The time is politically ripe. Let Abida’s book be what triggers real policy measures to protect Norway’s most vulnerable children. Abida Raja was kept in Pakistan by relatives she barely knew from the age of six to 13. She talks about crying every single day, about how she couldn’t understand why this was done to her, and about missing her parents and siblings. Back in Norway, she was pretty much wiped out of the Norwegian language, she had lost six years of schooling. She also never managed to finish her schooling here before she was again sent to Pakistan, this time to enter into a forced marriage with an abusive relative. We at HRS have never stopped wondering why there has largely been a resounding political silence related to the dumping/repatriation of children born in Norway. The consequences at the individual level can be dramatic and damaging. Abida is living proof of that. One is deprived of the ability to live a full life in Norway. Deprived of schooling, friends, family. You become rootless and more or less identityless. One is psychologically damaged by loneliness, loss and neglect, and is also physically damaged if the stay includes violence, as news documented extensively in 2018. These children are Norway’s most vulnerable children. They are left behind in countries where children’s rights are conspicuous by their absence. Where children have no intrinsic value. They exist for the sake of the family. When HRS started documenting these conditions in the early 2000s, we came across fates so appalling that we were sure that a united Storting would do something about the problem. Like the fate of the Tromsø girl Samira, who was dumped in Somalia because she had become “too Norwegian”. Through the Red Cross’ tracing service, we learned that every day she was accompanied by armed guards to the Koranic school in the town of Garowe. No public body took action. There was no device that could help a girl like Samira return to Norway. The answer from the authorities was that Samira had to go to the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and visit our embassy there. A girl alone on foot through the desert? Fieldwork in schools in Pakistan revealed the same thing: poor schooling, including girls staying in Koranic boarding schools. Our female Pakistani interpreter was particularly shocked by this: Only men, and only girls inside, Norwegian-Pakistani girls at that. Shocked, because sexual abuse in such boarding schools is a well-known issue in Pakistan. How did the politicians then respond? In meetings with the then political leadership in the Bondevik government, we got the impression that it prioritized the parents’ right to decide where the children should grow up. Ask Abida today what she thinks about these political “king thoughts”, “king thoughts” that are alive and well today. So what can be done? Schooling is not compulsory in Norway, but education is compulsory. Nor is the Education Act enshrined in an obligation to learn the Norwegian language. This must be changed. If a child is to go to school abroad, it should be possible to document the schooling with the same quality as a Norwegian school – and this must be applied for in advance. Children’s care situation during schooling abroad must also be approved in advance, and the children must be called in to check whether the training is satisfactory. In 2004, the then head of the prosecuting section in the Oslo police district, Hanne Kristin Rohde, wanted to test for the first time a 120-year-old section in the penal code which states that the man in the family can be punished with prison if he grossly “violates his duties towards his spouse or children”. “(We) did it deliberately to test whether this rule of law can be applied to denying integration,” said Rhode. The man from Algeria was sentenced to three years’ unconditional imprisonment for preventing his wife from integrating in Norway. “The victim was not allowed to move outside the home without permission from the defendant. Among other things, the defendant picked her up when, on the initiative of the child protection agency, she went on a Norwegian course. She did not have the right to talk to other course participants after the course ended. In the public space, she had to use traditional dress with a veil that covers her hair and encircles her face,” wrote the Oslo District Court. Rohde’s initiative has not been followed up. Political leadership today has a great responsibility to follow in Rohde’s footsteps. Because put this judgment against the best anti-integration tool there is: sending the children for long stays in the country of origin. Deprivation of liberty is punishable. Use this law actively against families who dump their children in their home country, even in violent Koranic schools. If political leadership is to have any credibility, they should take the cry of the child, youth and woman Abida Raja seriously and act accordingly. At least it would also be a band-aid for Abida to see that her retold story can actually save other children.
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Give Abida Raja reparation – Utterance
