Emergency hotline heralds EU’s child-centred policy plans

AN emergency Europe-wide hotline for children in trouble will kick-off a more child-centred policy that the European Union plans to adopt over the coming months.

As well as an emergency helpline there will be a hotline dedicated to missing and sexually exploited children. Both form part of a strategy based on the rights of the child that will be pushed nationally and internationally by the EU.

In addition, the banking sector will be asked to devise ways of preventing credit cards being used by paedophiles buying sexual images of children over the internet.

The strategy aims to tackle child poverty both in member states and abroad and to ensure children’s fundamental rights from health to education are achieved.

The strategy will cut across every aspect of the EU’s work and is designed to mainstream children’s rights in all the bloc’s nations.

The plan was welcomed by children’s bodies including Ireland’s National Children’s Alliance chief executive Jillian van Turnhout, who said it was a very positive development.

Announcing the plan in Strasbourg yesterday, Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said: “Children’s rights are still far from being generally respected, and their basic needs are sometimes not being met. The European Union can and should bring essential and fundamental added value in the field of children’s rights.”

Children are too often abused even in the EU where a sizeable proportion report they are beaten by their parents, he said.

The EU will create a website with the Council of Europe where children’s rights will be explained in a child-friendly way and there will be campaigns to make children and their parents aware of their rights.

Many of the EU’s actions have had a direct effect on children and over the past five years there have been around 30 such decisions, policies and laws.

These included family reunification, parental responsibilities, trafficking in human beings, sexual exploitation, children in armed conflict and paediatric use of medicinal products.

Ms van Turnhout praised as an excellent first step the commission’s plan to formalise the principles that will guide their future work.

This will be the first time the EU has attempted to bring together all its policies relating to children in this way. A number of Brussels-based NGO’s including Save the Children and World Vision called for a Commissioner for Children to be appointed.

The commission said they will appoint a Coordinator of the Rights of the Child, who will coordinate the strategy.