Commissioner for Children at ENOC conference in Warsaw

Sonia Camilleri, Commissioner for Children, recently attended the annual conference of the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children (ENOC) in Warsaw. The ENOC welcomed the recently appointed English Commissioner for Children as an observer member. The Commissioners for Children of Malta, Ireland and Scotland were attending for the second time, whereas all were eagerly awaiting the appointment of the Children's Commissioner in Serbia in the coming months.

The themes discussed this year were familiar to all 24 participants. These were: commercial and media pressure on children, protecting the rights of unaccompanied and separated children, and the right of children to remain in their family environment.

All three themes, with presentations and lively debates, brought out the similar and yet unique situations that each country faces. Particularly interesting is the migration of unaccompanied children. While in Malta we have young people under 18, mainly from African countries, Greece is inundated by children from Albania, Poland continually receives children from Chechnya, Spain has children from Morocco and North Africa, and so on.

The common factor is that these young persons are first of all children and then immigrants, and deserve the care and protection one would afford to the nation's own children. Malta so far has a relatively manageable child immigrant population and these are being well treated. Other countries have greater difficulty coping mainly because of the vast numbers of children who cross into their territory over and over again, even when sent back.

It was during the ENOC meeting, in fact, that the Scottish Parliament passed a law on better treatment of immigrants and expressly prohibited the "dawn raids" where children and their families are woken up before dawn and given half an hour to pack before they are deported.

Media pressure and the urgent need for media education was put across very clearly by Norway and Lithuania. Countries seem to be slow in realising that they can actually do something to curb the immense influence that the media have on children. Malta is one such country, where media education is only taught in a few classes of all Church schools.

Foster families are definitely the best alternative to the child's own families, and the move away from having children grow up in institutes is evident. Poland gave an interesting explanation of its brand new project of "foster homes", where couples are well trained and then paid by the government to welcome a maximum of eight children in their home. This is being proposed as an alternative to institutionalisation.

Two study visits were offered to the participants, who went out to meet children at one of Warsaw's "socialising centres" for children with difficult backgrounds, and also shared part of the evening with a considerable number of young people who attend a Salesian Youth Club with state-of-the-art sports equipment, including a gym.

The ENOC meeting has again proved to be an excellent opportunity for all the participating Commissioners to learn from each other, and share best practices. One cannot but look forward to next year's meeting where one of the main topics will be the decreasing age of children in substance and alcohol abuse.