At today's session of the Council for the Rights of the Child, which was presided over by the Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazović, the possibility of opening a Children's House was discussed, based on the model of multidisciplinary resolution of the issue of violence against children.
The children's house, modeled after Barnahus, would deal with cases of sexual trauma and abuse of children, and would serve for parallel and coordinated work on the criminal investigation, on the one hand, and the investigation carried out by the social welfare sector, on the other, taking care at the same time that the service is provided in a safe environment adapted to the needs of the child.
"In accordance with the Strategy for the Prevention and Protection of Children from Violence for the period 2017-2021 and the priorities recognized by the Council for the Rights of the Child, the UNICEF representative office in Podgorica provided strong support to the process of establishing the Children's House (Barnahus). In this regard, The representative office of UNICEF expressed its readiness to provide the best expertise in the process of establishing the Children's House in order to ensure the application of international standards in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and to take the best experiences from countries that have gone through a similar process," the Cabinet of the Deputy Prime Minister said in a statement.
They state that the UNICEF representative office reached an agreement on future joint activities with the Council of Europe with the aim of joint support and mobilization of human and financial resources during the establishment of this multidisciplinary service.
In addition to the permanent members of the Council, the session was also attended by Juan Santander, head of UNICEF in Montenegro and Evgenija Jakumpoulou, head of the Council of Europe Office in Montenegro, as well as Zaruhi Gasparian, the leading expert of the Council of Europe for Barnahus from the Department of Children's Rights of the Council of Europe from Strasbourg.
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