The 13th European Forum on the Rights of the Child (28 September–1 October), revolving around Delivering for Children: Towards the EU strategy on the rights of the child, featured a series of web-streamed plenary sessions, workshops, interactive tools, a networking area, and a 3D gallery providing a resource portal for publications, videos, testimonials and graphic recordings of the Forum. Most significantly, sixty young people from eighteen countries helped to organise and participate in the Forum as speakers, experts and moderators in an event that brought together over 300 participants from EU agencies, national authorities, judicial and child protection practitioners, child ombudspersons, NGOs and academics. A main objective was to define recommendations throughout the three days for what should be included in the upcoming EU Strategy on Child Rights (on climate, digital, economy, fundamental rights, democracy and external policy).

Greater child participation and active involvement in democratic processes was a recurring theme: FRA director Michael O’Flaherty stressed the need to make our capacity to respond to COVID-19 better through child rights resilience, getting children’s voices into decision-making rooms. The Forum gave particular focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged children. During the plenary session on Day I, Marija Pejčinović Burić (Secretary General, Council of Europe) emphasised the need for special attention for children who are in particularly difficult situations, citing children in migration and children with imprisoned parents. She highlighted the Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)5 for children with imprisoned parents as ‘a major achievement’ of the Council of Europe in terms of child rights. FRA director Michael O’Flaherty also highlighted issues for disadvantaged children, underscoring the inequalities inherent in COVID-19’s impact for those in vulnerable situations, and the need to speed up democratic digital access.

Better guidance for judges in order to improve child-friendly justice was also an emphasis. During a workshop entitled European judicial training as a tool to build child friendly justice, Wojciech Postulski of DG Justice at the European Commission highlighted the importance of what he calls ‘judgecraft’ – those skills and attitudes required to be a judge, including not only legal knowledge but also judges’ behaviour, language, unconscious bias, values, attitudes and overall approach. Judges need training on all of these factors to make justice systems more amenable to all children, regardless of whether they are in conflict with the law or have a parent in prison. Children impacted by justice systems are above all children. As one of the Recommendations that came out of another child-friendly workshop on Day 3 stipulates: The interests of children, whose parents are in prison or in some other way in conflict with the law, should not only be considered from the perspective of child-friendly justice, but in a broader sense as vulnerable children. They too, are at risk of discrimination and exclusion.

In terms of recommendations for the new EU Strategy on Child Rights, workshop participants highlighted that the Strategy should, inter alia:

  • Work to ensure rights-based meaningful and inclusive participation of children in decision-making processes that impact their lives at local, national and EU level and in partner countries with particular dedication to the participation of vulnerable, marginalised and younger children.
  • Allow children who have a parent who is involved in adult criminal justice sentencing processes to be accounted for, highlighting the impact of the parent’s imprisonment on children. And allow child impact statements to be provided during these processes so that judges are aware of the stakes and systematise “child checks” so judges and magistrates ascertain who and where the children are, and who will be caring for them when the parent goes to prison.  
  • Call on EU Member States to establish / strengthen monitoring bodies for children with imprisoned parents
  • Call on the EU and Member States to invest EU and national resources in programmes aimed to develop quality digital solutions for children in vulnerable situations. This includes ensuring digital access and funding for children in vulnerable situations (eg adequate bandwidth, hardware (eg,  smartphones). Children’s rights should be protected at the same level in digital contexts as in the physical world.
  • Call on EU Member States to fully implement the recommendations set in the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty to ensure that children’s deprivation of liberty is a measure of last resort and that they benefit from effective access to alternatives to detention.
  • Call on EU Member States to promote the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Council of Europe Guidelines on child-friendly justice for children in conflict with the law; and Council of Europe Recommendation CM/ Rec (2018) concerning children with a parent in prison. The Explanatory Memorandum on the latter gives concrete action points on how implementation can be carried out.
  • Improve the collection of data on children with imprisoned parents reflecting their needs and how EU policies support them, in line with GDPR, with emphasis on the need to respect the child’s right to privacy.

The extensive networking opportunities that were provided by the Forum’s interactive platform enabled COPE to engage with Forum participants from a variety of countries in 1:1 meetings. These included Serbia (head of the Network of Organisations for Children of Serbia MODS, an independent children’s rights and protection specialist), Estonia (Head of Children and Youth Rights Department at Office of the Chancellor of Justice, which ultimately led to a meeting with the National Preventive Mechanism; Estonian Union for Child Welfare, Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs). You can read the Forum report here, and additional materials can be found on the Forum website.