, he waited for his turn to use the shower in a white and blue wash shed on the edge of a fenced lot behind the Haitian Coast Guard station. The officials brought several people to a hospital and got to work figuring out what to do with the unaccompanied children.

    The U.S. Coast Guard and State Department say that the children they send back are transferred into the hands of local authorities responsible for the care of children. “When we have custodial protection of those children, we want to make sure that the necessary steps are taken,” Lt. Cmdr. John Beal, a Coast Guard spokesperson, told me, “to ensure that when we repatriate those migrants, they don’t end up in some nefarious actor’s custody or something.” But no U.S. agency would explain the actual precautions the U.S. government takes to keep children from ending up in the wrong hands, beyond initial screenings aboard cutters. Last year, the Coast Guard stopped tracking the “reception agency” in each country, because according to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government has set up rules establishing which agencies take these children and no longer needs to track them on a case-by-case basis.

    Haitian child-protection officials in Cap-Haïtien say their agency always finds relatives to take children, though sometimes after weeks or months. But the official with one of the other agencies involved in the processing of returned and deported Haitians at the Cap-Haïtien port said this claim is simply not true. The official said that children have departed the port with adults and with older children without any agency confirming they have an actual relationship or connection. “This is a serious concern in terms of trafficking,” the official told me. IBESR said those claims were unfounded. “According to the procedure, every child who leaves the port is accompanied by someone,” the IBESR official said, adding that when possible, the agency follows up with families to make sure children arrive safely. But the agency acknowledged there are limits to the support it can provide because of a lack of resources.
    Before they left the cutter, Peterson told Tcherry and the sisters that he would take care of them until they could contact their parents, who would figure out where they needed to go. Tcherry agreed. Peterson later told me he’d thought carefully about whether he wanted to get involved in the kids’ affairs once they were off the boat. He’d talked to other adults onboard, and they all agreed that someone needed to step up, that the Haitian government was surely not to be trusted. “If I didn’t do it,” Peterson says, “they would remain with the Haitian state, with all the risks that they could’ve faced, including kidnapping.”

    Peterson told the child-protection agency that he was the children’s guardian. The officials said they would need to contact the parents to confirm, so Peterson did the only thing he could think to do: He called the man who had been his conduit to the boat out of the Bahamas. The man sent him photos of the children’s IDs and put Peterson in touch with Claire and Beana’s mother, Inose Jean, in Michigan. She screamed and cried with relief upon learning her daughters were alive. Peterson explained that he’d taken care of the girls at sea and he asked her what to do with them. She said she would call back. Two hours later, she instructed Peterson to take the girls to her friend’s house in Cap-Haïtien.

    But Peterson still had no number for Tcherry’s mother. So he told the officials that Tcherry was Claire and Beana’s cousin, and that he’d gotten the image of Tcherry’s ID from Inose Jean. At dusk, Peterson walked with the three children through the metal gate of the Haitian Coast Guard station, at once incensed and relieved that he’d been allowed to take them. “The Haitian authorities didn’t talk to the children’s mothers,” Peterson says. “There was not enough evidence to actually prove I was who I was, or to prove a relationship.” They took a taxi to Jean’s friend’s house, and Claire, who recognized the woman from years earlier, rushed into her arms.

    The woman agreed to let Tcherry spend a night there. Peterson went to a cheap hotel with spotty electricity and a dirty pool. The man in the Bahamas finally sent Peterson Tcherry’s mother’s number. “I am the person who stood up to care for Tcherry on the boat,” Peterson told LaFortune. She collapsed onto the bed in her room, the only piece of furniture in the Toronto apartment she shared with her husband and her daughter. She had spent the last six days in a terrified daze, calling the people in the Bahamas she’d paid, begging for any news and fighting images in her mind of her son sinking into the sea. The next morning, after Tcherry woke, Peterson called LaFortune again. Tcherry looked weak and his voice was frail and hoarse. “When will I be with you, Mommy?” he asked.

    LaFortune did not for a moment consider trying to put Tcherry on another boat. She told him she would wait until she got asylum in Canada and send for him legally. But Haiti was even more dangerous for Tcherry than when he’d left. One man who was detained with Tcherry, whom I interviewed in Haiti two weeks after he returned there, said he feared he would be killed if he left Cap-Haïtien for his home in Port-au-Prince. After he ran through the roughly $50 the U.N. agency gave each of the returnees, which he used for a hotel, he did go back and was attacked on the street as he traveled to a hospital, he said, to get medicine for his daughter. He sent me photographs of gashes on his body. A second man sent me photos of a deep head wound that he suffered during an attack by the very armed men he had said he was running from. Another woman from the boat who told me she fled because she was raped says she is now “in hiding” in Port-au-Prince, living with relatives and her daughter, whom she does not allow to leave the house.

