President urges support for children, our 'building blocks of tomorrow'

Children need adult champions, people who will listen to them and are accessible to them, to ensure that their voices are heard and their rights upheld, according to President McAleese, who was speaking at the opening of the conference of the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children in Dublin yesterday.

In recent years we had heard stories of those who were abused in institutions, she said.

"We also know of family homes which can be places of relentless misery for children, rather than refuge. We know of children's awesome capacity for suffering in silence."

The best interests of children required that their voices and their views are given a shape, she said. She referred to the slogan of bodies representing people with disabilities when they said, "Nothing about me without me," which was a blow against the "long-standing culture of paternalism".

She said we had high hopes for our children and desired for them a childhood in which they were loved and protected - but often that was not how life panned out.

"We have a host of laws, institutions, voluntary and State organisations, government departments, international treaties; we have the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified international human rights instrument, and the network they create between them is those children's safety net. The smaller and tighter its mesh, the less are the chances of any child slipping through to that underworld of vulnerable silence where their lives can leach away cruelly and unnoticed."

Carol Coulter, Irish Times

More story at-http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0904/1220372094682.html

© 2008 The Irish Times

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