Setting up a European Ombudsman for children

Doc. 9048

20 April 2001

Setting up a European Ombudsman for children

Recommendation 1460 (2000)

Reply from the Committee of Ministers

adopted at the 750^th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (18 April 2001)

The Committee of Ministers has carefully examined Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1460 (2000) on setting up a European ombudsman for children. It notes that the Assembly emphasises the large number of standard-setting instruments adopted over the past 50 years that refer to children, even if sometimes only in part. It is true that the Committee of Ministers attaches a great deal of importance to the children’s rights and well-being as they represent the future generations of European citizens.

Like the Parliamentary Assembly, the Committee of Ministers insists on the implementation of the instruments it adopts. Accordingly, efforts undertaken to assist member states in bringing their legislation into line with these instruments have been stepped up.

Programmes that promote access to social rights, particularly for vulnerable persons including children, have been put in place. The Committee of Ministers has focused its work to promote children’s interests in the Programme for Children¹, thus involving children on an equal basis with adults from the outset, by providing them, through the Forum for Children, with a platform that enables them to have their say on issues that concern them.

Indeed, the Forum has proved an excellent platform for the exchange of ideas and joint action to promote children’s interests in Europe and it is interesting to note that the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children (ENOC), the activities of which the Assembly mentions, has been a regular participant at meetings of the Forum for Children and will be in the new Forum for Children and Families, thus creating a link between the activities carried out under the Programme for Children and the national ombudsmen’s offices in Europe.

Together with the Assembly, the Committee of Ministers recognises the benefits for children that would arise from the existence of a national ombudsman in all member states. It also wishes to draw the Assembly’s attention to the European Convention on the Exercise of Children’s Rights, which provides for the setting up, by Contracting Parties, of public or private entities for the promotion and the exercise of children’s rights (Article 12) and the introduction of mediation in order to prevent or resolve disputes concerning the exercise of children’s rights (Article 13).

Although the Committee of Ministers considers that, until such time as the vast majority of member states has undertaken to create institutions of this type, it would be premature to propose setting up the post of European Children’s Ombudsman, it notes that the Standing Committee set up under the European Convention has the task to consider the implementation of the Convention including matters relating to national bodies and would therefore look into this question. Furthermore, the Committee of Ministers considers that this topic could also be raised in the framework of the new Forum for Children and Families.

The Committee of Ministers is bringing together these important aspects of action undertaken for children as well as an outline of its future commitments to work for the legal protection of children and the promotion of a child-friendly society in the Political Message on Children, currently under preparation, which it intends to transmit to the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Children, to be held in New York from 19 to 21 September 2001.

¹ The Programme is continuing in 2001 and was extended to children and families.