YOUNG DEFENDERS Rights Violations of the Youth in the Mediterranean and Examples of Popular Mobilization 1 YOUNG DEFENDERS Research and writing Nora Miralles Crespo (Sudergintza kooperatiba) Translation from Catalan Sara Gil Ribas English editing and revision Christie Collins Design and layout Mireia Serrano Coordination Servei Civil Internacional de Catalunya In collaboration with Friedhelm Schneider (EBCO) Merve Arkun (Vicdani Ret Dernegi) Mesarvot Youssef M. Ouled Blanca Camps-Febrer Hibai Arbide Alfred Burballa Équipe Media Western Sahara Resource Watch Oussama Borouja (Akaliyat) Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles (M.A.L.I) With the support of YOUNG DEFENDERS Rights Violations of the Youth in the Mediterranean and Examples of Popular Mobilization Young Defenders Research INTRODUCTION An Introduction on the Situation of Youth, and Their Main Problems and Resistances in the Mediterranean Region ..... 6 EiGHT caSES OF RIGHTS viOLatiONS TO YOUNG HUmaN RIGHTS DEFENDERS IN MEditERRANEAN REGION CHAPTER 1 Return of Military Service and Repression of the Right to Conscientious Objection ....................................... 8 • The still timid opposition to the return of obligatory military service in Morocco and Italy. • Imprisoned for not participating in the war game. The situation of conscientious objectors in Euro-Mediterranean region. • Fleeing in order not to die killing. The draft and asylum-seeking objectors. CHAPTER 2 Arbitrary Detentions, Prison and Torture Against Young and Minor Activists ...................................................16 • Systematic use of administrative detention and the defense of young imprisoned Palestinians. • Torture and persecution from Morocco against Sahrawi organized students and children. CHAPTER 3 Young People at Fight for the Right to Land Use and Resistances Against Predatory Neoliberalism .........24 • The Soulaliyates, a fight for women’s rights and against colonial privatization of land. • Youth resistance against the plundering of resources in the Western Sahara occupied by Morocco. • Youth resistance against mega projects in the south of Europe. CHAPTER 4 Young People in Defense of the Right to One’s Own Body and at Fight for a Life Free of Violence Against Women ...32 • Youth feminist struggle against street harassment and for legalization of abortion in Morocco. • The beginning of the end of impunity for sexual violence in Lebanon. 4 INDEX CHAPTER 5 Youth Resistance Against Persecution of Sexual and Gender Diversity ............................................................38 • Imprisoned for defending sexual rights and freedom. • Harassment, administrative repression and defenselessness of young LGBTQ+ activists. CHAPTER 6 The Right to Work: Resistances Against Youth Unemployment, Precariousness and Domestic Slavery ........46 • “Employ us or kill us”, the uprising against youth unemployment in Tunisia. • The fight of migrated domestic workers against 21st century slavery. CHAPTER 7 Violation of the Right to Freedom of Movement and the Right to Migration and Mobility ..........................52 • Criminalization and self-organization of migrated young people and unaccompanied minors in the Mediterranean. • Life in limbo: freedom of movement, frustration and youth resistances in refugee camps. CHAPTER 8 Youth Uprising for Political Rights for Democratization and Against Tyranny ........................58 • The awakening of Hirak, the youth uprising for social justice in Rif. • Down with gerontocracy. Young people and women lead the end of an era in Algeria. CONCLUSIONS Conclusions ..............................................................................64 5 Young Defenders Research Introduction Historically, and despite the difficulty of defining what it means to be a young person, youth has been identified as An introduction a social and political subject for its rebelliousness towards dominant culture, traditional values and questioning their on the situation preceding societies and generations. This irreverence has often led to stigmatization and criminalization of young people’s demands, lifestyles and fights, connected with of youth, negative stereotypes such as delinquency, laziness or moral undoing. This invisibilization of young people as a and their main subject with agency and participation ability has helped, to leave out the contribution of the youth and, in this particular case, of human rights defenders as agents of problems and change in their territories. resistances in This research is a part of the campaign #YoungDefenders, promoted by SCI Catalunya precisely with the aim of visibilizing the role of young activists and human rights the mediterra- defenders all over the Mediterranean. It is indeed very difficult to perceive the actual transformation power that nean region these movements and activists have, and to know where their resistance was born, without getting to know the context of infringements and violences that cut across their daily lives in multiple levels. A reality which is often diluted in a sea of more general experiences and encounters, which does not allow us to understand the role of the youth and which are the risks that they endure in their societies. It is difficult to reduce to eight topics all the universe of violations that are afflicted on young people in general — and young defenders in particular— in the southern part of the Global North and the northern part of the Global South. In this region, the economic crisis, the wildest side of financial capitalism, and the colonial dynamics between center and periphery keep on exploiting young generations. Meanwhile, climate change is approaching and, by extension, a change in land and resources is also brewing, which augurs an increase on social conflict and new unstoppable mass movements of migrated people and refugees. In the countries of North Africa, the Arab Springs —despite their deceiving results in terms of profound transformations, which is stated in several chapters of this report— left a trace of organized, mobilized, awake and aware youth. This situation contributed to the creation of all kinds of movements in defense of human rights, in a continent with a large number of young population, that today are revived in the new fights against authoritarianism in this region. 6 Introduction In the territories of Palestine, Western Sahara and Kurdistan, all movement, is the leitmotiv in the forth chapter. Young still in conflict, young generations take up again the historical women organize themselves — often exposing themselves fight for political, cultural, economic and social rights of their to further attacks — for the right to an abortion and the right corresponding populations, which have unfortunately had to their own bodies, to reappropriate public space and to little or no success in the recognition of their existence. oppose the impunity of sexist violences, and they revive and renew the fight of previous generations. The groups Additionally, in the countries of the European shore, extreme and associations — presented in the fifth chapter — that right-wing powers are gaining ground up to the point that fight for decriminalization of homosexuality join the success they are governing in countries like Italy and are present of the women's movement. Same-sex relationships are still in most of the parliaments. This is decisively impacting on persecuted with imprisonment in several countries along the rights and the material reality of the young people — the Mediterranean shore and against institutional and social especially of women, LGBTQ+ persons, those who arrive hate speech towards sexual and gender nonconformity, crossing borders, and those who do not fit in the whiteness which gives way to aggressions and impunity of those who of the elitist European identity. commit them. To set up a close and specific view on some of the material Collective resistances against precarization of young people’s violences against which young activists organize themselves lives, who are condemned to the misery created by the in the Mediterranean, this report deals, in the first of its dismantling of social protection, more and more temporary chapters, with the violations of the right to peace that the jobs and the high unemployment rates is the focus of the return of military service will predictably cause on some sixth chapter. But also the thoroughly praiseworthy fight countries. This return takes place with the excuse of fostering of the 21st century slaves: migrated domestic workers — all a bond between the State and a disillusioned youth, who over but, in this case, in Lebanon. The contents of the seventh are desperate because of the lack of future and jobs. In chapter are cut across, without a doubt, by all the other rights addition to the rise of militarism, we find the persecution violations which afflict youth that force them to flee to other against conscientious objectors who refuse to take a rifle to countries which reject their right to migration and citizenship, learn to kill, and we point out the case of the State of Israel. and condemn them to live under the permanent threat of We also put it together with the reality of young Syrians who violence and deportation, or confine them in refugee camps flee from their country to escape the forced recruitment at that become a suffocating reality. the hands of the conflict’s armed actors. The eighth and last chapter of this report is a slither of In a world that dismantles the rights and protections