    Others on the boat have been luckier. In late 2022, the Department of Homeland Security started an unusually broad new legal-immigration program that now allows Haitians and Cubans, along with Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, to apply for two-year entry permits on humanitarian grounds from their countries, rather than traveling by land or sea first. The Department of Homeland Security says that since the program began, it has processed 30,000 people a month. More than 107,000 Haitians and 57,000 Cubans have been approved for entry, including a man who was detained with Tcherry. On Oct. 18, he stepped off a plane in Fort Lauderdale with a legal entry permit. He made it just under the wire, given the timing of his interdiction in February. In late April, DHS added a caveat to the new program: Anyone stopped at sea from then on would be ineligible to apply to the parole program. The Coast Guard says the new program and the accompanying restriction have caused the numbers of Cubans and Haitians departing on boats to fall back down to their pre-2021 level. “People have a safe and lawful alternative,” Beal, the Coast Guard’s spokesperson in Florida, told me, “so they don’t feel their only option is to take to the sea.”

    Tcherry rode a bus with Peterson over the mountains to Saint-Marc. In the stucco house on a quiet street where Peterson lived with his fiancée and her parents, Tcherry struggled to stop thinking about his experience at sea. “When I sleep, when I sit down, I want to cry,” Tcherry told me days after his arrival there. “They had us for five days. We couldn’t eat well, couldn’t sleep well. Couldn’t brush our teeth.” He thought of his body soaked from the sea spray, of the woman who died. Although Peterson assured him it was not true, Tcherry kept wondering if the officers had just thrown her body into the sea. “He is having nightmares about the boats,” Peterson told me a week after their arrival, “reliving the same moment again and again, and he starts crying.”

    LaFortune told Tcherry that she was arranging for him to travel to his grandmother in another part of the country. But it soon became clear to her that the roads were too dangerous, spotted with gang and vigilante checkpoints guarded often by men carrying AK-47s. Peterson told LaFortune that Tcherry could stay with him as long as she needed him to. But as the weeks turned to months, Tcherry felt that Peterson began to change. He said Peterson needed money, and he was asking Tcherry’s mother to send more and more. Peterson was frequently out of the house, working odd jobs, and often could not answer LaFortune’s calls. She grew worried. When she did talk to Tcherry, he was as quiet as he was in the smuggler’s house in the Bahamas.

    Two months passed. LaFortune’s asylum case was denied, and she and her husband appealed. Four more months passed. LaFortune’s husband heard news that gangs were closing in on Saint-Marc. LaFortune decided that they must move Tcherry, that it was time to risk the journey on the roads. In September, she sent an old family friend to collect him. They rode on a bus through a checkpoint where the driver paid a fee to a masked man. “I saw a man holding his gun,” Tcherry says. The man made a sign that they could pass.

    Tcherry arrived at a busy bus station in Port-au-Prince and looked for his grandmother. He saw her in a crowd and remembered her face, her high forehead and wide smile. “That is my grandma,” he said, again and again. His mutters turned to song. “That is my grandmother, tololo, tololo, that is my grandmother.” He sank into her arms. He held her hand as they boarded another bus and passed through another checkpoint, back to where he began.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/when-the-coast-guard-intercepts-unaccompanied-kids

    –—

    Reprise du #modèle_australien et son concept de l’#excision_territoriale :

    “People intercepted at sea, even in U.S. waters, have fewer rights than those who come by land. “Asylum does not apply at sea,” a Coast Guard spokesperson told me. Even people who are fleeing violence, rape and death, who on land would be likely to pass an initial asylum screening, are routinely sent back to the countries they’ve fled.”

    Excision territoriale :

    https://seenthis.net/messages/416996
    #Australie

    #droits #mer #terre #USA #Etats-Unis #asile #migrations #réfugiés #MNA #mineurs_non_accompagnés #enfants #enfance #Haïti #réfugiés_haïtiens

    via @freakonometrics

  • A Good Idea : You Should Draw On The Wall With A Marker
    https://clickhole.com/a-good-idea-you-should-draw-on-the-wall-with-a-marker-second


    Je découvre la revue satirique Clickhole - plein de bonnes idées pour la vie en famille.
    Vive la créativité !

    KidHole - Hey! Here’s a good idea. How about drawing on the wall with a marker? A lion, a castle, a tree, or whatever. Anything you can dream up, draw it right on the wall.

    It’ll be so fun!

    Paper is small and walls are big. Why draw on paper and tape it to the wall when you can draw right on the wall? It’s easier, and it just makes more sense!

    If you’re worried about getting in trouble, just remember that Mommy and Daddy decorate the house all the time, so by decorating the wall with your drawings, you’re being a BIG HELP. You can help them out by drawing on the living room wall, your bedroom wall, or even the kitchen wall, and they will be happy that you did all these chores for them.

    Crayons and paints work, but markers are the best! Especially Mommy’s special stinky markers from the craft drawer, because those ones are permanent.

    And remember, it doesn’t matter if you’re not very good at drawing as long as you try your best—THAT’S what really counts. Even if you just draw a circle with some lines coming out of it, that’d be fine, because then people can have fun guessing what it is. A sun? A lion? Whatever the case, you simply can’t go wrong drawing on the wall.

    So what are you waiting for? Go give your parents a big, special surprise by drawing all over every wall in your house!


    Quelques années après dans les toilettes d’un bar fréquenté par les enfants de l’ère anti-autoritaire

    #enfants #pédagogie #dessin #éducation #parodie #wtf