THE INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

The Information Centre is open to everyone who wants information about the situation of the children over the world, but also to the ones who want to get involved in the programs and the activities carried out in the Centre.

Activities

Information

• informing the public (students, NGO representatives, mass-media etc.) on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the situation of children and the way in which child's rights are respected in Romania and all over the world;
• information campaign with the aim of sensitizing the public's opinion on the situation of children in difficulty.
  

Documentation

 Permanent update on the statistical data of the situation of children through the various information channels (the National Institute of Statistics, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Police General Inspectorate, ILO-IPEC etc.).
Carrying out studies and research on various aspects of child protection: institutionalized children, children with limited access to social services, children with disabilities, children victims of trafficking, children whose parents migrated for work.
Organizing round tables, seminars, conferences, the participants being specialists, local and central authorities, non-governmental organizations, mass-media.
The Library of the Centre contains more than 700 books on various issues, such as: child and human rights, child protection, psychology, pedagogy, organizational development, as well as the reports of the researches carried out by Save the Children.

Publications

• The Centre publishes monthly or quarterly informative bulletins;
• The reports of the researches and studies carried out are published and disseminated by the Centre.
  

In 2006, the centre aimed at developing activities for monitoring children's rights at national level by establishing a monitoring network including 22 non-governmental organizations, as well as a group of 20 children and young volunteers or beneficiaries of the social services. At the same time, the campaign to promote the access to a quality education continued.

"MONITORING CHILDREN'S RIGHTS GROUP" PROJECT
Having as a general objective to enhance the capacity of the non-governmental organizations from Romania to monitor the observance of children's rights, the project was carried out during the period December 2005 - October 2006, with funding from the European Commission within the Programme Strengthening the Civil Society in Romania.
Meetings of the partner organizations were held, the data requested from the public institutions, studies and researches of the nongovernmental organizations, reports of several international organizations, publications and articles in the media were analyzed. At national level, questionnaires were applied to 1,545 students from urban and rural areas, eight focus-groups were organized (70 participants) and 40 interviews were conducted with specialists, parents and children in difficult circumstances. The processed was the backbone of the following publications:

I. The report "Situation of Respecting Children's Rights in Romania"
This report briefly shows that, even though important evolutions took place as concerns the legislation on the rights of the child, the lack of a unitary interpretation, the lack of qualified personnel, the bureaucracy and the insufficient resources made difficult the adequate enforcement of the law. Consequently, significant gaps are noticed regarding the observance of children's rights, particularly referring to the trafficking in human beings, the inadequate assistance for disabled children, discrimination against Roma and children with HIV/AIDS.

II. Research Report „ Students' Opinions on the Importance and Observance of Children's Rights in Romania"

The majority of the interviewed students consider that, at present, their rights are respected in a high and very high degree, except for the children's possibility to establish organizations to represent their interests, which accounted for 43%. It is noticed a more reduced knowledge of the children's rights in case of the students who live in rural areas. As concerns the students' information about the school counsellors, 35% do not know or did not hear about the existence of the school counsellors. Moreover, among the students who mentioned about the presence of the counsellor in the school, 75% have never benefited from the school counselling services.

III. Practical Guide on Child Rights Monitoring
The experience accumulated in the framework of the project "Monitoring Children's Rights Group" was synthesized and transposed into a practical guide, a useful instrument to those who are interested in analyzing the situation of the rights of the child.

Child Rights Enforcement in Romania  - Report drawn up within the child rights monitoring group

GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EDUCATION
In 2006, the campaign promoted the slogan "Each child needs a teacher!" emphasizing the necessity to guarantee a quality education for all children and, first of all, provide the needed number of qualified and motivated teachers. Over 9,000 children and young people and 500 teachers from 22 counties and Bucharest participated in activities and prepared students' and teachers' files.

In 2007, the Campaign promoted the message "Join Up for Education Rights Now", symbolising the need of mobilising and unifying the efforts of all the factors that can raise the access to education and professional training for every person (child and adult). The activities carried out in Romania emphasised the need of investing resources for developing, multiplying and promoting the educational programmes aiming to support people who never been to school or who dropped out (and they surpass the specific school age) to complete their basic education (the "Second Chance" educational programmes).

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH "The Impact of Migration on Children Left without Parents Care"
In this year, 2007, the Centre carries out a research on the situation of children left without parental care, following their parents' migration for work.

The main aim of this sociological research is to evaluate the impact of work migration on children left alone or in the care of one parent, and also, to underline the need of developing special services to assure the protection, the proper development and the implementation of the rights of these children. The study was carried out in three towns: Suceava, Iasi and Piatra Neamt, which are the residences  of the counties reported by the National Agency for the Protection of the Child's Rights to have the highest number of children whose one or both parents are working abroad.

The sociological research is a qualitative one, that uses, as data collecting methods, the interview and the focus-group. The target group consists of: children left in the care of one parent or without any parent, while the parents migrated for work; persons that are taking in temporally care these children; teachers; school councillors and representatives of social services from local or county administration.

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