National Child Rights Action Plan – Experts consultation Report

Implementing children’s rights on the structrual level remains one of the main areas of BIM engagement in the child rights field. Following the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children in May 2002, the Austrian government initiated the preparation of an Austrian National Plan of Action for Children’s Rights.

The Boltzmann Institute assisted this project through academic research and support.
The NPA process (originally called „YAP – Young rights Action Plan“) was coordinated by the then Federal Ministry for Sozial Affairs and Generations, with support from the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and in cooperation with several child rights organisations and institutions and individual experts. Four thematic Working Groups (provision rights, protection rights, participation rights, general measures) have been established with more than 100 participants; the Austrian Kinderfreunde and the Catholic Children’s Movement (Katholische Jungschar Österreich) started a major survey among children and a database on implementation measures as well as a NPA website have been created (today accessible via: www.kinderrechte.gv.at, in German only).

Based on the results of this extensive consultation process an editorial team, consisting of Liselotte Wilk and Renate Kränzl-Nagl/European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research and Helmut Wintersberger and Helmut Sax/Boltzmann Institute, drafted an Experts Report – a document 500 pages strong and containing almost 700 recommendations to the government. This report formed the basis for the discussion within the government, leading finally to the adoption of a National Plan of Action for the Rights of Children and Adolescents in Austria in November 2004.
In the following a Working Group was established, with representatives of various ministries, the Austrian federal states, the child and youth ombudspersons and the child rights network, to assist the implementation process; however, after a ministerial report in 2007, no further meetings of this Working Group took place.
Nevertheless, the consultation Experts Report contains a broad range of still valid recommendations in strenghtening child rights protection in Austria.

Link:Network Child Rights Austria/National Coalition (in German only)
 
Contact persons: Helmut Sax.

Funded by: Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth
Team: Women's Rights, Children's Rights and Human Trafficking.