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Summary: CRIN is contacting all candidates standing for election to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in December 2010. We are asking them about their experience in children's rights, what they think they can contribute to the Committee, what they think about key issues, their vision for the Committee and, importantly, how they see NGOs' role.
Dainius Puras, 52, from Lithuania, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and has served on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for four years. He also teaches public and mental health and chairs two Lithuanian NGOs: the Human Rights Monitoring Institute and the Global Initiative on Psychiatry. Click here to read Dainius' full CV. Can you tell us about your experience in children's rights? Why do you want to serve on the Committee? What do you think you can contribute to the Committee's work? Which issue in children's rights do you feel needs more attention? I understand the world's attention is on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the moment, but the problem with the MDGs is that they tend to focus on social, economic and cultural rights at the expense of civil and political rights. The Convention emphasises that all rights must be looked at together. Let's take child survival for example. Lots of people work in this area (article 6 of the Convention deals with children's survival and development), but it cannot be divorced from the emotional and social components of development. The legacy of the former Soviet Union illustrates the dangers of this approach. In fact, the former Soviet Union solved the MDGs decades ago, for example: almost everyone graduated and women were more educated than men - these were some amazing achievements! But look at the epidemic of suicides, staggering levels of interpersonal violence and other problems facing ex-Soviet countries now. These kinds of issues have partly arisen because the State over-protected people, and several generations have been deprived of the skills to control their own lives and enjoy civil rights and freedoms. The same is often done with children. You should not overprotect adolescents if you want them to grow up to be responsible adults. Governments tend to create laws to protect children from everything. We must protect them, but not over-protect them in what we think are their best interests. This gives rise to a situation where doctors do not consult with children before putting them through medical procedures "in their best interests"; States put them in institutions in their "best interests"; and prevent them from learning about sexuality "in their best interests". How can adults then expect children to trust them and to make responsible choices as they reach adulthood? I am particularly sensitive to this issue because in my country, Lithuania, the government has taken measures to prevent children - even older children - from being informed about sexuality. I was speaking out about this in the media when the law was being drafted. Journalists were coming to me asking why, as a children's rights advocate, I do not agree with the idea of protecting children from information about sexual and reproductive health. I told them I defend children's rights and part of this work is is to support and empower children who are trying to understand their sexuality and many other complex issues, rather than hiding truth about life's complexities. I do not believe in the communist ideology which surrounded me when I was growing up: the idea that the less people know, the happier they will be. This is why I think the biggest obstacle for implementing children's rights worldwide is the hypocrisy of adults. What has been the best achievement of your career? What is your vision for the Committee? At the moment the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is the only UN treaty body which does not have a complaints procedure which I see as proof of the existence of discrimination against children. Such a procedure is now being drafted so I am hopeful about how this will enhance our work. I feel that our weak point is our lack of follow-up to Concluding Observations. At the moment UNICEF is our hands – the Committee itself has no hands or teeth! How do you think the Committee could work more effectively with NGOs? What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the Committee? In my field, for example, mental health care is too influenced by a bio-medical paradigm. In many countries, for example, children with emotional and behavioural problems are just being given drugs, instead of being offered psychosocial services to help them as well as their parents and investment in prevention programmes is far too low. This is a problem! For now though, because we have so few resources and a heavy monitoring workload, it is very difficult for Committee members to seriously contribute towards shaping the future of how children's rights can be fulfilled in practice. If you were not working in children's rights, what would you be doing? Sum up children's rights in one word
I started out as a medical doctor 30 years ago. I worked from a public health perspective, but my experiences of working with children with mental disabilities and socially disadvantaged families led me to put children's rights at the forefront of my work. I was heavily involved in the transition of care for children with mental disabilities from institutions to community-based care in Eastern and Central Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. This also meant steering the direction of care from a paternalistic approach to a model of empowerment.
The first two years of members' term on the Committee are all about learning. After four years you really have the experience to contribute more effectively. I have learnt a lot about other countries beyond my region during my time with Committee, for example, I have been the rapporteur on Djibouti. It has given me the chance to talk to people working in children's rights all over the world.
I bring a different background to the Committee. Many of my colleagues are lawyers and brilliant at what they do. This is very important as the Committee's work is very legalistic, but you need other perspectives. My strength is in looking at the prevention of rights violations. I like to think I have been able to persuade many people about some of the issues around mental health and violence, for example, that violence against children usually comes from ignorance and lack of skills to manage relationships with mutual respect.
My main areas of interest are the social determinants of health, mental health, emotional well-being and violence against children, but I believe all rights are equally important.
In 1989 I created an NGO called Hope to support parents whose children had mental disabilities. I am very proud of this. I worked with these parents to help them understand their children's rights and to support them to work through other solutions to institutionalisation. This was at a time when NGOs were still not well accepted in my country; a time when non-governmental organisations were perceived as anti-governmental organisations. I am happy that many children with severe developmental disabilities in my country now live with their families and receive education and other community-based services.
I think the work of the Committee can be made stronger but resources are few and we meet just three times a year. I am also concerned about the harmonisation of the UN treaty bodies that is currently being discussed and hope that this will not threaten the Committee's existence.
My heart is with NGOs but I have also worked closely with governments so I am very familiar with the level of trust and mistrust that can exist between the two and I'm well placed to facilitate between the different groups. Without NGOs, I couldn't see the sense in the Committee's work – it would all be about rhetoric and people competing to say who loves children more! The pre-session is my favourite part of the working on the Committee.
The monitoring process must be simplified. At the moment we are overwhelmed with reports. Because monitoring is the Committee's only mandatory function, we always come back to this. But there are many creative members of the Committee who want to get involved in charting the future direction of children's rights, for example, by drafting more general comments and issuing statements about new challenges or trends we see as dangerous or controversial.
If I were not working in children's rights, I would like to be teaching the new generation.
If I could sum up children's rights in one word, I would say dignity.