Thousands of Dutch children still jailed, sexually exploited

Ten thousand children in the Netherlands are still having their human rights denied to them, according to a new report by Unicef Nederland and charity Defence for Children.

 

The report, which will be handed to the parliamentary justice commission later today, states that there has been an explosion in the number of reports of internet child pornography on Dutch servers– up from 1,200 cases in 2010 to 10,500 last year.

The number of victims of exploitation rose 17% to 260, of whom 94 came from abroad. ‘Most of the victims were Dutch minors who were victims of sexual exploitation,’ the report says.

Jail

Almost 7,000 children were taken into some form of police custody, a drop of 8%. The number of children being held in a juvenile prison also fell 25% to 1,520. However, 74% of them are jailed before they have been convicted of any crime, the report says.

DNA from 2,368 children was added to the national DNA bank.

In addition, 2,511 children were not allowed to visit a mother or father who lives legally in the Netherlands under what the organisation called ‘the extremely child-unfriendly family reunification rules’.

The aim of the report is to help the government assess its compliance with United Nation’s children’s rights treaties, the Volkskrant says.

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