PARTICIPATION OF RUSSIAN NGOs IN THE PREPARATIONS OF THE
EU-RUSSIA HUMAN RIGHTS CONSULTATIONS
16th April 2008 in Ljubljana - Slovenia

Rights of Children in Russia in the European perspective

We are grateful to the European Union and to the EU present President Slovenija for the initiative to include children’s rights in the agenda of the Russia-EU human rights consultations.

1. Description of the situation

A number of children (“child” is a person below the age of majority 18 years old) in Russia had decreased by 11 million in 15 years and reached 28 million in 2006 (20% of the population). In the same period a number of children who lost care of their biological parents increased annually by 15-20 thousand and reached 750.000 in 2007. About 200.000 Russian orphans permanently live in different Orphanages. More than 120.000 kids annually loose their biological parents; 90% from them are so called “social orphans” whose parents are alive but abandoned their kids or were deprived of parental rights by the Court Decisions due to neglect of their parental duties and violence against children.

Also 200.000 legally non-orphaned children “with limited possibilities of health” and officially registered “disabled children” permanently live in “special (corrective)” Boarding schools and in social internats. Inherited from the former USSR practice of segregation of children with health problems from “normal” children, in the field of  education in particular, is still flourishing. Most of these children live with their parents (often single mothers) who meet with enormous difficulties because of poverty and lack of professional support. About 300.000 of essentially disabled children do not learn at all, although the universal right for education is proclaimed by Russian Constitution. They don’t learn since there are no educational facilities for it and inclusive education is not practised yet in Russian regular schools and kindergardens. Most terrible is the situation of 29.000 children in the social internats for mentally disabled children. This is a sort of “life sentence” (for survivors) since after 18 years old they are forcibly moved to internats for mentally disabled adults - to the end of their days. Rare inspectorate visits to these places reveal that there are many children or adults capable of the normal life in community, capable to learn, to work, to create a family. They were isolated from the society because of abuse of diagnostics of mental decease and absence of rehabilitation work. This is a quotation from the recently issued Annual, 2007, Report of the Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin: “Most serious in our country is the problem of observation of rights of children with disabilities. In June 2006 Ombudsman issued Special Report about this problem. Unfortunately Proposals of the Special Report aimed at improving the situation were not implemented and even more – they were not considered at all” (Governmental “Rossiskaya gazeta”, 14.03.2008).

In this Report Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights says about many violations of children’s rights: the right of orphaned children for dwelling guaranteed by the Law, rights of abandoned babies permanently living in hospitals, the fundamental right of the child to live and to be brought up in caring family, etc. Special problem is drastic violations of rights of “normal” and unhealthy children permanently living in the institutions. The reason is in the absence of transparency of these “closed societies”. Sometimes the country is shocked by the “real life” information from there, but there are no regular tools so far to make these institutions transparent and their administration accountable.

Family violence. At the Round Table (where I was an Invited Speaker) in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (MVD), on 20 February 2008, dedicated to family violence against children the figure was given that 2500 kids annually die in Russia because of violence of their parents. Other data say that 14.000 Russian women perish annually because of domestic violence. Round Table was chaired by Minister of MVD Rashid Nurgaliev who showed full understanding of the problem. State statistics also says that in average 2800 children under 18 years old commit suicide annually, official reports underline that most of tragic cases resulted because of violence against child at home or in school when the child had nobody to complaint to and did not find any other way out. According to the Research fulfilled in State Duma (Lower Chamber of Russian Parliament) about 2 million children below 14 years old are annually beaten in families, 65% from them are kids below 7 years old. General Prosecution Office Reports describe plenty of cases of the elongated violence towards children with tragic outcomes when authorities were many times informed of the problems in the family but showed terrible passivity. Thus violation of rights of children WITH  INACTION of responsible State bodies is the great problem of Russian social system. Another side of the medal is that “The only way of the State reaction to the unfortunate situation in the family remains the withdrawal of the child from the family which results in drastic increase of orphaned children”, - says the above named Annual, 2007, Report of the Ombudsman, where it is also said: “Today in Russia the crises of the institute of family is observed: its pedagogic and moral basis had languished, number of children suffering from the cruelty of parents, from the psychological, physical and sexual violence is increasing”.

