The protection of children

Last Monday, children missed out on a golden opportunity, that of being number one priority for parliament. In determining two very important issues that will directly affect the rights of children, the majority of our representatives chose to focus on the rights and powers of others rather than those of the child.

Minister Bartolo has granted himself access to students’ personal information in a manner that he can identify the child specifically. This is an interference with every child’s right to privacy. In the same parliamentary sitting, the final vote on the Civil Unions Bill was also taken. This will affect the child’s right to family life. 

One would have expected children to be at the very heart of a healthy public debate that would have spurred both these legislative measures. Instead, any debate that has occurred was hijacked by focusing predominantly on adults.

For Minister Bartol,o a nine-seat parliamentary majority may provide him with the power to know the abilities and disabilities that your child and mine might experience and this consequently marks a political win for him. To me, this vote marks the day when the government has unjustly and disproportionately interfered in our children’s right to privacy. It marks the day when information privacy applies only between private individuals but not between the individual and the government. When the latter wishes to know, it legislates so as not to seek your consent.

To make things worse, this unjustified and disproportionate interference is carried out on one of the most vulnerable groups in society. Children do not have a voice unless someone provides them with one and the government has failed them in this regard. This government was, only a few weeks ago, boasting of coming up with the first law drafted by children for children. We were given the impression that this government was willing to place children as a priority. Yet at the same time, the government showed how blasé it is towards children by granting unto itself the power to know what abilities and disabilities each one of them has without their knowledge, let alone their consent.

The Civil Unions Act gave rise to an order to bring about equal marriage rights for same-sex partners but not to a call for the government to come up with a strong and effective policy on children. The vote last March was in favour of civil recognition of same-sex couples. Even those who may have voted for the Labour Party for other reasons automatically gave this government the mandate to pass this law. In a way, even those who voted for the Nationalist Party gave it this mandate since both parties had indicated that they would grant civil recognition.

So why did this law also legislate in the area of adoption? After all adoption focuses on the child. This is now done and the child’s wellbeing or the child’s best interest, as legally defined, rests entirely in the hands of those who participate in the adoption proceedings.

Is the need for a good and effective children’s policy fulfilled? Not at all.  The government ought now to take on the challenge of addressing children’s needs by placing their best interest at the heart of debate and action, and should be expected to do so with such speed as it used when it usurped powers over children’s information and passed the civil union law. Each child in care has his or her own story to tell, but I am sure that there are plenty more children who have heart breaking stories to tell too. These stories are not fictional, but true and it is up to the government to ensure that each child is safeguarded from harm.

Safeguarding a child from harm may not necessarily mean placing that child under a care order. Sometimes I get the feeling that the government puts its conscience at peace simply by placing a child under a care order and within an institution. It forgets that child’s family, even if this remains an integral part of that child’s life.

Childcare institutions struggle to give each child placed under their care the best professional attention possible. Their resources are, however, strained. The carers I have met in these institutions provide a service lovingly and professionally. Often their success is limited in effect. They really and truly are asked to focus on the child placed within their care, but who looks after the child’s family? Any child placed under care retains the right to be reintroduced within his own family. But how can we do this if the family is not empowered to break through a cycle of difficulties?

We often think of children in care and forget those who are not but greatly need to be cared for. Several services have mushroomed in the last decade. Yet we are not seeing much progress in lowering child abuse and neglect, poverty and social exclusion. The government has a number of committees and boards set up to deal with these issues, with families and children. Yet it is time for the talk to stop and for the action to be rolled out. Children can’t wait; they turn into adults too quickly.