CRCA To Start Work For The CRC Shadow Report

CRCA

05 March 2007

The Children's Human Rights Centre of Albania - CRCA announced on March 2 that it has started the work on the preparation of the new Convention on the Rights of the Child Shadow Report. The Report will be prepared in cooperation with the Albanian Coalition for Preparation of Alternative Reports, network of major national NGO's in Albania established in 2006.

Since Albania signed and ratified the UN Human Rights Treaty System, the country has been reporting to several UN Human Rights Committees - on torture, children, women, racial discrimination etc. This year Albania needs to start the preparation of new country reports (state reports), while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the leading institution.

The work for the preparation of Alternative Reports comes as part of the activities of the CRCA Programme "The Rights of the Child is a Democratic Right" funded by the Olof Palme International Center and SIDA Sweden. Next week, CRCA plans a meeting of major organisations working on children's rights in Albania in order to share the responsibilities for the preparation of the shadow report.

The CRC Shadow Report will cover all areas of the Convention on the Rights of the Child including the implementation of the concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child for Albania.

The main aim of this report is to review the current situation of children's rights in Albania, in order to ensure a better protection of their rights. The report also aims to present in the best possible way the real situation of children in Albania and to provide conclusions and recommendations. The final shadow report will be presented to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.