Child Circle
CHILD CIRCLE is a centre of expertise on child protection and European measures, founded in Brussels in 2014.
ID: 202973814485-15
Lobbying Activity
Response to Integrated child protection systems
20 Oct 2023
Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Europe and Child Circle welcome the European Commissions consultation on child protection integrating systems. In our Advancing Protection project, we shine a spotlight on the need to strengthen procedural safeguards (with a particular focus on access to quality legal assistance) for unaccompanied and separated children arriving in the European Union. Integrated child protection systems clearly could play a vital role in the protection of unaccompanied and separated children from risk and harm, immediately on their arrival at the border, but also to ensure a proper assessment of their best interests to inform asylum and migration procedures, and when deciding on transfers between countries (for example, for family reunification or relocation). Our suggestions for European Commission recommendations are contained in the attached paper.
Read full responseResponse to Preventing and combating trafficking in human beings - review of EU rules
21 Mar 2023
Child Circle, a centre of expertise and public interest engagement to protect children from violence and promote their rights in Europe, welcomes the initiative of the EU to strengthen measures to identify, assist and support trafficked persons. Our submission focuses on the proposal to require States to put in place national referral mechanism. We recommend that the recast require referral mechanisms with particular features, in order to ensure that they are effective. In particular, in relation to children, we recommend that States be required to put in place child-centred mechanisms which will take into account the specific rights and responsibilities that arise in relation to children. These should take account of the role of both guardians and legal assistance providers, given their central role in ensuring procedural safeguards are fulfilled for children.
Read full responseResponse to Amendment of the EU rules on victims’ rights
10 Jan 2022
Child Circle asbl is a non-profit centre of expertise and action on child rights and child protection in EU policy and law. Based in Brussels, we provide policy recommendations and partner with a wide number of organisations on European projects, concerning, inter alia, child victims in criminal proceedings. We welcome the Commission’s call for evidence in relation to Criminal justice – EU rules on victims’ rights (update).
The EU Victims’ Rights Directive provides important legislative architecture to ensure that the rights of child victims are fulfilled across Europe. The EU has also put in place valuable practical measures of support in the field, including support for the Barnahus model for responding to child victims of violence (www.barnahus.eu) as well as resources for tools to ensure full application of the safeguards in the Directive (including through EU funding for projects such as Focus).
Building on these solid foundations, we see scope for strengthening child centred justice for child victims of crime, both through amendments to the Directive and the continuation of EU practical measures of support, including for regional training and exchange of good practice and professional experience. See attached document for further reflections.
Read full responseResponse to EU Action Plan against migrant smuggling (2021-2025)
15 Mar 2021
Child Circle is a not-for-profit centre of expertise and action on child rights and child protection in EU policy and law. We provide policy recommendations and partner with a wide number of organisations on European projects concerning children in migration, including smuggled and trafficked children. Our overarching recommendation for EU action in fighting migrant smuggling is that it properly take account of, and respond to, the vulnerabilities of child migrants. We urge the EU to ensure that any actions under the Action Plan to fight migrant smugglers strengthen, rather than diminish, the procedural safeguards which should be in place when responding to children in migration.
As background context, we underline a number of key points as follows:
Around the world, migrants, including children, cross over international borders without identity documents or permission to do so in search of protection, he means to find food or shelter or missing family members or for economic or educational opportunities. The challenges posed by doing so are lessened when the border is not heavily policed, common languages are spoken and casual employment and shelter is relatively easy to find. However, child migrants and refugees also often have to travel further for assistance and/or opportunities and may become involved with smugglers.
When a child attempts to flee from persecution, civil war and/or exploitation in a State such as Eritrea, Iran, Iraq or Syria via Southern or Eastern Mediterranean or Western Balkans routes, he or she will rarely be able to do so without the assistance of adults who have knowledge of the routes needed to be taken to avoid detection, an ability to produce forged identity documents and contacts along what is often a complex route. As a consequence, he or she or his or her family members will have sought the assistance of an agent or agents to protect the child on the proposed journey.
