Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-336"
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"en.20030701.14.2-336"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission welcomes the draft report on children’s rights that has been prepared for the meeting of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. It highlights the enormous challenge facing the international community over the protection of children’s rights.
First, on the subject of child soldiers. The European Union supports the UN special representative and welcomes the initiatives of the UN Security Council, in particular Resolution 1460 of 30 January 2003. The European Union calls on all states to ratify the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and to hasten ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which describes the conscription and recruitment of children under the age of 15 or their deployment in hostilities as a war crime.
At the political level, the European Union is endeavouring to find a common line on the problem of child soldiers. In December 2002, the Council authorised the development of a strategy or guidelines on this subject. UNICEF and other agencies then organised a meeting of experts on children’s rights on 14 March 2003. The recommendations made at that meeting stress among other things the importance of a pre- and post-conflict strategy and the necessity of making this subject a cross-sectional topic in the European Union’s entire decision-making process. The Council working party on human rights will, in due course, be examining what steps should be taken next.
Regarding European financing for measures to help children in armed conflicts, the following must be said. Children are a focus for humanitarian aid in ECHO. This commitment is reflected in specific projects, advocacy measures and research activities. Children are one of the three focal points of the ECHO strategy for the current year.
Secondly, on combating trafficking in children. The European Union has introduced a large number of legislative, political and financial initiatives. In 2002, the Council adopted the framework decision on combating trafficking in human beings and reached political agreement on the draft for a framework decision on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. On the Commission’s initiative, the ‘European Conference on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Human Beings – a Global Challenge for the Twenty-first Century’ was held from 18 to 20 September last year. The Brussels declaration was a concrete outcome of that conference. Then on 25 March 2003 the Commission decided to set up a group of experts on trafficking in human beings, which will assist the Commission in putting forward further concrete proposals at European level. The group will in particular present the Commission with a report based on the recommendation of the Brussels declaration. In 2002, more than EUR 1.7 million were used as part of the STOP II programme to finance 16 projects to combat trafficking in human beings and to combat sexual exploitation. The TACIS and CARDS programmes also support projects to combat trafficking in human beings in east and southeast Europe, and an action plan against trafficking in human beings has also been developed as part of the EU-Africa dialogue.
Thirdly, on the subject of ‘children and development’, the Commission is pursuing the Millennium Development Goals as its objectives, in particular the achievement of universal primary education and the reduction of infant and child mortality. Although children as such are not a specific target group of our development policy, they benefit from a large amount of aid in the areas of education, health, AIDS and population policy. Finally, the Cotonou Agreement, for example, contains specific provisions for the protection of young people, in particular combating child labour. The Commission has also intensified its cooperation with the International Labour Organisation as a whole for the purpose of promoting these objectives.
Finally, I would like to note that the report contains many interesting proposals for increasing the European Union’s commitment to children’s rights. It is true that the Community currently has no specific competences in this area. We await, however, with interest the outcome of the talks on the draft constitutional treaty, the European Convention, which for the first time provides for the protection of children’s rights as a specific objective of the European Union. Thank you very much for your attention."@en1
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