Reactie en aanbevelingen Commissie Rechten voor het Kind op rapport van Nederland

De Commissie voor de Rechten van het Kind geeft haar reactie op het rapport over Nederland.
 
Op 16 januari presenteerde Nederland haar rapport over de situatie van kinderen in ons land bij de Commissie voor de Rechten van het Kind. De reactie van de commissie treft u hieronder aan:

Among follow-up measures undertaken and progress achieved following its review of the third periodic report of the Netherlands, which included reports by the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, the Committee noted with appreciation the entry into force of new legislation, such as the Equal Treatment Act 2003, the Youth Care Act 2005 and the Childcare Act 2005. With regard to Aruba, it noted the establishment of a counselling and reporting centre on child abuse in August 2005, and the amendment of the Criminal Code of Aruba criminalizing the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Also noted with appreciation was that the Netherlands had ratified or acceded to a number of international instruments that would have an affect on children and their rights, including the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2004, and its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, in 2005, as well as the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, in 2005.

The Committee reiterated its concern that Aruba still had not introduced compulsory education and regretted that there was no action plan for children there. It was also concerned that there were no human rights institutions nor Ombudsmen for the Netherlands Antilles or Aruba. While welcoming allocation of extra resources for the identification and support of families and children at risk in the Netherlands, the Committee was concerned at the lack of resources in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, in particular for children with disabilities. Noting that corporal punishment in the home was not prohibited in Aruba, and that it was still being used at schools, daycare centres and at home in the Netherlands Antilles, the Committee recommended that the Netherlands prohibit corporal punishment by law, enforce the prohibition in all settings, and conduct awareness-raising campaigns and parenting education programmes to ensure that alternative forms of discipline were used. Further concerns were the lack of sufficient family-based services to ensure early intervention and prevention at the local level, and the time children and young persons were without adequate help. The Committee recommended that the Netherlands conduct comprehensive research on the reasons for the long waiting lists for children to receive services, and to involve the families more in preventing and resolving their problems. Moreover, youth care still focused largely on placing children in residential institutions, which also had long waiting lists, and there were frequent changes of placements, as well as a lack of a permanent social worker taking continuous care of children in need of care.

The Committee was also concerned about the high prevalence of child abuse in the Netherlands, and urged the Netherlands, inter alia, to establish mechanisms for monitoring the number of cases and the extent of violence, sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment or exploitation and to ensure that professionals working with children received training on their obligation to report suspected cases. While appreciating the high number of asylum-seekers accepted in the Netherlands, the Committee was also concerned about the practice of detention of unaccompanied children and families with children, and that children continued to disappear from reception centres.

Finally, the Committee was concerned at the lack of a comprehensive national strategy to prevent trafficking and sexual exploitation specifically of children and that the Netherlands considered that sexual exploitation of children was not a problem in Aruba. The Netherlands was recommended to strengthen its efforts to reduce and prevent the occurrence of sexual exploitation and trafficking of children and child sex tourism, through, inter alia, undertaking a comprehensive study and data collection; and training law enforcement officials, social workers and prosecutors on how to receive, monitor and investigate complaints in a child-sensitive manner.

Een verdere toelichting in het Nederlands is te vinden op de website van Defence for Children Nederland