Supporting the Czech authorities in strengthening the protection of people fleeing Ukraine, in particular women and children in a vulnarable situation, was the main topic of a roundtable discussion co-organised on 26 January 2023  by the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on Migration and Refugees (SRSG) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’s (UNHCR) offices in Prague and Strasbourg.

The online roundtable, which gathered more than 50 participants, was a follow-up to the report of the fact-finding visit to the Czech Republic carried out by SRSG Leyla Kayacik on 4-6 May last year.

The roundtable also served to present the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case-law and the Council of Europe standards on protecting the rights of migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women and girls, in particular protection from violence and human trafficking.  As part of the discussion on the national approach to child protection, the Council of Europe presented its new Handbook on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse in crisis and emergency situations.

The Handbook builds on the findings of the Committee on the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote Committee), in particular its urgent monitoring round on protecting children affected by the refugee crisis from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and includes examples of concrete measures that may be set up or improved in member states. It also includes the description of promising practices that have been identified in several relevant areas at national level, such as, available helpline and other support services for children, coordination across agencies responsible for migration and child protection, data collection and the phenomenon of missing children.

The Handbook contributes to the implementation of the Council of Europe Action Plan on Protecting Vulnerable Persons in the Context of Migration and Asylum in Europe (2021-2025) and the Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child (2022 to 2027), and is available in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Ukrainian.