Children’s rights ‘shaved off’ by EU aid arm

Date: 30/01/03

By David Cronin

THE European Commission does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of development aid on children, a new study has found.

Prepared for charity Save the Children, the report cites an unnamed Commission official who admitted "children's rights were shaved off" as the Union's aid arm decided to concentrate its work on a smaller number of priority areas.

The report also quotes Koos Richelle, head of the Commission's directorate-general for development, who argued late last year that 'concentration' is necessary for aid to be effective.

"We have to concentrate on - in general - not more than two sectors per country in order to deliver quality assistance," he said.

"We have problems in harmonising these principles in our daily practice with heavily pushed sectoral approaches, which are to a certain extent supply-driven and change with the seasons of fashion."

Development consultant Mirjam van Reisen, the paper's author, said the Commission had agreed to fund ten aid projects specifically aimed at boosting children's rights in 2001 under the €100 million European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights.

For 2002-2004, however, none of the schemes financed under that heading were exclusively oriented towards children.

"The formal policy is now - that in all projects - an assessment needs to be made on children's rights but it is no longer possible to fund projects dedicated specifically towards children's rights," added van Reisen.

"At present, it is not possible to estimate the amount [of EU aid] that reaches children directly.

"The Commission does not quantify how much of its aid reaches children in a systematic manner."

According to Save the Children, some 600 million children in poor countries belong to households with an income of less than 1 euro per day, while 130 million do not attend school. Two-thirds of the latter figure are girls.

Van Reisen recommends that children's rights should be a "standard topic" raised in every meeting between the Commission and a government receiving EU aid.

She advocates that a legally-binding regulation be introduced, requiring the Commission to take children into account in all of its development aid work and for a "high level post for children's rights" to be created in the EU executive.

The European Commission does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of development aid on children, a new study prepared for charity Save the Children has found.