LONDON-Children are still being tortured, raped and murdered in many countries.
And that's despite the introduction four years ago of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Amnesty International said today.
"Youth offers no protection from the death squads, the state rapists and assassins, the torturers or the executioners," the London-based human-rights watchdog said in a statement.
Amnesty said children were killed, mistreated or tortured to get at their parents or because they belonged to the wrong ethnic group or sometimes simply because they were a nuisance.
In a handful of countries, including Iraq, Bangladesh and the U.S., juvenile offenders can legally be sentenced to death.
In others, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and China, teenage girls are among those
missing or held in jail after taking part in political demonstrations.
(text of January 7, 1994 The Province article)