Northern Ireland's priorities and plans
Government here is committed to supporting and realising the rights of all our children and young people as an integral part of our work to improve children’s outcomes and help them to achieve their potential.
To underline this commitment the Executive has included ‘ensuring the central role of the rights of the child’ in its Programme for Government 2008-11.
In 2008 the Junior Ministers with responsibility for co-ordinating children’s issues established a Ministerial Sub-Committee on Children and Young People for all Executive Ministers and also invited representation from the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Court Service.
The aim was to ensure that making progress towards the outcomes of the rights based 10 year children and young people’s strategy was placed at the heart of government’s agenda. Champions for Children and Young People were also appointed in all government departments to ensure that children and young people’s rights and interests were fostered and their views sought on relevant policy and strategy issues.
Our ten year strategy for children and young people 2006-2016 ‘Our Children and Young People – Our Pledge’ sets out a shared vision that all children and young people living in Northern Ireland will thrive and look forward with confidence to the future. Progress is measured against six high level outcomes, one of which is that children and young people are living in a society which respects their rights.
If children are living in a society which respects their rights then they are more likely to achieve in the other five outcome areas which are: healthy; enjoying learning and achieving; safety and stability; economic and environmental well being; and contributing positively.
Like the UNCRC, the ten year strategy applies to everyone under 18, but it extends to 21 years for young people who have been in care or have a disability in recognition of the fact that they may need extra support to protect their rights.
The mechanism for achieving these outcomes for all children is through triennial strategy action plans. The current 2008-11 action plan (Children and Young People's Strategy Action Plan 2008 - 2011) already addresses a number of the Concluding Observations but we recognise that there is considerable work still to be done. We have agreed with our NGO partners and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland that the children and young people’s strategy action plan will be a ‘living document’ which will be built upon and strengthened by including further actions in response to the Concluding Observations.
We consider that this will more effectively integrate respect for children’s rights into policy and practice than developing a separate UNCRC action plan. We will also make a clearer link between the appropriate actions and the relevant Concluding Observation in both the current and future action plans.
Although the 2008 Concluding Observations on how the UK can better implement the UNCRC are for the State party as a whole, the majority of them are relevant to us. There is already considerable work in progress that addresses the issues raised by the Committee but we are committed to responding positively to the Concluding Observations and will give careful consideration to all those which apply here.
However, we recognise that we cannot address all the Committee’s recommendations immediately. As issues and progress are not consistent across the administrations, it has been important to establish the most important issues for priority action here in the short to medium term. We would emphasise however that this is the starting point not the end point.
