Implementation of the UN recommendations on the rights of the child

In September 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published its first report on Liechtenstein in 17 years. In its concluding observations on the report, the Committee formulated 45 recommendations for Liechtenstein to improve the implementation of children's rights in the country. It called for urgent measures to respect the views of children, to protect them from abuse and neglect, to protect the rights of children with disabilities, to promote mental health and to address the special protection needs of asylum-seeking and refugee children.

The Committee notes that the Children and Youth Service is responsible for the coordination of activities and for the implementation of children's rights, but that there is no information on how and how effectively the Children and Youth Service carries out this work. It recommends that Liechtenstein establish a coordination office for the implementation of children's rights at the interministerial level and give it a clear mandate to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Only in this way can the implementation of the Convention be coordinated across society, nationally and locally. The coordination office must be provided with the necessary human, technical and financial resources. A coordination group has been in place since 2019 in the form of the inter-agency working group on human rights. However, it has not yet implemented any overarching children's rights measures.

The Committee calls on Liechtenstein to create various strategic foundations, including a strategy for the inclusion of children with disabilities and a strategy and action plan to combat violence against children. All cases of violence against children should be collected and evaluated in a national database. This should include the extent, causes and type of violence. The Ombudsman's Office for Children and Young People (OSKJ) had already called for a national action plan and a strategy for the prevention of violence in 2021 and 2022 as part of the nationwide campaign "Gewalt-FREI erziehen" (Raising children free from violence). To date, this recommendation has not been taken up.

 

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