Children’s Alliance
The Rights of the Child are Human Rights
Alternative Report
on the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child
(2005 – 2009)
To:
The United Nations Commission on the Rights of the Child
Geneva, Switzerland
April 2009
Content
1. Introduction
2. General Measures
3. Definition of ‘child’
4. General Principles
5. Civil and Political Rights
6. Home and Alternative Care
7. Primary Health and Social Protection
8. Education, leisure and cultural activities
9. Special protection
10. Annex I – Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child analyzed from the child’s perspective, December 2008 – January 2009.
11. Annex II – Input from the main public and non-public structures involved in the protection of the rights of the child, January-February 2009 (summary of methodological instruments).
12. Annex III – Monitoring report on the implementation of the rights of the child in pre-detention and detention facilities by the Albanian Helsinki Committee, January-March 2009.
13. Annex IV – List of organizations with active contributions to the process of drafting the Alternative Report.
I. Introduction
This is the First Alternative Report on the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, prepared by the Children’s Alliance, the largest children’s coalition in Albania gathering a membership of 150 organizations. Through this report, the Alliance intends to throw light on the situation of the rights of the child, in terms of both the implementation and violation of these rights. In this respect, this Report is complementary to the Report submitted by the Country of Albania. In addition, this Report represents an effort to provide a systematic analysis of the coherence of domestic legislation, its compatibility with the standards contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its implementation in real life. The structure of the report follows that of Albania’s Official Report in order to allow for comparison of findings and facts in the two reports.
In this context, the Alliance would like to bring to the attention of the UN Commission that Albania continues to grapple with the challenges of overcoming the legacy of the past regime, the poverty and the array of problems created in the aftermath of the fall of communism. It should be pointed out that following the nineties, Albania drafted from almost scratch its entire body of laws and regulations, it has ratified a number of international instruments, including those related to human rights, and acquired membership in the Council of Europe. On 12 December 2008, the Stabilization and Association Agreement between Albania and the European Union took effect, thus obliging the Albanian government to launch a number of reforms towards approximation of Albanian legislation with “aquis communautaire”. In addition, Albania became a NATO member on 4 April 2009. While the authors of the Report hail all of these achievements as remarkable progress made in international relations, thus marking an improvement of Albania’s image in the international arena, they would like to point out that the abovementioned achievements should be recognized by the Albanian State as an additional obligation to respect the standards of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to consider them as priorities, not only on the political and declarative aspects, but also in real life. This is important in order to produce the desired results and to provide the Albanian children with an appropriate level of wellbeing, equal access to education, special protection for vulnerable children, increased support for families with numerous children, increased efforts by responsible bodies, coordinated interventions at the national and trans-national level, and the provision of necessary services for children who have been exposed to trafficking, economic exploitation, and sexual abuse. Although Albania has changed and is changing for the better, such rudimentary phenomena as blood vengeance and domestic crime continue to plague the Albanian society. In both of these cases, children are the victims most severely affected by these crimes. While their rights are trampled and their lives destroyed there is the risk that they may be forced to give up the hope that the society and state will ever be capable of putting an end to these plagues.
Albania has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Based on the Constitution of the Republic of Albania, this convention becomes part of domestic legislation and receives priority above other domestic laws. Therefore, the Children’s Alliance, through this report attempts to conduct an analysis of the main issues and to present a picture of children’s situation through facts, figures, and what’s more important, through the voice of children themselves.
In a summarized way, the Alliance points out:
· The lack of necessary financial resources to guarantee the rights of the child at the central and local level, so that children may enjoy an acceptable standard of living;
· Lack of coordination and systemic coherence of the various structures responsible for establishing the child protection institutions;
· Unclear division of responsibilities among the various governmental structures;
· The need to strengthen the role of the family in child upbringing;
· Provision of equal access to education for children throughout the country;
· Provision of access to health services for all children at country level;
· Lack of appropriate support systems for children without parental care;
· Lack of appropriate policies for disabled children;
· Lack of an appropriate and adequate statistical system;
· Lack of decentralization progress, due to unfunded mandates of local authorities.
I.I Methodology
To compile this report, the Children’s Alliance has collaborated with Delegibus Consulting Law Firm, which hired a group of lawyers and a psychologist with relevant experience and expertise in the field of children’s rights: with knowledge of legislation and with considerable practitioner experience in constitutional, civil, penal, family, administrative, and human rights law.
The Alliance took special care to conduct a participatory and transparent process. It encouraged the member organizations to bring forward issues and problems related to the rights of the child, which they came across in their daily activities. In this respect, it asked the consulting company to design a methodology which would guarantee a broad based process, while respecting the standards of qualitative work and professional involvement.
In a more detailed way, the process of compiling the present alternative report followed these methods and instruments to provide for participation and transparency:
· Legal experts drafted standard protocols for semi-structured interviews to collect information from governmental structures involved in the implementation of the rights of the child, such as: the Regional Educational Directorates, the Regional Primary Health-Care Directorates, the Police Stations at regional level, social administrators at the municipalities, residential institutions for child care, and NGOs involved in the provision of such services. These instruments were presented to members of the Alliance and were endorsed by this membership. The interviews were conducted in 10 regions by coordinators of the Children’s Alliance. The consulting company, together with the board of the Alliance, held a one day training session with the interviewers to introduce them to the procedure of conducting the interviews and provide clarifications to the questions contained in the questionnaire.
