MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on children’s rights on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
20.11.2019 - (2019/2876(RSP))
pursuant to Rule 132(2) of the Rules of Procedure
Nicola Procaccini, Jadwiga Wiśniewska, Beata Kempa, Joanna Kopcińska, Angel Dzhambazki, Anna Zalewska, Beata Szydło, Andżelika Anna Możdżanowska, Beata Mazurek, Zbigniew Kuźmiuk, Elżbieta Rafalska, Joachim Stanisław Brudziński
on behalf of the ECR Group
B9‑0178/2019
European Parliament resolution on children’s rights on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
The European Parliament,
– having regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of 20 November 1989,
– having regard to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights – ECHR),
– having regard to Articles 2 and 24 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the Charter),
– having regard to Directive 2011/93/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA[1],
– having regard to Directive (EU) 2016/800 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on procedural safeguards for children who are suspects or accused persons in criminal proceedings[2],
– having regard to Council Directive 2002/90/EC of 28 November 2002 defining the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and residence[3] and Council Framework Decision 2002/946/JHA of 28 November 2002 on the strengthening of the penal framework to prevent the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and residence[4],
– having regard to its resolution of 29 November 2018 on the role of the German Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) in cross-border family disputes[5],
– having regard to its resolution of 4 October 2017 on ending child marriage[6], its resolution of 4 July 2018 on ‘Towards an EU external strategy against early and forced marriages, next steps’[7], and its resolution of 7 February 2018 on zero tolerance for female genital mutilation (FGM)[8],
– having regard to the joint statement of 1997 issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) against the practice of FGM, the WHO statement of 2008 on the elimination of FGM to support increased advocacy for its abandonment, and the WHO report of 2010 on a ‘Global strategy to stop health care providers from performing female genital mutilation’,
– having regard to Article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU),
– having regard to Rule 132(2) of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas the CRC is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history, has been ratified by all Member States, and establishes clear legal obligations for states to promote, protect and uphold the rights of every child in their jurisdiction; whereas Parliament will host a high-level conference to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the CRC;
B. whereas Article 6 of the CRC provides that ‘States Parties recognise that every child has the inherent right to life’; whereas practices such as surrogacy run counter to the genuine interpretation of the ‘right to life’ principle;
C. whereas, because of their physical and mental immaturity, children require special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth;
D. whereas Article 14 of the CRC sets out that ‘States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child’;
E. whereas Article 5 of the CRC sets out that ‘the States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognised in the present Convention’;
F. whereas, the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members, and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community; whereas, the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding;
G. whereas promoting children’s rights is an explicit objective of EU policies and is enshrined in the Charter, which requires that the best interests of the child be a primary consideration in all EU action;
H. whereas children’s rights continue to be violated in many parts of the world;
I. whereas global trends, such as new technologies and digitalisation pose new threats for children, but also new opportunities to learn and connect;
J. whereas almost 25 million children under 18 are at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU; whereas poverty deprives children of educational opportunities, childcare, access to health care, adequate food and housing, family support and even protection from violence, and can have very long-lasting effects;
K. whereas, nearly one in four victims of trafficking in human beings registered in the EU is a child trafficked within the EU; whereas Article 79 of the TFEU states that the EU is to develop a common immigration policy aimed at combating trafficking in persons, in particular women and children;
L. whereas the smuggling of migrant children can lead to human trafficking, because exploitation and abuse may start during transit or at destination, even if consent is initially given; whereas girls are by far the primary targets and are trafficked for sexual exploitation; whereas the ‘Facilitators Package’ (Council Directive 2002/90/EC and Council Framework Decision 2002/946/JHA) is an important instrument designed to combat trafficking in human beings and the sexual exploitation of children;
M. whereas timely registration of migrant children, in particular unaccompanied minors, is a necessary precondition in order to ensure their protection and to prevent them from going missing;
N. whereas child sexual abuse and exploitation online is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of children, which is a growing phenomenon resulting in enormous trauma and long-lasting harmful consequences for child victims; whereas, according to the latest figures, the number of images depicting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online has dramatically increased at an unprecedented pace, with reports of more than 45 million images and videos flagged as child sexual abuse;
O. whereas tradition, culture, religion, beliefs, politics or any other doctrine should never be used to justify violence against children; whereas child victims of practices that arise from obsolete cultural and religious practices may develop, as one of the consequences, a hostile attitude towards society once they have grown up;
P. whereas female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons; whereas FGM is recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women and is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and the age of 15;
Q. whereas promoting initiatives aimed at spreading the teaching of ‘gender theory’ at schools should be combatted;
R. whereas Article 165 of the TFEU states that ‘The Union shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity’;
General comments
1. Considers that children’s rights should be at the heart of EU policies and that the 30th anniversary of the CRC provides a unique opportunity to ensure its full implementation in policy and in practice, and to take additional measures to ensure respect for the rights of every child, in particular the most vulnerable;
