Turkey’s Parliament sets up Child Rights Monitoring Committee
ANKARA, Turkey - November 20, 2008 As the world marked Universal Children’s Day on November 20, the speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey announced the creation of a parliamentary Child Rights Monitoring Committee. Addressing a joint meeting of parliamentarians and representatives of 81 provincial child rights commissions, a body formed by children themselves, speaker Koksal Toptan noted that the date of the foundation of Turkey’s parliament, April 23, is celebrated nationally as “Children’s Day”. It was therefore appropriate that the assembly should take a further step towards institutionalizing its monitoring system for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The speaker made clear that the committee would operate in a child-friendly manner and “will take responsibility and carry out enquiries based on the information reaching it from public opinion and from children themselves”. He also mentioned that a website would be created to enable children to raise issues and make recommendations to the committee members at any time. The provincial child rights commissions, meanwhile, could play a key role in channeling information and ideas to the parliamentary Child Rights Monitoring Committee. As Turkey does not have an office of child ombudsman, the parliamentary committee aims at filling this gap and ensuring effective implementation of the provisions of the Convention. Earlier, the government minister responsible for women and the family, Nimet Çubukçu, had set the scene for the day by calling on the children to take responsibility and suggest solutions for the problems which they and their less fortunate peers faced. “We are trying to protect children from the negative aspects of our adult world… and at the same time we want them to be conscious individuals aware of their own rights,” she said. “Rich source of ideas” UNICEF Representative Reza Hossaini welcomed the formation of the new parliamentary committee. Drawing attention to some of the rights abuses facing children worldwide, Mr Hossaini went on to say that “Children, worldwide, are an unexplored rich source of ideas and potential partner for change. Children freely cross the borders we adults have created for ourselves; they don’t differentiate between colours of skin, ethnicity, and political grouping. We adults should learn to listen to them.” The UNICEF Representative also underlined that Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child obliged governments and the public sector to assure children of the right to express their views freely in all matters affecting them. Dr Cevdet Erdöl, the chairperson of the parliamentary Health, Family, Labour and Social Affairs Committee, under which the new Child Rights Monitoring Committee will function, noted that children did not have the right to elect and be elected, but that Parliament had to represent them just as much as adults.
At a workshop with the MPs, the children, aged between 12 and 17, set out their recommendations for the better protection of children’s rights. The issues which they raised ranged from staff shortages in children’s homes and the difficulties faced by disabled children to the problems of getting leave from school in order to take part in child rights activities. One of the most prominent demands was for MPs and local government officials to take a closer interest in children’s rights and to listen to their voices all year round. Children’s skills on show Meanwhile, the lofty marble chambers of the parliament building played host to an exhibition illustrating the work carried out over the last twelve months by the provincial child rights commissions. In recent years, these commissions have become increasingly active in a wide range of child rights work including teaching other children about their rights, setting up websites, conducting surveys, helping children with addictions, visiting detention centers for children and above all collaborating with local authorities to monitor child rights implementation. Feeling important The activities of the children’s commissions are proof of what children can do for themselves when adult organizations provide them with the opportunity to do so. In the same way, the success of the new parliamentary committee will depend not so much on the undoubted commitment of its founder members as on how children themselves make use of it. World Child Rights Day is held to mark the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly in 1989. Turkey ratified the Convention in 1994. UNICEF continues to support the Government of Turkey in its efforts to ensure that all children in Turkey enjoy their rights to survival, health, education, protection and participation.
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