Switzerland needs a national child rights policy, say advocates

Depending on where they live in Switzerland, children have access to varying levels of care and protection, says Child Rights Network Switzerland. © Keystone / Christian Beutler

One year after the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted recommendations for the Alpine nation, no progress has been made in certain areas, according to Child Rights Network Switzerland.

“It is high time that the federal government and the cantons intensify their efforts,” said the network’s president, Valentina Darbellay, in a statement issuedExternal link on Sunday, World Children’s Day.

“In this respect, it is important that organisations active in the field, as well as children and young people themselves, are involved in the development of measures,” she added.

During the 2021 periodic review for Switzerland’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Swiss representatives acknowledged to the committee that the country could be doing more to prevent violence against children and facilitate children’s participation in society. The Committee on the Rights of the Child monitors implementation of the CRC, which Switzerland ratified in 1997.

Variations across cantons

A year later, the network said, implementation varies among the country’s 26 cantons, which are responsible for applying individual obligations of the CRC. Depending on where they live, children have access to varying levels of care, child and youth protection provisions or means of participation.

In addition to a national children’s rights policy, the advocacy group released recommendations in 10 priority areas where Switzerland needs to improve. These include focusing on poverty and protection against violence and gathering missing data on the living situation of children.

According to the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, schools are also failingExternal link to respect the CRC, which stipulates the right of children to be heard in all decisions that affect them. This provision is not applied uniformly across Switzerland and implementation in some cases is problematic, the director of the children’s ombuds office, Irene Inderbitzin, told the paper.