Steps forward in recognizing street children’s plight at a political level. But the participatory dimension of the meeting is still unsatisfactory
The second EU Forum on the Rights of the Child was held on 04.03.2008 at the Berlaymont building of the European Commission in Brussels and gathered experts and representatives of the European Institutions, as well as from Member States and civil society organisations active in the protection of children’s rights. Remarkably, the programme of the Forum did not include any contribution by NGOs and its tight schedule did not allow much time for discussion.
Commitment to children’s rights as well as a picture of child poverty in Europe, with particular focus on Roma children, were presented during the morning session in a series of speeches held by Vice-President of the European Commission Franco Frattini, the EP rapporteur on the Rights of the Child Roberta Angelilli, Ms. Tomc representing the Slovenian EU Presidency, Luis Riera Figueras of the EC DG Dev, and Margarida Barroso. A strong call for the establishment of a single European child help line and for cross-border cooperation in Child Alert Systems for missing children emerged from most of the speeches.
In particular, EC Vice-President Franco Frattini pointed out that only four Member States have taken steps towards establishing a single European child help line and that more efforts are required towards developing and interconnecting national Child Alert Systems for missing children. He stressed that both initiatives do not require further legislation nor specific budgetary resources, but political will. MEP Roberta Angelilli also called for the establishment of Child Ombudsmen in all EU Member States. She expressed concern about the particularly vulnerable situation of street children and Roma children and welcomed that a specific budget line for tackling child abduction is now part of the EU budget for 2008.
Street children and missing children were the focus of Mrs. Barroso’s intervention. She praised the work of NGOs working in the protection of the rights of the most vulnerable groups of children and she stressed the importance timely intervention in the first hours of disappearance of a child: the more time children spend in the streets, the more exposed they are to exploitation and abuse. She pointed out that “street children are a growing issue”, increasingly a “European issue”. Not addressing the plight of street children would mean leaving “a legacy of poverty and exclusion for the next generation, and a drag on the economic and social development of the whole Union”. She called for “specific and targeted measures” which are required as a consequence of the insufficiency of normal social intervention methods in dealing with street children, but also for “a holistic wide approach” involving “a close co-operation of the European Union with the member states and European networks of NGOs”. Mrs. Barroso has been since 2005 member of the Advisory Board of EFSC.
As a reaction to Ms. Pelsez’s (French Ministry of Justice) presentation of the French experience of the Child Alert System “Alerte Enlevement”, Reinhold Müller of the EFSC drew attention to the specific problems involved in managing disappearance of street children, who are most vulnerable but to a large extent invisible and fall out of the reach of administrative registers, and suggested cooperation of the alert system with NGOs as a preventive measure as well as an increased cross-border co-operation within Europe.
The EU commitment towards child participation was expressed during a ceremony of symbolically planting a tree on the Berlaymont esplanade, as a symbolic meeting place for children with their policy makers. Some children of the European School of Brussels and Commissioners Frattini and Wallström met under the tree, sung and exchanged views on children’s futures. The ceremony was criticised during the following debate for being far too symbolic and to exclusively involve elite children.
Criticisms were also raised about the lack of involvement of the civil society in the organisation of the forum. Kélig Puyet of SOS-Kinderdorf took the floor before the start of the afternoon session on behalf of the NGO Action Group on the EU Strategy for the Rights of the Child (CRAG), of which the EFSC is a member. Although welcoming the organisation of the Forum, she complained that the meeting had been organised “with no involvement of the Steering Group that was set up after the Berlin Forum, without a transparent process for selecting civil society representatives and without transparent criteria to select the topics of the Forum”. Therefore, she reported, the CRAG cannot consider the 4th of March meeting “as being an appropriately constituted Forum”. She welcomed the “commitment of the European Commission to allocate more substantial human resources to follow-up on the 2006 Communication and to prepare the EU Strategy on Child Rights”; and auspicated cooperation and greater involvement of civil society in the future organisation of the Forum. Francisco Fonseca Murillo of the EC, DG JLC, as the mediator of the Forum, took note of the comments. But no further discussion was carried out on the topic.
