CRIN - Child Rights Information Network

[ROTTERDAM, 5 November 2008] - The Child in the City conference was held this week in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with 300 participants from 20 countries. The conference had two focus areas: to develop guidelines to help cities produce tools for monitoring child friendliness and for building child friendly urban spaces.

The conference, which was organised by the European Network of Child Friendly Cities, inaugurates Rotterdam as a ‘UNICEF city’ which means it will be assisted in becoming more child friendly by UNICEF for the next year.

In an opening speech, Leonard Geluk, Vice Mayor of Rotterdam, who is responsible for youth, families and education, welcomed the initiative, highlighting the high proportion of young people in Rotterdam. He said it has the youngest population of the Netherlands four largest cities, and that this represents an opportunity for change.

Role of local authorities

Andre Rouvoet, Ministry of Youth and Family, emphasised that much of the responsibility for ensuring that communities are child friendly rests with local authorities, “however, too often, social interests are placed second to economic interests”, he said.

Cor Lamers, Member of the board of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities, emphasised the role of municipalities in developing child friendly cities, saying that solutions must be tailor-made, there is no ‘one-size fits all’. He asked what makes a child friendly city? It is a place where children can grow up in safety, where they feel safe and can develop their talents, with appropriate infrastructure, a reduction in crime, good health services, and sustainable urban planning. Child friendliness should not be a discrete policy, however, but an integral part of other policies.

Equal opportunities for all children

Cornelis Visser, member of the European Parliament, said “Giving all children equal opportunities is essential to creating child-friendly cities.” The more chances children are given, the more chances they will have as adults.

Discrimination is a serious problem in the EU, he explained, with certain groups of children, such as Roma children particularly exposed to poverty and discrimination. The EU agenda is key to resolving such problems by building on its human rights tradition. The EU also has the necessary presence to put children at the forefront of the international agenda and at the national level.

Visser regretted that the Lisbon Treaty did not yet apply in Europe as it introduces child rights in the EU for the first time. EU States have an obligation to respect fundamental rights, a duty to refrain from acts violating these rights, and to take child rights into account in its own policies.

Francesca Moneti, from UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre’s International Child Friendly Cities, commented that there is a “sometimes a perception in northern countries that survival and development and protection rights are, to some extent, already achieved. Nowhere do we have full child friendliness, but everywhere we should have pursuit of child friendliness.”

There is no international standard about child friendliness and UNICEF does not decide. Global principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child should and must be for all, but the actual standards are local, inspired by the principles of the CRC, but defined locally, she concluded.

Council of Europe recommendations

Gaye Doganoglu, Chair of the Committee on Sustainable Development of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities at the Council of Europe (CoE), spoke of the CoE’s initiatives on child friendly cities. These include recommendations on building child-friendly cities as a contribution to the CoE’s programme ‘Building a Europe for and with Children”.

Doganoglu spoke of the challenges of living in towns and cities, saying they are seen as too dangerous for children to explore and that people who have sufficient financial means are moving out of urban centres. Car dependency also presents obstacles to sustainability. Children become confined to home, isolated and inactive.

Children should be treated as fully fledged citizens, able to enjoy the world outside their home. Local and regional authorities must show political will and create affordable housing, designing cities from a child’s perspective. The CoE has adapted the European Urban Charter for children to address aspects of children’s experiences in urban environments. It urges authorities to place people at heart of urban development, especially children.

The recommendations propose:
- improved facilities for cyclists and pedestrians
- special planning to think abut space from child’s perspective
- good practices include car free zones near schools and residential zones
- street furniture should be adapted for smaller sizes
- take into account the need to play in all spaces
- decisions about land use should reflect needs
- communication should be encouraged between everyone, e.g. by making schools available to everyone outside school hours
- participation, e-tools, networking

'Cities are social and political labs'

Jan van Gils, Chairman of the European Network of Child Friendly Cities, explained why the conference was entitled ‘Child in the city’. “Cities are places where problems are concentrated and where new problems arise,” he said, and the search for solutions starts in the city - cities are the social and political labs of our societies.”

He set out his vision for a child friendly city as including:
- the integration of children’s play into other public spaces
- children’s participation – more initiatives must be made to involve teenagers 11-14 to overcome negative perceptions.
- a focus on communities, rather than the whole city, is the scale on which both children and adults experience their life.

School buildings should be multi-purpose and for use by everyone out of school hours, he said, but “children should have opportunity to be free, to what they want to do, not be educated from morning until night.”

In conclusion, he cautioned that, although progress must be measured, labelling a city child friendly could stop the process as a city could never achieve full child friendliness.

Further information

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Last updated 06/11/2008 12:49:44

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NETHERLANDS: Child in the City conference 2008

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