2. Recalls that every human being has the inherent right to life and that human life must always be protected starting from the moment of conception; stresses that women must be offered all the necessary support to prevent them from considering abortion as an option;
3. Encourages the Member States to share best practices, with a view to improving the correct application of the principle of the best interests of the child across the EU;
4. Welcomes the commitment of the new Commission to present a new comprehensive strategy on children’s rights; recalls the EU’s commitment to protecting the rights of the child, as enshrined in both Article 3(3) of the TFEU and Article 24 of the Charter, within the limits of the competences established by the Treaties;
5. Recalls that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are relevant for upholding the rights of the child;
6. Calls for the EU and the Member States to step up their action to ensure a healthy environment for children and combat the negative effect of climate change, in line with the Paris Agreement;
7. Encourages the Member States to ensure the continuity and quality of a well-functioning service for reporting missing children, as required by the European Electronic Communications Code adopted in 2018;
8. Notes with great concern that problems concerning the German family law system, including the controversial role of the German Jugendamt, which have been reported through petitions by non-German parents, still remain unsolved; underlines that Parliament’s Committee on Petitions continuously receives petitions from non-German parents in which serious discrimination is reported as a result of the procedures and practices concretely adopted by the German authorities in cross-border family disputes involving children;
9. Reiterates the need for the Member States to provide children with any necessary and justified foster care in accordance with the wording of Articles 8 and 20 of the CRC, and in particular to make it possible to provide continuous childcare that takes into account the child’s ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identity;
Internal Policies
Ending all forms of violence against children
10. Condemns all forms of physical or mental violence against children, including sexual abuse, online violence, forced marriage, child labour, prostitution, human trafficking and organ trafficking, smuggling of migrant children, torture, honour killing, female genital mutilation, recruitment, conscription, deprivation, neglect, malnutrition and the use of children as soldiers and human shields;
11. Urges the Commission and Member States to work within the bounds of their respective competences in order to guarantee that cultural and religious legacies would have no impact on the physical and psychological integrity of children;
12. Urges the Commission and the Member States to work out a holistic approach to eradicate sexual violence and child abuse, both online and offline; stresses that it is crucial to cooperate with industry and calls on ICT companies and online platforms to assume their share of responsibility in the fight against child sexual abuse and exploitation online; encourages the Member States to put in place national awareness-raising campaigns to inform children in a child-friendly manner about the risks and threats associated with the internet, in addition to targeted campaigns for parents;
13. Welcomes the Council conclusions of 8 October 2019 on combating the sexual abuse of children and calls on the current and upcoming Council presidencies to step up efforts to ensure that the Member States take concrete actions to better assist victims and work out effective preventive, investigative and prosecution measures to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice;
14. Calls on the Member States to fully implement Directive 2011/93/EU and its resolution of 14 December 2017 on the implementation of Directive 2011/93/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography[9]; calls on the Member States that are State Parties to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote Convention) to implement the recommendations of the Lanzarote Committee (Committee of the Parties of the Lanzarote Convention);
15. Acknowledges that law enforcement authorities are confronted with an unprecedented spike in reports of CSAM online and face enormous challenges when it comes to managing the workload, forcing them to focus their efforts on imagery depicting the youngest, most vulnerable victims; stresses the need for more investment, in particular from industry and the private sector, in research and development and new technologies intended to detect CSAM online and expedite takedown and removal procedures;
16. Calls on the Member States to enhance cooperation between law enforcement authorities and civil society organisations, including hotline networks, which combat child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation; calls on the Commission to update the Better Internet for Children Strategy launched in 2012;
Investing in children
17. Calls for the EU and its Member States to invest in public services for children, including childcare, education and health;
18. Recommends that the Member States adopt laws to safeguard and strengthen maternity and paternity rights in order to provide a healthy, stable environment for children, in particular during the first months of their lives; calls for the EU and Member States to ensure the full implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive[10], since achieving a better, fairer work-life balance will have a positive impact on children’s welfare;
19. Calls for the EU and the Member States to develop strategic frameworks to reduce poverty, which should consider various non-monetary aspects of poverty, including equal access to health services, housing, and education;
20. Calls for the EU and the Member States to align the yearly reform programmes for the European Semester with the 2013 Commission Recommendation on investing in children, and develop effective indicators for the social scoreboard of the European Pillar of Social Rights disaggregated by age in order to effectively and impartially monitor the situation of children in the EU;
21. Calls on the new Commission and on the new Commissioners for International Partnerships and for Crisis Management to present a strategy and to upgrade the Commission’s policy framework to guide the Member States in their efforts to ensure that children grow up in inclusive and prosperous societies, where no one is left behind, and by setting targets to reduce child poverty by half in the EU’s 2030 agenda;
22. Encourages the EU and its Member States to invest in children and adolescents, so as to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge required for the labour market and are able to exercise their right to thrive and fulfil their full potential as agents of change in the society;