The first part of the afternoon session was devoted to the “analysis” of child poverty through presentation of studies and research approaches about the issue. The results of the EC report on “Child poverty and well-being in the EU” were reported by Mr. Marlier, who called for a “European effort” on harmonising data collection and for establishing “specific data sources on children in vulnerable situation”. For those children, data collection is still very incomplete and is severely hampering the adequateness and effectiveness of policies. Ms. Cricklet of the Fundamental Rights Agency presented the work of the Agency and stressed the importance of developing indicators, of an early warning system and of monitoring Member States as “duty bearers” towards their citizens. Ms. Santos Pais of the Innocenti institute of UNICEF, while stressing that “no policy is neutral to children”, called for national multi-dimensional assessments of child poverty, articulated at the sub-national level, disaggregating data according to age groups of children (very little is known about the early years of children), and to the composition of the household.
In terms of concrete “policy responses” to child poverty, on which the second part of the afternoon session focussed, Commissioner Špidla stressed the importance of good practices as a means to exert political pressure on Member States in their interventions on children. Hugh Frazer, Adjunct Professor of Social Inclusion Policy and Practice at the NUI Maynooth, raised the point as to whether better data were actually going to be converted into better policies. Answering to this, Jérôme Vignon, Director of Social Protection and Integration at the DG EMPL, pointed out that given an appropriate analysis tool there is convenience for Member States in setting themselves quantitative objectives. The Round Table on Poverty to be held on the 17th of October would provide the occasion for formulating those objectives in terms of clear commitment by Member States.
Policies tackling the marginalized situation of Roma children and, in particular, their educational needs were presented by MEP Victoria Mohacsi and María Ochoa Llidó of the Council of Europe. Victoria Mohacsi asked for a better coordination between the EU policies and the strategies adopted under the Decade of Roma inclusion; María Ochoa Llidó showed that the bottom-up approach to the definition of strategies of social inclusion targeted to the Roma population has put education at the core of the strategies in 22 countries. The November decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the landmark case of 18 Roma children placed in “special schools” in the Czech Republic, declared as a violation of human rights, had been recalled several times during the Forum.
Although criticisms were raised about the Forum being just a collection of general statements without concrete impact on the conduct of Member States and on the enforcement of children’s rights, it was generally welcomed as a starting point of cooperation between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council, and as an occasion to influence the Spring Council towards greater commitment of Member States in protecting children’s rights. Francisco Fonseca Murillo foresaw the Steering group to be gathered in April to discuss the priorities of the next Forum.
Although the organisation of the Forum lacked a fundamental participatory dimension of civil society and of children, it nevertheless brought to some important results in terms of expression of political will at EU level. Frattini’s regret for the large number of Member States which still did not advance towards the establishment of a child help line, as well as Vignon’s call for clear objectives to be endorsed by Member States at the Round Table on Poverty, are likely to influence Member States in their attitude towards implementing children’s rights EU-wide. Moreover, the Commission committed itself to seriously start involving the Steering Committee on children’s rights in the organisation of the Forum, which is likely to bring a more pragmatic approach to the meeting and to contribute to increase NGO and children’s participation.
As for street children in particular, the fact that the necessity to urgently improve their live conditions was stressed by Ms. Angelilli and particularly by Mrs. Barroso is a significant step forward towards the recognition of street children as a European problem and as an urgent matter to be addressed by Member States. Given the reluctance that many Member States show in recognising that street children at all exist in their territory, the speeches of Mrs. Barroso and Mrs. Angelilli, backed by the two paragraphs of the Angelilli report dealing explicitly with street children, pave the way towards an accountability-based, holistic and cross-border approach in dealing with extremely marginalized groups of children. If appropriately implemented, this approach is going to impact at the field level in terms of improved involvement of the national, local and regional authorities and of increased data collection efforts. The centrality of these objectives makes it crucial to bring the advocacy action further in the protection of street children’s rights.
Anna d’Ambrosio, 7th of March, 2008
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