Report: Poverty on the Rise Among French Youngsters
Nearly 23 percent of young people in France are poor, according to a report by the National Institute of Youth and People´s Education (Injep) released here.
According to the report, 22.5 percent of people between 15-25 years of age live in conditions of poverty, a five-percent increase over 2004.
The document, scheduled to be presented today before the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, indicates that more than one million youngsters live in deprivation due to the economic crisis and unemployment.
The family, social and economic environment of tension leads to school dropout, reducing the chances of success, says the study.
According to Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs, Valerie Foumeron, the report reveals the increasing fragility of young people and the ever increasing inequality in the current time of crisis.
She said the diagnosis shows the urgent need to act rapidly to fight against the risks of exclusion and intensify the efforts to give everyone a place in society.
Malaysia: 105 Women Forced to Work as Slaves Rescued
Malaysian authorities have rescued 105 women, most of them from Indonesia and over a dozen from Philippines and Cambodia, who were forced to work as domestic workers without official permits, as reported in this capital.
Immigration Department sources indicated that the victims were working without pay for a cleaning agency that led them to houses during the day and at night kept them locked in a building.
Those women, who traveled to Malaysia with the promise of a secure job and a monthly salary, will be repatriated to their countries because they have no work permit.
During the raid, authorities arrested 12 people involved in the network.
Devastating UN Report on Immigrants in Greece
Local media on Tuesday echoed the devastating conclusions of a report from the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrant people, Francois Crepeau, after visiting Greece.
During his nine-day working visit, the expert witnessed an atmosphere of generalized violence against immigrants, so he strongly condemned “the inadequate response by police services to curb violence and punish those responsible”.
Crepeau strongly criticized the racist raids carried out by the police under the “Hospitable Zeus” program, sponsored by the Ministry of Public Order, the absence of a comprehensive migration policy and the lack of coordination with other agencies.
“I deeply regret the new policy by the Greek government to systematically detain all those who arrive irregularly on Greek territory, including unaccompanied minors and families,” said the UN rapporteur, after witnessing that many of those arrested have lived and worked in the country for years.
The situation is especially critical on the island of Lesbos, off Turkey’s shores, where foreigners, as there is no expulsion order, “are trapped on the island, without a permit to travel to Athens, sleeping on the streets or in parks, and in the case of minors, without any institutional support or special status”.
All this, he noted, is “contrary to the human rights framework and leaves these people in a legal limbo where they can only live day by day in a level of precarious survival and with constant fear of being arrested, detained or deported”.
Crepeau demanded a civil, non-police plan to handle asylum and shelter the migrant population, and to evaluate each case individually and prevent the dreadful conditions of reclusion in which many of those people are living.
In that regard, he explained that those detained had little or no information about their situation and the duration of their captivity, without lawyers or with lawyers who do not take care of their cases, in dreadful sanitary conditions and without knowing the status of their case among the asylum seekers.
The report will be submitted to the 23rd meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in May or June 2013, along with the conclusions of the study on the work of the outside borders of the European Union and its impact on human rights.
Via PL