The Children’s Rights Sub-Committee held its tenth sitting on 2 March. The sitting was chaired by Zivodarka Dacin, and attended by the Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Policy, Slobodan Lalovic, with his associates, the Director of the Sombor Social Work Centre, Silvija Kranjc, and members of the Committee on Labour, Ex-Servicemen’s and Social Issues and the Education Committee.

The sitting saw a presentation of the General Protocol for the Prevention of Children from Abuse and Neglect, drafted jointly by the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Policy, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of the Interior, along with non-governmental organisations and independent consultants. The Protocol aims to further clarify roles of all stakeholders in protecting children from abuse and neglect, and to define steps to be taken to actually protect victims. It provides general guidelines, while individual protocols, soon to be adopted, will regulate specific areas of protection.

Physical, mental, and sexual abuse, neglect and negligence, as well as commercial and other forms of exploitation have a real or potential impact on the health, survival, development and dignity of a child. To prevent this from happening, legislation needs to be passed to protect children’s rights; a system also needs to be developed to recognise and react to these issues, and to have a preventive, rather than just a reactive, effect. Adults need to be sensitised and educated about how to act in situations where they recognise abuse of children’s rights.

Ms Kranjc also presented a model of the Protocol’s implementation in Sombor. In this municipality, activities aimed at preventing and combating child abuse and neglect in the family are focused mainly on overcoming the administrative and bureaucratic approach to the issue, co-operating with the police, exchanging information on occurrences, and making professional assistance available. Additional funding needed to be provided in the local budget for these activities to the amount of a civil servant’s annual salary, Ms Kranjc underlined.