MODS' announcement

The Network of Organisations for the Children of Serbia - МОDS welcomes the beginning of work and the constitutive meeting of the Children's Rights Council held by the new Government. The new president of the Children's Rights Council is Slavica Đukic Dejanović, minister without portfolio responsible for demography and population policy.

One of the new members of the Children's Rights Council of the Government of the Republic of Serbia is Jasmina Miković, Praxis' Deputy Executive Director and President of MODS Steering Committee.  

Since we currently lack the basic strategic documents in the field of children’s rights, and coordination of activities and measures in the field of protection and realisation of the rights of the child, MODS expects the Children's Rights Council to be fully committed and work actively on the attainment of these goals in the future.

We remind that under the Action Plan for Chapter 23, the Government accepted an obligation to strengthen its role in the formulation and monitoring of children’s rights policies. Accordingly, MODS expresses its hope that the new Government will work on strengthening the capacities of the Children's Rights Council so that it grows into a leading inter-sector coordination mechanism with the core competencies in the child protection sector.

The MODS members expect that the Children's Rights Council will prioritise the following topics and legislative initiatives in order to improve the quality of children’s life:

- Launching an initiative for drafting the National Action Plan for Children and the Law on the Rights of the Child, which will be a framework for the general state policy towards children, so that the child protection system has a clear focus and goals;

- Adoption of the National Strategy for the Prevention and Protection of Children against Violence and Monitoring the Effects of the Implementation of this Strategy, as well as launching an initiative for the updating of the General and Special Sectoral Protocols for the Protection of Children from Neglect, Abuse and Violence;

- Initiating the process of drafting and passing the Law on Ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning the procedure of lodging a complaint with the Committee on the Rights of the Child;

- Activities in the area of the prevention of institutionalisation of children, as defined by the Action Plan for Chapter 23. In this context, it is necessary to monitor the achievement of goals and activities related to the transformation of residential institutions for children and the development of services for children and families in the community. The priority should be the adoption of the Rulebook on Intensive Family Support Services, the provision of which is aimed at preventing the separation of children from their families and strengthening the capacity of families to take care of their children;

- Establishing a system for recording and tracking of all cases involving child, early and forced marriages, and in particular among Roma girls, and providing shelter for children and appropriate rehabilitation and counselling services as well as conducting awareness campaigns on the harmful effects of children, early and forced marriages;

- Activities in the field of child poverty reduction - adopting amendments to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children and the Law on Social Protection, in order to increase the coverage, adequacy and targeting of financial social benefits.

All these processes should be guided by the principle of child participation, which involves allowing a child able to form his or her free opinion the right to freely express that opinion on all matters concerning the child, while paying due attention to the child's opinion in accordance with his or her age and maturity.