The SEE Children's Ombudspersons' Network

The idea for creating the SEE Children's Ombudspersons' Network emerged in February 2006. Thinking of most efficient and effective ways to assist children in the SEE region in practice and protecting their own rights, there was a sdhared belief that a network focused on the goals listed below would prove beneficial in many ways.

Vision

Human rights affirmation through awareness-raising of citizens and the local civic society about the need to respect, practise and protect human rights.

Mission

Establishing close collaboration among children's ombudspersons' intitutions in the region through social awareness-raising on the necessity of respecting and protection of children's rights and incrasing of the level of general authority of the ombuspersons' institutions with the pyblic.

Purpose of the project

The purpose of the project is to strengthen capacities of Ombudsman Institutions in order to establish the procedures and standards of protection of children's rights in South East Europe.

Overall aims:

• Capacity-building of the existing, newly-founded and future ombudspersons' institutions in the SEE region through colaboration in the field of children's rights protection;
• Establishment of common resolution-focused action procedures for individual and group children's rights violation cases at national or regional level;
• Supporting ombudspersons' institutions that are not members of ENOC in the process of their joining this network;
• Increasing the level of children's rights protection in the SEE region.

Specific goals:

• Empowerment of ombudspersons' institutions through identification and sharing experience on best practices in children's rights protection;
• Enhancement of collaboration of ombudspersons' institutions in SEE with an aim of increasing the instance of successful resolutions of cross-border children's rights violation cases;
• Support the SEE ombudspersons' institutions in fulfilling the conditions necessary for full ENOC membership.

States in the SEE region have experienced war, poverty and transition over the last fifteen years. Most of them operate under a traditional patriarchal social system in which, consequently, citizens and institutions are not familiar enough with the human rights concepts and practices.

Since all these states have been facing similar problems, there was a need to establish a close institutional collaboration in the field of collective children's rights violations in the region, believing that raising standards in dealing with regional and/or cross-border children's rights violation cases would contribute to improvement of the children's social position in the region and enhancement of mechanisms protecting their rights. Additionally, due to intensive migrations all over ex-Yu countries, there was a chance to offer legal assistance in clarifying tchildren's legal status issues in the light of their rights.

Supported by the Save the Children Norway SEE Regional Office, the SEE Children's Ombudspersons' Network became a reality by recruiting its founders and first members. Their number increases every year, confirming thus the validity of the idea to focus jointly on common causes. Ever since its foundation the network has been referred to as informal, leaving enough space and autnomy to each member institution in their contribution to its work and development.

It is a common belief that creating such an informal network has created a special potential for enhancement of children's rights protection in the region, especially in the light of the fact that ombudspersons' institutions in the SEE region have been established fairly recently, each with its own model of facing children's rights violations in practice. This is why this way of sharing experience among ombudspersons in dealing with collective and individual children's rights violations is deemed necessary and useful