Entitled “Towards an EU strategy on the Rights of the Child” the communication proposes to establish a comprehensive EU strategy to effectively promote and safeguard the rights of the child in the EU’s internal and external policies and to support Member States efforts in this field. The stratgy takes a transversal and cross-cutting approach dealing with civil and criminal justice, employment, development co-operation, trade negotiation, education and health.
The strategy aims to push childrens’ rights to the forefront of the international agenda and promote universal childrens’ rights at national level worldwide. It also aims to promote and support attention to children’s needs, drawing on Europe’s values of social protection and on its policy commitments and programmes in different fields.
According to UNICEF, The European Commission’s new Communication is "a very welcome move towards the full realisation of children’s rights within the European Union and beyond.”
The call of a number of Brussels-based NGOs, including Eurochild, for a Commissioner for Children’s Rights has been realised in the new EU Strategy. The strategy proposes a "Commission Coordinator of the Rights of the Child”, acting as a contact person of the European Commission, making Children’s Rights more visible, and ensuring coordination of the strategy with all services concerned.
Other specific short term measures in the strategy paper include:
a one single six digits telephone number (beginning with 116: 116-xyz) within the EU for child help lines and one for child hotlines dedicated to missing and sexually exploited children (end 2006)
supporting the banking sector and credit cards companies to combat the use of credit cards when purchasing sexual images of children on the Internet (2006)
launching an Action Plan on Children in Development Cooperation to address children’s priority needs in developing countries (2007)
promoting a clustering of actions on child poverty in the EU (2007)
In addition, the communication draws a preliminary inventory of more than 75 EU instruments affecting children’s rights including concrete legislative, non-legislative and financial actions that are to be proposed in 2006-2007.
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