The agent will often exploit the child or their family financially and the proposed journey will have become increasingly dangerous, more risky and more costly as the borders of Europe have become more difficult to cross by sea or by land. But one of the objectives will have been to bring the child to a place where they can access international protection.
A child will often also lack the experience to distinguish between an adult offering them a service, as a human smuggler, and a human trafficker intending to exploit them in Europe. Yet the proposed Action Plan does not address the fact that often the same adults may be profiting from human smuggling in relation to some migrants and refugees, while acting as part of a chain of human traffickers in relation to more vulnerable migrants and refugees, such as unaccompanied children.
Actions to combat human smuggling that do not identify the vulnerability of unaccompanied children to human trafficking and exploitation will place these children at further risk unless procedures are developed to conduct individual assessments of these children’s needs and best interests at the point at which they are first encountered, even if they are making an illegal entry with others.
For more detailed recommendations on the protection of children in migration, we refer you to further reports and recommendations on our website (www.childcircle.eu). These include recommendations on border measures concerning children in migration as well as the need for quality legal assistance for unaccompanied children in all procedures in their regard. We also refer you to our input on the roadmap concerning the upcoming EU Strategy on combatting human trafficking.
Read full responseResponse to EU Agenda to tackle organised crime (2021-2025)
15 Mar 2021
Child Circle is a not-for-profit centre of expertise and action on child rights and child protection in EU policy and law. We provide policy recommendations and partner with a wide number of organisations on European projects, concerning, inter alia, children in migration, including trafficked children.
We welcome a new EU Communication on an EU Strategy on combatting trafficking in human beings as an action which should add necessary impetus to action in the field. Alongside fighting crime, we urge the Commission and the EU Anti-Trafficking Coordinator to prioritise strengthening the procedural safeguards which are central to responding to the situation of persons who are trafficked or at risk of trafficking. In particular our input focuses on safeguards for children at risk of trafficking.
In its previous strategy on combatting trafficking and in the EU Directive against trafficking in human beings the European Commission and Parliament recognised that children are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked into and within the EU. The Commission Communication on the protection of children in migration also points to the need for important action to secure the rights of these children and to protect them from trafficking.
However practical application of EU measures lags behind these commitments and fails to fulfil the rights of children. Moreover, children’s vulnerability to trafficking is not sufficiently addressed in the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, despite an acknowledgment that many children within recent migration flows became victims of child trafficking. Any EU Anti-Trafficking Strategy should remedy this and prioritise concrete actions which:
• Raise awareness of children who are at risk of trafficking and the different types of trafficking that exist, including for exploitation in criminal activities; through gaps in knowledge on these issues, trafficked children are consistently failed by the child protection and criminal justice system;
• Improve identification processes (including identifying children and referring them away from the border for proper risk assessments and individual needs assessments);
• Strengthen procedural safeguards, including guardianship and access to quality legal assistance (the last EU Strategy led to the development of important guidance by the Fundamental Rights Agency on guardianship; we suggest that similar guidance in relation to ensuring access to quality legal assistance for children would also promote progress in this field);
• Improve procedures which help children disclose trafficking (this should involve promoting the use of multidisciplinary child-centred, inter-agency models, similar to the Barnahus model, highlighted under the EU Victim’s Rights Strategy);
• Improve best interests procedures to identify durable solutions (including potentially through providing for relocation possibilities from EU States in which a child has been trafficked);
• Reduce risks of trafficking (including risks to children from inadequate care, assistance or delays in procedures such as family reunification); this should include improving transnational case management procedures involving children.
As further background to our comments please see the attached pdf, which includes the above introduction, references our recent recommendations and reports, as well sharing further important observations on challenges for children in the field
Read full responseMeeting with Věra Jourová (Commissioner) and
18 Oct 2016 · CHildren in migration