The UN Guidelines on Justice in Matters Involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime (2005)
The process that led to the adoption of the UN Guidelines on Justice in Matters Involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime (ECOSOC resolution 2005/20) began in 2004, when at the recommendation of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted resolution 2004/27 of 21 July 2004, by which it requested the Secretary-General to convene an intergovernmental expert group in order to develop guidelines on justice in matters involving child victims and witnesses of crime. (The resolution is available in other languages from our publications section.)
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And so it is that on 15 and 16 March 2005 - thanks to the financial contribution of the Government of Canada - the Intergovernmental Expert Group to Develop Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime met in Vienna, Austria. The meeting was attended by 50 experts from 29 countries, 1 observer from the United Nations system (UNICEF), and 2 observers from non-governmental organizations (International Bureau for Children's Rights and Defence for Children International). As a result of its deliberations, the Intergovernmental Expert Group completed the guidelines on justice in matters involving child victims and witnesses of crime contained in annex I to its report. It should be noted that very few changes were made to the IBCR Guidelines, which were used as a canvas by the IEGM. The report of the Intergovernmental Expert Group is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
The report and the draft guidelines were submitted to and considered by the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice , held in Bangkok from 18 to 25 April 2005. The report of the IEGM was then adopted by the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice at its fourteenth session, held in Vienna from 23 to 27 May 2005. More importantly, the Commission recommended to ECOSOC that it adopt a new resolution on the Guidelines.
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This new resolution, presented at the Commission by Canada and co-sponsored by more than fifty Member States, was submitted to and adopted by ECOSOC on 22 July 2005. The resolution: adopts the Guidelines on Justice in Matters Involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime (annexed to the resolution); invites Member States to draw on the Guidelines in the development of legislation, procedures, policies and practices and calls upon Members States to make information available to other States and to assist them in developing and implementing training or other activities in relation to the use of the Guidelines; calls upon the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to provide technical assistance as well as advisory services in this regard; requests the Secretary-General to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the Guidelines and recommends that Member States bring them to the attention of relevant governmental and non-governmental organizations and institutions; calls upon the institutes of the |
United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme network to provide training in relation to the Guidelines and to consolidate and disseminate information on successful models at the national level; and requests the Secretary-General to report to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice at its seventeenth session on the implementation of the resolution.
Click here to view ECOSOC Resolution 2005/20 in English, which contains the new Guidelines on Justice in Matters Involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime. The document is also available in available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.
The efforts of the International Bureau for Children’s Rights in laying the groundwork for the development of Guidelines on Justice in Matters Involving Child Victims and
Witnesses of Crime are explicitly recognised both in the preambular section of both the resolution and in the Guidelines themselves.
Protecting children through the use and application of the Guidelines
The adoption of the Guidelines by the United Nations marks the beginning of a new and important activity: ensuring that the Guidelines are applied in practice and that children are indeed protected. Click here to see how IBCR and its partners are meeting the challenge.
