Justice and Consumers

The EU Children’s Participation Platform is now open with first activities on their way. We have children from more than 40 civil society organisations, and more applications in progress. If your organisation or someone in your network is interested in joining the EU Children’s Participation Platform, just share or follow the link to find our more and apply.

The first General Assembly to be held on June 26-27 in Brussels. The Assembly will bring together children, their organisations and child rights stakeholders. It’s going to be a unique event with space for friendship, fun and lots of listening to what children have to say. The opening and closing session will be webstreamed. #EUChildparticipation

In the EU Strategy on the rights of the child, we promised to propose how to better protect children and bring all relevant authorities and services to work together in a system that puts the child in the centre. The first step is now to ask children what they need to feel safe. All children below 18 can reply to the child friendly survey, first one under the CPP. It is available in all EU languages - please share the link with children. We will publish an open public consultation and a call for evidence for adults on this initiative in the coming weeks. We will keep you posted. Thus please keep this link for children only! The results of the child and of the open public consultation will feed into the document that is planned for adoption early 2024.

On 7 June, the Commission adopted a new Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health. Childhood is a crucial stage in mental health. One chapter specifically looks at difficulties that children and young people face and proposes some practical solutions to better prevent mental health problems and to help altogether those in need of assistance.

A recent ECJ decision states that the EU Return Directive must be interpreted to say that children’s best interests must be protected at every stage of a return decision. The children’s best interests could not only be considered after the return decision, when the court could decide to suspend enforcement of the return decision on the basis of the children’s best interests.

The EU Agency of Fundamental Rights (FRA), in close coordination with the European Guardianship Network, to developed training material for guardians and trainers. All unaccompanied children are entitled to a guardian under EU law. Guardians require specific knowledge and skills to promote the rights and best interests of the unaccompanied children they are responsible for. To guide guardians, FRA created an online training and a training platform as well as a trainer's manual for guardians. The training contains practical exercises, case studies and quizzes to assess participants’ knowledge and other resources to allow participants to further develop their skills. The manual It helps institutions, organisations and individuals train guardians or deliver ‘train-the-trainers’ courses in a range of training contexts

This report points at concrete challenges faced by people fleeing Ukraine, with a specific focus on children (who responded to a specific questionnaire). In general, most respondents did not face difficulties when travelling into and within the European Union. Less than half of those who were in education shortly before fleeing Ukraine have continued their education in the host country. The language barrier is the main reason for this. Almost two thirds of children availed themselves of online education provided by schools or universities in Ukraine, or taught themselves using materials and other support from Ukraine. Worryingly, about half of the younger children (aged 12–15) who participated in the survey report having difficulty sleeping and/or concentrating, a loss of self-confidence or feeling vulnerable

Published on 8 June 2023, with a specific section on rights of the child: The number of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion continued to increase in 2022. High energy costs and rising inflation placed additional burdens on the households in which families with children are struggling to cover basic needs. Alongside the arrival of children fleeing Ukraine, the arrival of other non-EU asylum-seeking children continued to increase. As a result, several Member States struggled to provide basic reception conditions, and some continued to detain children in the migration context. The European Commission issued several legislative proposals on victims’ rights. Member States have thus taken numerous legislative steps in the protection of children involved in justice systems as victims, as witnesses or when in conflict with the law.

SOS Children’s Villages, War Child Holland and Save the Children joined forces to prevent mental health problems in refugee children. The EU-funded project ‘EPSUM - Enhancing Psychosocial Wellbeing of Unaccompanied Minors’, organised training for professionals and volunteers in Italy, Greece and Sweden and supported to integrate within existing services for children in migration. TeamUp facilitators guide children through games, sports-related activities, dance, body awareness exercises and creative movement that contribute to their physical, cognitive, social and emotional development. They are also trained to timely identify children experiencing mental distress and in need of targeted specialised support and refer to relevant services.

In April, Child Helpline International published a position paper on the role of child helplines in prevention, detection, and victim support for children against (online) child sexual exploitation and abuse. This publication outlines the position of Child Helpline International, provides European child helpline data and information on (O)CSEA 2019-2021, and includes a discussion on OCSEA and underreporting, and what can be done about it.

Give a listen to the recent episode on ‘Mental Health of Children in Migration’ of the podcast Heartbeat of Humanity. In this episode, IFRC Psychosocial Centre Communications Officer Jesper Guhle explores how humanitarian actors can support the mental well-being of children in migration. One of the guests is Orso Muneghina from SOS Children’s Villages International, who tells us more about the Epsum project mentioned in this newsletter.

Childhood is not a fight arena! This is one of the key messages developed by young people as part of the EU co-funded project “Applying Safe Behaviours: Preventing and Responding to Peer Violence Amongst Children and Young People”, implemented by SOS Children’s Villages. A free e-learning course and series of explainer videos were developed for all adults who care for and work with children and young people. For young people, two awareness-raising videos were created using stories and ideas from the project’s International Young Expert Group. Children aged 8-11 can have a look at a children’s booklet created by groups of children in each of the project countries.

All across the globe, children and young people are taking actions to end violence and make the world a better place. These projects deserve the spotlight. The Let’s Tell The World campaign aims to map child- and youth-led initiatives everywhere. Fill in this survey to tell the world how you are making it a better, healthier, safer, more equal, more inclusive and more innovative place. You can fill in a survey and tell the world about your project.

The EU Co-funded project was implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Greek NGO ARSIS and Belgian foster care agency Pleegzorg Vlaanderen. The project reinforced family-based care in Belgium and Greece, developed prototypes to support UMC in their transition to adulthood in Germany and built the capacity of care professionals and (future) foster families in various EU member states. All of the U-CARE tools were developed in exchange with (inter)national experts, social workers, (aged-out) UMC and diaspora and migrant organizations and were disseminated widely in the final months of the project, in the EU and beyond. For more information or questions, please reach out to Anke Van de Velde, U-CARE project manager: avandevelde@iom.int