On Wednesday, 9th October, in the Media Center, as part of the Children’s Week, the Friends of Children of Serbia organised the panel discussion “Child Rights in Serbia 30 Years After Adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”.

Jasmina Miković, Praxis Deputy Executive Director and member of the Council for the Rights of the Child was also a speaker. She stressed that the child’s rights continued not to be a priority for our country and that we were far from the full implementation of ratified international treaties in the field of child’s rights. In this respect, she pointed to the existing shortcomings of the institutional and regulatory framework in this field.

She also drew attention to some of the trends and challenges in the field of child’s rights identified by Praxis in working with target groups, which had not been properly addressed:

•The state has not yet taken measures within its remit to remove legal barriers that prevent immediate birth registration of children born to mothers without personal documents.

•There is no adequate institutional response to child marriages, which occur disproportionately more frequently among the Roma population and particularly affect girls. 

•Segregation in education continues to exist, which seriously jeopardises the rights of the child and has far-reaching negative social consequences. Although it still exists in some schools in Serbia, no concrete measures or activities have been taken to prevent this discriminatory phenomenon.

•Discrimination against particularly vulnerable groups of children is still widespread and represents a major challenge in our society. Decisions taken at the local level are also disconcerting because they often discriminate against particularly vulnerable groups of children, such as children with IDP status, Roma children, children with disabilities and others.

For more information, see here.