Hello, my name is Jean Zematten.

Pleased to present you a model

on children's right monitoring. The plan of my presentation is first
to speak about the CRC committee. Second, the mandate of this committee and the main
menu if I can say,
will be the seven steps of monitoring. Then I will speak about the legislative
activity of the committee or the committee published general comment,
day of general discussion, and I will finish with the presentation of the
third optional protocol of the convention. What we call usually the OPIC. The CRC
committee is established according
to article 43 of the convention. It is one of the nine treaty
bodies in human rights. He is attached to the office of the high
commissioner of human rights but only for administrative matters
since he is absolutely independent of the high commissioner. It is composed of 18
independent experts with a 4 year mandate and they are serving
in their personal capacity. They are fully independent
towards the states. Their committee meets in Geneva, and normally all three session
barrier
consisting of three week plenary and one week pre-sessional working group. Where the
committee meets with UN agency
and non-governmental organization. The committee acts in 1 or
2 chambers depending of the workload and review around 12 to 14
country per session. So main activity of
the committee's are monitoring. It is to say to monitor how well
states meetings are obligation under the convention and to monitor as
well as the two optional protocol. The protocol on children and
on conflict and the protocol on sale prostitution and
child pornography. The task of the committee is to check
the measures adopted to implement the CRC, the progresses made on the enjoyment
of the rights and the obstacle met. I remain that reporting is an obligation
but a lot of state party are very late. The committee is used to work
on reports and dialogues. There is no field visit
possible before the session. No personnel and
formal contact between the members, the committee and the state party
authority before the station, and the committee work on
a step-by-step meeting. The seven steps. The first step is the state party reports. State
parties sending
an official report to the convention and this start the work. Then the second step, the
committee will held a pre-session, it is to say, we meet with NGO group with UN agents.
Then, third step, you will send
a list of issued to the state party. And fourth, the state will answer
by written to the committee. And the main activity will be then to have a session it is to say
a dialogue between the committee and the state party in Geneva. The result of all this work
will
be what we call the six steps, concluding observation
condoning concern and recommendation for the state. And then the seven step
is a follow up is to implement its concluding observation. So we can say is that the
monitoring
activities is more a dialogue than a judgement is based on recommendation and
not on condemnation. It consist an incentives to change through technical help and
financial support and it's based also on interaction
with the UN agents. Apart of this monitoring activities,
the committee as a legislative activity, this is to say that produced or
published general comment. It is a necessity for the committee
to have this comment to explain and give guidance to the states
on different concept or article and
it gives the CRC committee's position. To date, we have 18 general
comment from 2001 to 2015. For example,
a general comment on article 12, and also on juvenile justice,
in general comment 10. So state party have to respect the general
comment, even if it is soft law. The committee organized also,
since 1992 every years, day of general discussion. This day's focus on thematic issues
like children in armed conflict, for example, children with disability,
the right of the child to be armed. And the last one was devoted to
the children and the new technology. In the monitoring, there is a new optional protocol to
the CRC which
is called the OPIC or third Optional Protocol on
Communication Procedural. Okay, we end this monitoring activity,
we'll also mention the third optional protocol to
the CRC on a communication procedure. It is a new instrument that
allow group of children and their representative who claims that their
right have been violated by the state to bring a procedure
communication what we call or sort of complain to the CRC committees. It's a quasi-judicial
mechanism. This optional protocol was
adopted in 2011 by the UN general assembly in New York, and is now entered into
force in April 2015 and has been ratified by 18 country to note,
that the OPIC is in force. Only in the states that
they have ratified it. The interesting things with
this optional protocol is the better protection given to
the full range of children's right. Also the possibility to ensure
that the children have effective remedies are available to address
violation and at the end, strengthen the effective
implementation of the CRC and the accountability of state parties. Thank you for your
attention. [MUSIC]