Children’s Voices on their Right to be Heard in the Field of Child Protection in Belgium (Communauté française): Highlighting of Blind Spots Regarding the Place and Role of the Parents

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) guarantees the right of discerning minors to be heard on all matters aff ecting them, and to have their opinion taken into consideration. The Committee on the Rights of the Child notes this demonstrates the particularities of the legal and social status of children. On the one hand, they lack full autonomy from adults, but on the other they are subjects of rights. Children are simultaneously the same as and different from adults. They are human beings whom we must take seriously, while taking into account the factual differences distinguishing them from adults, without considering them as mini-adults, which they are not.

For both the Committee on the Rights of the Child and for the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR),the child’s view is not considered as one element of appreciation among others to determine his or her interests, but rather as the determining element. Yet it took several decades to recognize the interest of – and even the need for – taking a child’s view into consideration in the legal field. Since the 1990s, recognition has followed demand. Provisions have thus been adopted in various areas of law concerning young people (family, child protection, juvenile delinquency, education, etc.) to gather the opinions and/or obtain their participation in the decision-making process. Two legal mechanisms were mainly used. The first is the hearing of the minor during the administrative or judicial procedure without him or her being a party to the case. Conversely, the second consists of making the child a party to the proceedings in the same way as the adults concerned.

While children may now make their opinions known, neither the mechanisms for youth assistance and protection, nor the nature of the judgments have changed significantly. Is it enough to insert mechanisms allowing minors to make their voice heard for these procedures to become truly child friendly ? To answer this question, it seemed relevant to turn to the young people themselves and interview them. By taking the word of young people as the cornerstone, our research fundamentally questions the capacity of the youth assistance and protection system to achieve its objective.