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The European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC) joins with other networks of human rights institutions for children to urge States at the current session of the Human Rights Council to initiate the process of drafting an Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure for the Convention. We hope that the Council will adopt a resolution to establish an open-ended Working Group for this purpose. Our institutions, established through legislation to safeguard and promote the rights of children, are particularly aware of the gap between the commitments which States Parties have made on ratification to implement the Convention, and the effective recognition and realisation of children’s rights in reality. Children, like adults, need effective remedies for breaches of the full range of their rights at national level. But also, when national remedies fail them or do not exist, they and their representatives, including our institutions, need international mechanisms. It is a matter of deep concern to us that the UNCRC should be the only core human rights instrument that lacks a communications procedure to complement the reporting procedure. The CRC contains many unique rights for children that cannot be pursued through existing communication procedures linked to other human rights instruments. These other procedures do not engage a specialised group of experts on children’s rights. The Committee on the Rights of the Child needs to be empowered, like other Treaty Bodies, to consider individual communications and thus also develop jurisprudence under the Convention. We hope that States will take particular note of the very strong support for this proposal from human rights institutions for children and from NGOs in all regions who are directly engaged in representing children and advocating for recognition of their rights. We are in full agreement with the Committee on the Rights of the Child that such a communications procedure “would significantly contribute to the overall protection of children’s rights” (Statement by Yanghee Lee, Chairperson of the Committee, 63rd Session of the General Assembly, 15 October 2008).