Protecting the Child from Poverty: The Role of Rights in the Council of Europe

Back Protecting the Child from Poverty: The Role of Rights in the Council of Europe

Report

The report, that was presented at the International Conference on Children’s Rights on 13 November, focuses on the role of children’s rights in addressing child poverty in the Council of Europe. The author, Aoife Nolan, member of the European Committee of Social Rights and Professor of International Human Rights Law, makes clear how the European Social Charter as interpreted by the European Committee of Social Rights can serve as a framework or roadmap for state efforts to combat child poverty.

Both, the 1961 European Social Charter and the Revised Charter of 1996 set out a wide range of rights with implications for state efforts to combat child poverty. These include Article 30 on the right to protection from poverty and social exclusion – the only provision under international human rights law that explicitly outlines a right to protection from poverty, but also other child poverty relevant provisions relating to the right to work, the right to protection of health, the right to social security, the right to social and medical assistance, the right to social, legal and economic protection of the family as well as of children and young persons, etc.

The report was presented during Session 2 ‘The power of inclusion: fighting precarity, poverty and exclusion, and promoting equal opportunities for all children’. The presentation of the Report was followed by an intervention by Eliane Chemla, General Rapporteur of the European Committee of Social Rights. The objectives of the session were to raise awareness about child poverty across Europe, to draw attention to some of the dramatic situations of children living in extreme poverty on an overall wealthy continent, to discuss how the Council of Europe instruments can contribute to eradicating child poverty, including the European Social Charter and the Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child. It also aimed to identify legislative and policy measures at national, regional and local level to combat child poverty effectively and illustrate how important early childhood intervention is to prevent and overcome intergenerational cycles of poverty.