· The Children’s Alliance considers that the child’s opinion on how he/she perceives and lives through the situation is a very important expression of the right of the child to free expression. Without this element, the alternative report would not be real and would not respect one of the basic rights of the child, i.e., the right to be heard. In this context, the legal experts and the psychologists together drafted two questionnaires to collect the child’s opinion: the questionnaire for children aged 10 to 14 and the questionnaire for children 14 to 18. The content of the questionnaires was approved by the members of the Alliance. These questionnaires were administered by the coordinators of the member organizations in 10 regions of Albania. It was conducted in two schools of each region: one 9 year school, and one secondary school in the villages. The reason for this was the concern of the member organizations regarding the situation of children’s rights in the rural areas. At the same time, previous studies provided abundant data concerning the situation of children in the urban areas. Over the period December 2008- January 2009, a total of 1350 questionnaires were administered. Collected information was processed electronically by SPSS and findings are summarized in Annex I one of this Report called “Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child from the Perspective of Children, December 2008 - January2009”
· The Children’s Alliance established a number of working groups to facilitate the collection, processing, and analysis of data, and design of the appropriate approaches to address issues which concern the Albanian civil society and compromise the enjoyment and implementation of children’s rights. The following working groups were established:
1. The working group on the rights of the children without parental care and placed in child care institutions;
2. The working group on the rights of minorities;
3. The working group on the rights of children suffering from labor, exploitation, sexual abuse, and trafficking;
4. The working group on the rights of disabled children.
The representatives of member organizations contributed to the working groups with their suggestions on priorities to be considered by consultants during the process of drafting the report according to the division of the work. In addition, they contributed with concrete information from real life situations of children they had dealt with, information derived from studies carried out by their organizations, information from partnership between NGOs and governmental structures, pilot projects, best practices, and respective legal initiatives. Due to the nature of their practitioner work, the contribution of the members of the working groups was particularly important with regard to examining and identifying the concrete issues in relation to the absence and/or the necessity for the creation of appropriate infrastructures to implement legislation. It should be particularly mentioned that the member organizations contributed significantly to the drafting of recommendations. Information about organizations and their participation in the working groups is contained in Annex IV.
· It should be emphasized that the Children’s Alliance, besides the involvement of the member organizations, has collaborated closely for the drafting of this report with the Coalition "Together against child trafficking", consisting of 19 organizations who work directly with children who have been afflicted by trafficking or children at risk to be trafficked, exploited, used and abused. The Alliance has also cooperated with the Helsinki Committee, which as part of this initiative, undertook a series of monitoring visits in detention and prison facilities for children. The Alliance has also been helped by the state structures which have been willing to co-operate for providing information, providing access to the group of experts to the documents and information, as well as to the facilities which were monitored or were used to conduct the interviews or to administer the questionnaires with the children.
In a more detailed manner, the Alliance wishes to thank:
• The Inter Ministerial Committee under the auspices of the Deputy Prime Minister;
• The State Social Service and the employees in the child care institutions;
• Educational Directorates in the regions;
• Primary Health Centers in the regions;
• Police Stations;
• Social Administrator in the municipalities;
• Employees of the National Secretariat for Children at the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities;
• The Ombudsman;
• INSTAT (Institute of Statistics);
• Budget Directorate at the Ministry of Finance;
• National Council of Radio and Television;
• Technical Secretariat for Children at the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities;
• Directorate of Refugees at the Interior Ministry;
• Last, but not least, the Children’s Alliance wishes to thank UNICEF and Save the Children, Albania, for their support in the realization of the entire process of drafting the Alternative Report.
In conclusion to this introduction of its first Alternative Report, the Children’s Alliance wishes once again to bring to the attention of the Committee for Children's Rights, the fact that this report intends to help all state, and non-state bodies, national or international, to grasp the reality of the Albanian children’s rights by providing a view of their situation not only as prescribed in the laws and projected in the policy and strategy documents, but as they exist in the real life.
II. GENERAL MEASURES towards the implementation of the Convention
(articles 4, 42, 44)
Articles 4 – Implementation of the rights of the child
Legal framework: Albania became party to the Convention of the Rights of the Child on 28 March 1992 and adhered to its Optional Protocols: "Concerning child involvement in armed conflicts” and “Concerning child trafficking, child prostitution and child pornography".[1] These acts, in accordance with constitutional provisions have already become part of the Albanian legal system[2]. The Constitution recognizes the power of legal agreements and of ratified international treaties, subsequent to their publication in the official gazette[3]. It also acknowledges the principle of automatic adoption, except in cases when legal provisions by themselves can produce no direct effect. Hence, the need for the adoption of a specific law. The Constitution acknowledges the supremacy of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) over domestic laws, whenever the latter come into conflict with the CRC provisions[4]. In this regard, it is worth underlining that since its ratification in 1992, the CRC has not yet been published in the official gazette. However, the Albanian translation of the CRC is available online at the official website of the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities[5].
Under the constitutional provisions, children enjoy special protection from violence, abuse, exploitation and hard labor. They are entitled to protection of their health, morale and normal development[6]. However, the Constitution guarantees these rights to individuals in general, without specifically referring to the category of minors. These gaps and legal issues have been identified and discussed thoroughly under the various sections of this report.