23. Encourages the Member States to invest in preventive measures to tackle the rising phenomenon of child mental health disorders in their national systems, and ensure that schools are sufficiently funded to provide counselling and that teachers are adequately trained;
Education
24. Calls on the Member States to guarantee children’s right to education on the basis of equal opportunity;
25. Recalls that the Member States are fully responsible for organising their education systems, the content of their teaching and their cultural and linguistic diversity;
26. Encourages the Member States to set up measures to combat and prevent early school leaving and to ensure gender-equitable access to quality education from early childhood to adolescence;
27. Highlights that innovation should be the leading principle for education and training in the digital age;
Access to justice for children
28. Calls on the Member States to fully implement Directive (EU) 2016/800; stresses that the best interests of the child should always be a primary consideration in all decisions concerning children who are dealing with the justice system, in addition to the right of the child to be heard while giving due weight to their age and maturity;
29. Calls on the Member States to ensure that children in prison are treated in a manner that takes into account their best interests in accordance with applicable law and procedures;
Children in migration
30. Calls for the EU and the Member States to step up their efforts to combat human trafficking and migrant smuggling of children, especially those who are unaccompanied, since they are more exposed to the risks of exploitation and child trafficking;
31. Calls on the Member States to effectively implement the ‘Facilitators Package’ to combat the human smugglers’ business model, thus protecting migrant children from exploitation and abuse;
32. Stresses the importance of registering the biometric data of refugee children, welcomes the Commission’s proposal of 2016 for a recast of the Eurodac Regulation[11], and underlines the importance of registering refugee children from the age of six to help identify and trace missing children while preventing them from ending up in the hands of human trafficking networks;
33. Calls on the Member States to fully implement the EU Anti-Trafficking Directive [12] with a special focus on preventive measures in line with its Article 18;
34. Stresses the importance of the Member States stepping up their action when it comes to upholding accountability towards the victims and eradicating crime, and of combating any impunity that still prevails for traffickers, human smugglers, exploiters, profit makers, users and abusers, including by criminalising the use of services exacted from victims of trafficking for all forms of exploitation;
Vulnerable children
35. Deplores all forms of violence against girls and urges the Member States to apply concrete measures to end child marriage, FGM, and other harmful practices; calls for the EU and the Member States to increase training and awareness on FGM practices among healthcare and medical professionals, and to promote awareness campaigns within the different communities;
36. Calls on the Member States to enhance cross-border cooperation and information-sharing among law-enforcement and child-protection authorities to identify and protect missing children;
37. Stresses that special attention should be given to children with disabilities, who are a particularly fragile population; strongly condemns all forms of violence against them, including violence caused by ill-treatment or inappropriate care; calls on all the Member States to implement the standards set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children;
External policies
38. Calls on the VP/HR to pay special attention to children’s rights in all EU external action so as to ensure the effective mainstreaming of children’s rights, including in the context of human rights dialogues, the EU’s common security and defence policy (CSDP), including its crisis management operations, and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP);
39. Calls on the Commission to step up its actions when it comes to integrating children’s rights into development cooperation and into humanitarian aid in order to ensure adequate funding, and to increase the level of protection for children affected by conflict;
40. Notes that the new multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2021-2027 reflects the urgent need to tackle child poverty both within the EU and in third countries through its external actions; underlines the importance of official development assistance (ODA) as a key instrument for eradicating poverty and recalls the respective ODA commitments of the EU and the Member States;
41. Calls on the Commission to ensure the full and speedy implementation of Parliament’s resolution on ending child marriage; underlines that this resolution calls for the EU and the Member States to apply unified legal standards with regard to the procedure for dealing with child marriages, to cooperate with law enforcement authorities and judicial systems in third countries, and to provide training and technical assistance to help with the adoption and enforcement of legislation prohibiting early and forced marriage;
42. Calls on the VP/HR and the Commission to address the short-, medium- and long-term impact of armed conflict on children in an effective and comprehensive manner by making use of the variety of tools available, including the updated EU Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict of 16 June 2008, the revised implementation strategy of the EU Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict of 6 December 2010, and the Checklist for the Integration of the Protection of Children affected by Armed Conflict into CSDP Operations of 23 May 2006;
43. Calls on the VP/HR to systematically raise the issue of grave violations against children with parties to conflict, especially those mentioned in the UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict; urges the VP/HR to use all tools available to ensure the EU protects children in conflict by ensuring that the EU Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict are fully implemented and by ensuring that all EU CSDP mission staff are adequately trained in matters of child protection;
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44. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the European Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.
- [1] OJ L 335, 17.12.2011, p. 1.
- [2] OJ L 132, 21.5.2016, p. 1.
- [3] OJ L 328, 5.12.2002, p. 17.
- [4] OJ L 328, 5.12.2002, p. 1.
- [5] Texts adopted, P8_TA(2018)0476.
- [6] OJ C 346, 27.9.2018, p. 66.
- [7] Texts adopted, P8_TA(2018)0292.
- [8] OJ C 463, 21.12.2018, p. 26.
- [9] OJ C 369, 11.10.2018, p. 96.
- [10] OJ L 188, 12.7.2019, p. 79.
- [11] OJ L 180, 29.6.2013, p. 1.
- [12] OJ L 101, 15.4.2011, p. 1.