P010 - Child-friendly justice ? Towards an effective guarantee mechanism for child victims of crime.

• In Event: Poster Session & Ice Cream Social

Abstract

Along with the development, trends and directions of selected rights of child victims, the article presents the assumptions of the creation of the guarantee mechanism: standards for the protection of the rights of the child and increasingly specific rights that clarify the rights of the child with regard to certain aspects of their participation at criminal proceedings. The aim is to demonstrate the effective right of the child to a criminal court, in the sense of a "child-friendly justice system", through an analysis of the direction of the creation of international procedures, policies and strategies. The basic research thesis is to see the correlation between children's subjectivity, which has underpinned the implementation of the regulation of children's procedural rights, initially with a focus on the formal regulation of rules for the participation of minors, and the creation of assumptions that we are now assessing as benchmarks for the evaluation of whether we have a 'child-friendly justice system'. Irrespective of the legal framework, it is still an open question whether the practice of the application of the rules on the participation of children in criminal proceedings needs to be adapted to the standards so that a fair procedure in reality means not only fulfilling formal-legal criteria, but also taking into account the special needs of children as participants in the proceedings and, at the same time, completing the protection of their subjective rights in relation to which criminal proceedings are being conducted. The presentation will discuss, inter alia, European standards for protecting, empowering and supporting child victims, including in particular: European Commission Report 2022 on the evaluation of Directive 2012/29/EU and the effectiveness of its implementation and Rights of child victims of crime in the draft Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23.07.2023 amending Directive 2012/29/EU

Author

• Lukasz Cora, University of Gdansk