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International Day of Children Rights |
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19 November 2009
International Day of Children Rights
 On the occasion of the International day of children rights the BiH Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees has organised the press conference at which was summarised what has been done in the of the first year of CoE campaign “Raise your hand against corporal punishment”.
SRSG Caroline Ravaud spoke about the effect of the pan- European CoE Campaign “Raise your hand against corporal punishment “ in Europe representative of the MHRR spoke about what the Ministry has done up to the day in reform of legislation and Strategy to prevent violence against and “Save the Children Norway representative spoke about the results of spreading the campaign through NGOs sector, the partner in this campaign.
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Today in Sarajevo, the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees in BiH, Council of Europe and Save the Children Norway draw the attention of the public on the importance of prohibition of physical punishment on the children. Anent to the 20th Anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the special representative of the Council of Europe in BiH, Caroline Ravaud showed that almost all countries in the world have ratified the Convention and have legally bound themselves to fulfill the regulations in that convention.
“As a results of that, the situation connected to children is still promoted in a little bit of a better way within the political activities but the real implementation of the Convention is slightly less effective than what was expected“, she added. The main reason for that, according to her, is the lack of systematic application to implementing children’s rights as a political priority. “Children are not mini people with mini rights. Already the fact that they are very young puts them in a very vulnerable category and situation. In the Council of Europe we have adopted a strategy called “Building the Europe for Children and with Children”. This program has two aspects – promotion of children’s rights and protection of children from violence”, Ravaud said.
She added that last year in BiH, they started a campaign against corporal punishment of children together with Save the Children Norway and the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees in BiH. At that moment, 18 out of 47 members of the Council of Europe had fully banned corporal punishment of children. But from that moment until today, only Moldova has fully adopted that program. “The Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees in BiH started to build a strategy which will lead to the revision of the BiH legislation and we will work together with them and Save the Children Norway on this issue in the coming period”, Ravaud added.
The representative from the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees in BiH, Milena Juric, said that even though in the last years, activities for discovering cases of violence on children have been intensified and the number of registered cases increased, there are still high numbers of un-registered cases of violence on children in BiH.
The representative from Save the Children Norway, Andrea Zeravcic, re-iterated that this organization is involved in the campaign for removing corporal punishment on children in BiH as they believe that any corporal punishment of the child violates their basic rights of human dignity and their physical integrity.
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