Ombudsman marks Children’s Day

The promotion and defense of the rights of the child are fundamental tasks of the State and of the community, being assumed not only as ethical duties, but also as obligations that have already reached the juridical level, based on national and international instruments.

Therefore, celebrating the day of the child implies to affirm its singularity as a holder of autonomous rights, specifically recognized to meet the special needs demanded by the different stages of development of childhood and adolescence.

But celebrating a child’s day also requires looking beyond the existing legal framework and entering the concrete plane of life where challenges to the realization of rights materialize in the daily lives of so many children and so many families.

For this reason, the Ombudsman, as the National Human Rights Institution, has produced a report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the occasion of the presentation of the 5th and 6th national reports for the 82nd session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to be held in Geneva from 9 to 27 September 2019. Education issues – such as drop-out, absenteeism and school failure – child poverty, domestic violence and child and youth care in danger and of refugee children, deserved particular attention on the part of this organ of the State.

It should also be recalled that, in order to respond to situations of children and young people in situations of risk or danger, the Ombudsman has a free telephone line – the Children’s Line (800 20 66 56), which answered, in the year 2018, 553 calls.