Comment: A short article from the Turkish daily newspaper 'Today's Zaman' reports on the EU Anti-Trafficking Day. The news proposes only few data about the situation of Turkey related to trafficking in human beings, dating 2006.

Today's Zaman full text

Comment: 'Nine O'Clock News' reports that the Council of Europe Information Office in Romania launched a pan-European campaign against corporal punishment of children in Romania. The initiative wants to achieve full prohibition of corporal punishment of children, promiting positive parenting and raising awareness of children's rights throughout Europe.

Nine O'Clock News full text

Comment: 'B92' online Serbian newspaper publishes worrying figures on child poverty commemorating the anti-poverty day. According to UNICEF data, more than 155'000 children in Serbia live under the poverty level, while half of Roma children do not have access to daily meals. "46 percent of Roma children do not have a single daily meal. The most alarming fact is that 60 percent of Roma live in so-called unsanitary settlements" Labor Minister Rasim Ljajic says.

B92 full text

Comment: In a communique, Human Rights Watch denounces "Spain's accelerating effort to send back unaccompanied children who enter the country illegally might subject them to danger, ill-treatment and detention". The 26-page report, "Returns at Any Cost: Spain's Push to Repatriate Unaccompanied Children in the Absence of Safeguards," says that in Andalusia, the southern region that is a common entry point for migrants, authorities have said they intend to send up to 1'000 unaccompanied children in their custody to Morocco, claiming that safeguards are in place. But officials could not explain how they determined it was in a child's best interest to return, as required by law. They also said that the Moroccan government's agreement to take a child back was in itself a sufficient guarantee of the child’s well-being after return.

HRW full text

Download the report here (English and French)

Comment: 'Chronic poverty remained the greatest challenge to a child's development' was the conclusion of the meeting of the UN General Assembly’s delegates to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) that fell on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October) Government representatives also called for greater financial and technical support to tackle those problems.

Reliefweb full text