Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/736806
14 EVER since the United Nations' Universal Charter of Human Rights was first drawn up, it has been widely acknowledged that the concept of 'human rights' alone, without a support system to make them obtainable in prac- tice, cannot be worth very much. It would be no consolation to a starving child, for instance, to know that the UN Charter guar- antees the 'right to food' to all hu- man beings everywhere. After all, one cannot eat a human right. It was to redress this inher- ent flaw that nations around the world – to differing degrees – took a number of initiatives to translate the conceptual idea into a workable system. On paper, the system guarantees access to jus- tice through the law courts and various other legal instruments. But paperwork rarely matches up to the intricacies of any system in practice. In Malta as everywhere else, some people – or groups of people – will invariably find it harder than others to access what should be theirs by right. Few seem to know this more than the current President of the Republic, who opened the confer- ence to launch of the Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child with a speech about ac- cess to justice by vulnerable chil- dren. "Access to justice is not simply a human right – it is the pathway through which all other human rights are achieved and within which they flourish. For chil- dren's rights to be more than a promise, we must promote the ways in which those rights are enforced," HE Coleiro Preca said last April: strongly hinting that this goal is not being achieved at present. "Children are as aware as adults of the abuses of power that have become an all too frequent part of our daily reality. And yet the importance of access to justice, especially regarding the rights of the child, continues to be ne- glected." Fast-forward seven months, and the President's Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society is gearing up for its second national confer- ence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the theme is 'Access to justice for vul- nerable children'. Are we to con- clude that access to justice is in fact a bigger problem locally than one would think? In what way are we letting our children down? "The idea is to talk about access to justice because it's a cross- cutting right," Dr Ruth Farrugia, the Foundation's director general, tells me when I put the question to her. "The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives chil- dren all sorts of rights, but if you can't access the justice system, you can't access any of them..." Even without any direct obsta- cles, she points out that the pro- cess of seeking justice is in itself often stressful and traumatic. "Access to justice, we know, isn't the easiest of things for most peo- ple. For children in particular, it's a double whammy. In this confer- ence we will be focusing on vul- nerable children in particular. But when you think about it, access to justice is an issue throughout the full spectrum of society. Everywhere: not just in the jus- tice sector itself, but also in the education sector, for instance. In all sectors. There are some sectors which have been more inclusive; which listen more... and others which are doing less of a good job, I suppose. So the idea behind the conference is to examine what we are doing, what other countries are doing... to share experiences with a view to finding out what works best." Certainly there should be much to discuss. The list of speakers in- cludes Marta Santos Pais, Special Representative of the UN Secre- tary-General on Violence against Children; Regina Jensdottir, Head of the Child Rights Division of the Council of Europe; Astrid Podsi- adlowski, from the UN's Funda- mental Rights Agency, and Dan- ielle Douglas of the International Foster Care Organisation, among others. Significantly, it also includes lo- cal child speakers. "They're going to talk about their own issues with access to justice. We always bring in the child's perspective... we feel we have to, if we're talking about children. As any child rights ac- tivist will tell you: have you really listened to what children want or expect out of this? To give you an example: when the National Child Policy was being drawn up, there were meetings with all children in care. I was involved in the process at the time – wearing a different hat, I must point out, from the one I'm wearing today. We wanted to know how children felt about the care system. And it's incredible how the law somehow overlooked certain things which seemed re- ally obvious, when looked at from a child's perspective..." She gives the example of a girl from an abusive family back- ground, who was taken into alter- native care directly from school. "She could understand what was happening at some level... but what she couldn't understand was why she wasn't allowed to go home and say goodbye to the dog. To a child, that's a big deal. So is being allowed to go home and take your personal belongings. At that point the law didn't cater for anything like that. We weren't looking at it from the perspective of children. Ultimately, the per- spective of the child must be tak- en into account. The question is, how? We think that encouraging child participation – and making people think of child participa- tion as an obvious thing – is our contribution to their present and future well-being." More than just 'children', in this case we are talking about 'vulner- able' children. Farrugia explains that the conference will be look- ing at four specific types of vul- nerability. "There are children who are victims of violence; children who are in court proceedings because they're in trouble with the law; children who are indirectly in court proceedings, because their parents or carers are in court for whatever reason; and asylum- seeking children. That doesn't mean we're not interested in children with mental health is- sues or disabilities. We are. We're certainly interested in children in alternative care. That emerges as one of the main groups. We're interested in how access to jus- tice works out for those children, too..." Couldn't it be argued, however, that part of the problem is pre- cisely that the judicial system itself was not conceived with children in mind? In Malta, for instance, there are very glaring lacunae when it comes to young offenders. This has sometimes re- sulted in awkward and problem- atic issues: such as placing teen- age girls in the same prison ward as adults – or even at Mt Carmel Hospital – for lack of any suitable alternatives. The President herself suggested that our Courts are decidedly child-unfriendly in her speech last April: "Children must be able to understand, to use, and, above all, to trust the legal systems that protect and facilitate their hu- man rights. A child must know that the process itself is account- able, effective, and transparent – that it is worthy of the trust of a child, and capable of meeting that child's needs." To this end, she argued that what was needed was a "profound change in the relationships be- tween children and the legal sys- tem itself..." So is this what the conference hopes to achieve? "We certainly want to come away with concrete proposals about how to improve the system. As for the shortcomings you men- tion... Mt Carmel, for instance: placing a child there who has of- fended in some way, or who is in conflict with the law... that isn't a good idea. Of course it isn't. But even within that system: what sort of access does a child have to jus- tice from within Mt Carmel? That is an issue in itself..." Turning to a different category of vulnerable child: asylum seek- ers. Up until a few years ago, newspapers such as ours received constant reports of children being kept in detention centres such as Safi or Hal Far: where conditions were very far from suitable. The situation has reportedly improved since, but that seems to have more to do with declining arrival fig- ures than with the actual system. Would Dr Farrugia agree with that assessment? "Let me put it this way: deten- tion of children was an issue at the time you speak of. In fact the very first thing the President did when she took office was to convene a rather historic meeting between the IOM and the UNHCR. The meeting took stock of the deten- tion situation, and for the first time all the relevant stakeholders were around the table. They came up with a set of proposals, includ- ing the removal of detention of children. We thought it would be a good idea to have another meet- ing, a year on, to see where those proposals have got to. I am hap- py to say that we were told that detention for children is gone. Meanwhile, asylum seeking chil- dren outside of detention... that is to say unaccompanied minors... are also few. I don't have reliable statistics, but through the grape- vine I am told there are no more than four cases at present..." Nor is this the only difference. "The entire immigration land- scape has changed. Those un- accompanied minors I told you about will most likely not have come by boat, as in the past, but by plane. Naturally this doesn't mean they are not vulnerable. But I think it's fair to say there has been a change for the better. I think it's a real achievement that there is no longer any detention of children, for instance..." Malta has changed in other ways, too. One change that may affect children directly concerns the loss of open spaces. More pointedly, that the urban envi- ronment is simply no longer safe for children. To give an example from my own childhood: it was perfectly possible, 30-odd years ago, to play football in the streets. Today, any open-air activity at all takes place at the risk of being run over... Given that the Foundation deals specifically with 'wellbeing'... is this a cause for concern? "I'm sure it does have an impact Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2016 What they were telling us was that they were fed up of people structuring their time. They could use their own imagination, and use the space how they wanted to Ultimately, the perspective of the child must be taken into account. The question is, how? FREEDOM PERSPECTIVE No justice without