Workshop on EU Guidelines for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child. Brussels, 15 February 2012

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1 Workshop on EU Guidelines for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child Ladies and Gentlemen, Brussels, 15 February 2012 It is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you. Cooperation OHCHR s role, complementarities and systematic cooperation with UNICEF on rights of the child. OHCHR field presences on the ground (country offices, regional offices, HRAs, presence in peace missions etc.). Potential for strengthened cooperation with EU delegations, - we could be involved in capacity-building, e.g., child-rights training, dissemination of concluding observations and general comments of CRC, special procedures mandate holders, SRSGs recommendations, and UPR, which due to its inter-governmental nature is more politicized and less specific, but can add political weight to the issues on which the experts (TBs, SRs, SRSGs) have worked in greater detail. In support of what was said earlier by SRSG Marta Santos Pais, we encourage the EU to ensure that the issue of violence against children remains high on the agenda and does not dissolve in a sea of child-friendly rhetoric : freedom from violence is of course essential for the enjoyment of all other rights of the child. Needless to say, it has to be seen in the context of all the other rights laid down in the Convention (ICRC) as well in the overall context of international human rights law (IHRL), as mentioned by previous speakers. It is important to recall that IHRL is indeed the common basis of all our efforts, internal as well as external; it is very useful to have EU Guidelines but it needs to be highlighted that the non-eu States are expected to fulfill their obligations under IHRL (and where applicable, those stemming from Council of Europe standards), not the Guidelines as such.

2 External action It is essential that human rights, as laid down in IHRL, stop being a niche which is addressed only through specific instruments such as Human Rights Dialogues or activities financed through the EIDHR. In this context, we very much welcome the new Joint Communication Human Rights and Democracy at the Heart of EU External Action (Human Rights Strategy) and we are looking forward to the development of an Action Plan. We particularly welcome the consistent use of a language of IHRL (rather than just European values ) in the Joint Communication and, of course, the fact that rights of the child were chosen as one of the three themes in focus for the next three years. We also welcome the wording in the section on Development Cooperation, which refers to HRBA to development and explicitly mentions some social rights in this context. Development We believe that the review of the Guidelines must be closely linked to the EU HR Strategy but also to development policy. But I think that we still have a challenge there. When we look at the Communication Increasing the impact of EU Development Policy: and Agenda for Change (of 13 October 2011, i.e., two months before the Joint Communication), we see that there is a whole chapter on human rights, democracy and good governance and it is on free and fair elections, rule of law, media freedom, access to internet but there is not a word on rights of the child, not a word on ESCR, it is still the classical libertarian perspective of human rights being only civil and political rights, freedoms, and the link between human rights and development is defined as stricter conditionality. All this, of course, is important, but it s not what we mean by HRBA: it looks only at when are recipient countries too undemocratic to merit development cooperation, rather than at the actual impact of development cooperation on the enjoyment of rights by groups at risk, for instance women and children. Thus, we see this as a visible inconsistency

3 between EEAS and DG DEVCO s approach, and we would like to contribute to overcoming it by offering to DG DEVCO capacity-building on HRBA. (We have done that with Belgian development agents in 2010.) I emphasize that it s not just or mainly about a human-rights-friendly terminology; it s about the practical effect. Does it improve the enjoyment of rights by those who are at risk or underprivileged? Or do the gains from development favor disproportionately those groups who are already in a more advantageous situation, thus contributing to ever greater gaps? EU Guidelines themselves - suggestions They should reflect the developments, including the adoption in December of 2009 of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children. These lay down more explicitly that focus should be on supporting biological families, and if not possible, then family-type care, with institutionalization being the last option 1. It seems to me that explicit reference to the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and to their substance (i.e., strengthening families or at least choosing family-type alternative care rather than placing children in institutions) could be made under what is now point (h) of the Guidelines, i.e., enhance families and other caretakers capacity to fully carry out their roles with regard to the protection of children s rights Perhaps, also in the light of another new instrument of IHRL which the EU has just ratified a year ago, the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) for the first time becoming party to an instrument of IHRL there should be explicit mention of the rights of children with disabilities somewhere in the document. Finally, when looking at allocation of resources for strengthening protection and promotion (d), I wonder whether it should be only about awarenessraising and analysis or breakdowns of budgets or else also about actually allocating resources for services which are beneficial for the enjoyment of rights of children. 1 Indeed, in the light of new scientific evidence placement in institutions can itself be seen as a form of violence against children.

4 Need for consistency between external and internal dimensions Need for external internal consistency (Kjaerum, Theuermann in COHOM: EU and its MS undermine their efficiency in external policy if they aren t consistent on these issues domestically). This does not mean they should refrain from addressing them externally if they failed to solve them internally, but it does mean that they should pay more consistent attention to the internal issues. Unfortunately, the EU Agenda for the Rights of the Child (internal) represents such a piecemeal approach, with the issue of overinstitutionalization of children not mentioned at all; it seems as if it the Agenda focused mainly on violations committed by non-state actors, while in issues such as institutionalization who is at fault is States themselves and their policies. The Regional Office for Europe works both on external and internal dimension of EU and MS policies (cover a range of states both inside and outside the EU, though not as broad as the Council of Europe). We have good cooperation with EU in area of rights of the child (Bulgarian reforms of institutional care, Romanian problem of right to health/life for children with spina bifida). But from our perspective, the inside-eu and outside-eu issues represent a continuum, not two different worlds. For instance, the aforementioned issue of children in who either are in institutions or are at risk of being placed there concerns both EU and non- EU States. UNICEF and OHCHR issued last year a Call for Action on Children under 3 which was followed by a sub-regional conference for 17 East European States, both EU and non-eu. Similarly, migrant children represent an overlapping territory and it is difficult to say where it is still internal and where external. Returns of Roma from Germany to Kosovo, which have devastating effects on the children as documented by the excellent UNICEF publication Integration subject to conditions are a case in the point: the actual human rights violations suffered by the children who have no access to education and housing happen in Kosovo itself, i.e., outside the EU, but of course the cause of this development is something that happens within the EU,

5 namely the decision to return these children although they are well integrated in German society and have little or no chances of integration in Kosovo where they do not even speak the language. Last year s judicial colloquium in Barcelona on best interest of the child, which our Office organized, highlighted these and other issues as practical examples of the need for consistency between what is done in Europe and what is preached abroad. Thank you for your attention.