Press Centre 2005/06/17: Child Protection
The State will take care of children living on the streets
Ayşegül Doğan, Zaman Newspaper, 17 June 2005
State Minister Responsible for Women’s and Children’s Issues Nimet Çubukçu with child delegates to the conference on a new Service Model for Children Living and/or Working on the Streets. Photograph by Rana Mullan © UNICEF Turkey 2005
The Minister of the Interior Abdülkadir Aksu and the State Minister Çubukçu, have announced that specific steps are to be taken for the care of street children. The Ministers said that the problem will be addressed in cooperation with the non-governmental organisations.
State Minister Çubukçu said that street children are vulnerable to abuse and violence but that it would be a mistake to see them all as potential criminals. The Minister added that misconceptions about children living in streets had to be corrected first in order to come up with sustained solutions to the problem.
The Minister of Interior Abdülkadir Aksu said children living and working in streets made up one of the priority problems of the country and stressed that the maintenance of law and order is not just a problem of policing but that crime and criminality are social issues.
The ministers were attending a conference organised jointly by the State Ministry, the Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK), UNICEF Turkey and the Coordinator of the EU Project for Support to Basic Education to introduce a new Service Model for Children Living and/or Working on the Streets. Çubukçu and Aksu said that the problem of street children has become an issue of concern for all sections of the society. State Minister Çubukçu said that:
Children living and/or working on the streets should not be confused with others recruited to organised street gangs and thieves.
State Minister Çubukçu told delegates to the conference that a committee made up of five ministers had been set up on the directive of Prime Minister Erdoğan to examine the full scope of the problem of street children and that SHÇEK has developed its Service Model for Children Living andçor Working on the Streets in line with the findings of this committee.
Speaking at the conference, the Minister of the Interior, Abdülkadir Aksu said that concrete steps are needed to solve the problem of children working and living on the streets. Pointing to the important role of non-governmental organisations in solving this problem, Minister Aksu said that everyone with social responsibility and awareness including governors, mayors, social service agencies and government staff has their own duties to fulfil in the first place.
Minister Aksu also stressed that perpetrators of acts such as mugging and theft were mostly by children around the age of 18. Minister Aksu explained that he has had meetings with the Governors and Security Chiefs of the 81 provinces over time to assess the situation take appropriate steps including the transfer of a division of the ‘Rapid Response’ police force to peace-keeping, reducing numbers of office-based personnel by assigning them to outdoor duties and the introduction of emergency measures to ensure the active participation of the public in the fight against crime.
Minister Aksu added that mobile teams comprising psychologists, educationalists and social workers to prevent child abuse have been set up and that are nine of these teams are operating 24 hours a day in İstanbul. The number of teams will soon be increased to seventeen.
Previous page
|
Next page
Skip to the page footer menu or select an item from this list ▼
OTHER PRESS RELEASES ON CHILD PROTECTION ISSUES
- More than 225 participants including representatives from five different ministries, parliamentarians, governors, mayors, NGOs, academicians, the media and children met to reaffirm their commitment to protecting the rights of street children during a conference between on the 16th and 17th of June at the Princess Hotel.
- The State Minister for Women’s and Children’s Issues Çubukçu and the Minister of the Interior Abdülkadir Aksu have announced that specific steps are to be taken for the care of street children. The Ministers said that the problem will be addressed in cooperation with non-governmental organisations.
- The State Minister Responsible for Women’s and Children’s Issues, the Minister of National Education, the Minister of Health, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice have set up a joint commission to develop a new model of child protection.
- One of the most dangerous and unfortunate consequences of social transformation in a developing country is child labour. (Turkish Daily News)
* How to use RSS …