Building a Europe for and with Children: Council of Europe three-year action programme - Launching conference, Monaco, 4 - 5 April 2006

(To be Checked against delivered Speech)

Speech by Anissa Temsamani, member of the Congress Committee on Culture and Education

(Monaco, 4-5 April 2006)

Your High Royal Highness,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

A great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, once wrote: "The whole world is not worth a single tear of a child”. These words were written more than a century ago – before the two World Wars, before the Bolshevik revolution and the Communist regimes, and before the triumph of democracy on this continent, which we are enjoying today.

Yet, despite our democratic achievements, we are here because the situation of children in Europe urges us to act to prevent the persistent ill-treatment, abuse and violence against our younger generation, and to defend the children’s rights as human beings. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, ten children die every day from ill-treatment in OECD member states. In France alone, 75,000 children are ill-treated every year, and two children die every day from cruel treatment. Human Rights Watch has stated on many occasions that children were “easy targets” for abuse and violations of their rights – be it domestic violence or violence in schools – including corporal punishment – street violence or police brutality, child labour or sexual exploitation and child pornography.

We must recognise that children are the most vulnerable group of society requiring special attention – even more so when they are children whose parents belong to other groups subjected to discrimination such as migrants, refugees, or national minorities. At the same time, we must reaffirm that children are full-fledged citizens who enjoy equal rights as any human beings, and it is our political and moral duty to make sure that these rights are fully respected – including the right to be free from violence.

We have a good legal basis: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by almost all governments – with the regrettable exception of the United States and Somalia – and the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees equal rights for everyone, without the discrimination on the basis of age. The challenge is, however, to apply these treaties in practice, and at all levels – national, regional and local. The Programme “Building Europe for and with Children,” which we are launching today, serves just this purpose – to bring together all actors involved in children’s welfare, to combine our efforts in protecting their rights and freedoms and involving them to the fullest in our democratic societies.

Regional and local authorities of Europe, and the Council of Europe Congress representing them, on whose behalf I speak today, have an important role to play in this process, and can make a valuable contribution to implementing the Programme. Certain chapters of this Programme have a direct relevance to local and regional government: the prevention of neighbourhood violence and work in communities, prevention of violence in schools, action concerning street children, to name but a few. Awareness-raising is another important aspect where local and regional authorities can be of great importance, engaging local NGOs and media to provide adequate information on the situation in specific communities and residential institutions. In addition, we propose creating local free-of-charge telephone hotlines and shelters for battered children, which would allow a child to address directly social workers. Local authorities can also assume the responsibility for training of community workers and parenting counselling, especially in cases of family violence.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We in the Council of Europe Congress see local and regional authorities as being the first line of defence of children’s rights – because abuse of children and their exploitation happens in local communities, which should be the first to know about it and to react to it. It is clear, of course, that national governments should give local authorities proper means to implement their programmes for children, including local action to enhance the youth participation in community life – which is one way of preventing crime and violence among young people. Our Congress has adopted several resolutions and recommendations on youth participation and the role of young people as citizens, dating back to 1999, not to mention the European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life, revised in 2003.

Local authorities also have a crucial role to play in dealing with disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where children are particularly exposed to violence. Our Congress has done a great deal of work on this issue, starting from a recommendation to Council of Europe member states on policies for deprived children and their families, adopted in 1999, and, recently, launching the so-called Berlin Process to mount action for disadvantaged urban areas. The most recent conference on this subject was held at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg at the end of January this year.

We should also look into the idea of establishing and developing a Europe-wide network of ombudspersons for children at regional and local level, already existing in some countries. It is especially important because children do not have direct access to courts, and the parents who may represent their interests are sometimes themselves the source of their children’s rights violations. Such a network could operate in close cooperation with the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.

Coming back to the famous phrase of Dostoevsky, I would like to stress that the fact that we are here today shows our full awareness of the need to act so that children in Europe – and elsewhere – do not shed tears from pain, fear, poverty or exclusion. The Programme which we are launching today will address this need, and I wish all of you – all of us – every success in carrying it out. Let us act together to make sure that children shed only tears of joy.

Thank you.