Juvenile justice is not introduced in Russia so far although the package of corresponding Federal Laws is “waiting” in State Duma for years, although there is quite a positive pilot experience of the work of Courts for Minors in Rostov Region and elsewhere. Police violence against minors is widely distributed. After humanization of the Criminal Law in 2003 the number of sentences connected with deprivation of freedom of children decreased but still remains high (15-20 thousands per year, which is 20% from the total number of child-sentences, cf. with 2-2.5% in EU countries). Absolutely unacceptable are too long terms of deprivation of freedom given by the Courts (4,1 years in average, children are often sentenced to several years terms even for a small crime like robbing because of hunger). The general number of minors in different places of deprivation of freedom in Russia (in police lock-ups, investigation jails, corrective colonies, temporary isolation centers for minors-delinquents) varies from 30 up to 40 thousand in different years. This is 21-28 minors in confinement to 100 thousands of population of Russia. To compare with other countries the same parameter in Western and Central Europe is from 0 (Italy) up to 5,7 (Greece); in the countries of former communist block - from 0,6 (Slovenia) up to 16,6 (Estonia) and 17 (Belarus); in the USA it is equal to 30. Russia (together with the USA - from the end of XX century) keeps this shameful record by quantity of children contained in places of deprivation of freedom since times of Stalin’s GULAG. (Data from  the “Alternative Report – 2005” to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) prepared by the Coalition of  Russian NGOs).
 
And there is no effective probation system in Russia. Hence minors-delinquents sentenced to punishments not connected with deprivation of freedom, or those ones who already served their terms of isolation are not accompanied as a rule which results in a great percentage of recidivism.

Speaking about places of custody I have a moral debt to make a digression about our Moscow human rights colleague Lev Ponomarev who is now under written undertaking not to leave the place. The point is that Lev Ponomarev publicly accused leadership of GUIN (State Department of Corrective Institutions) in transforming these institutions into “torture chambers” with forming from prisoners the so called “disciplinary squads” which terrorize other prisoners on secret orders of Administration. Lev Ponomarev was accused “in slandering” and is under criminal investigation now. That is why he is not here with us. We ask to raise this question before Russian Delegation.
Poverty of families with children: more than 50% of families with children have income below the living wage; this results in the lack of nutrition of children. In this situation it would be very important to have hot meals in schools, but this practice is underdeveloped in many Russian regions. This problem, like many other social problems, became especially severe after the Federal Law # 122-FL was passed in 2004, this Law decentralized social responsibility from Federal center to 87 Russian regions which created great geographical disparity in children’s welfare.

2. The causes of the problems and attitude of authorities.

In short the main cause of the crises of childhood in modern Russia may be phrased by the simple words “there is nowhere to complain”, which means absence of the effective, actively working social restoring system, absence of social standards of this work, lack of tools of transparency capable to reveal the violations of children’s rights and of the remedies to protect them. The fact is that during the last 15 years Russian Federation did not implement the system-building UN CRC’s Recommendations, which also include some Proposals formulated in the Russian NGOs’ Alternative Reports submitted to CRC in 1998 and 2005. The basic points of these Recommendations are as follows: to establish Juvenile Justice, to create mechanisms of consideration of complaints about cruel and degrading treatment of children, to perform deinstitutionalization of care of orphaned and disabled children, to develop inclusive pre-school and school approach to education (“Education for All”), to create mechanisms involving Civil initiatives in favor of family and children, to surmount the regional disparity in this field, to introduce the system of surprise public inspections to children’s institutions, etc. Cf. - Download .doc 
 
At the same time there is an excellent experience of the child-protecting work in some Russian regions and municipalities which may be the best-practices example even for other countries and which is not distributed properly in Russia for years due to absence of binding federal laws and conservatism of existing extremely expensive and ineffective social system fairly called “Orphanprom” (like “Gazprom”). As Representative of UNISEF in Russia and Belorussia Carel de Roy put it at the pre-session Meeting of the UN CRC in June 2005 (where the author of this presentation also took part): “The situation is really paradoxical: there are vast problems of family and childhood in Russia, there are highly qualified experts of world level who propose the needed reforms, there is a surprisingly effective pilot experience which may be an example to many, and there are many good people who want to change the situation for the better. And it all does not work due to the  lack of Political Will”.

The hope is that in the last two years the intention to improve the system was clearly expressed at the top political level. In his Annual Appeal to the Federal Assembly (Parliament) on 10 May 2006 President Vladimir Putin spoke in detail about the problems of family and childhood in Russia and about the necessity to find a way out from demographic crises. In particular he said: “I commission to the Government and to Heads of Russian regions to elaborate mechanism which will permit to decrease the number of children living in institutions”. President Putin also announced the essential increase in State payments to foster parents which was really fulfilled in the Budgets of the years 2007 and 2008. This however did not give an essential result because the “Orphanprom” system remained intact so far. As Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights sums up in his newest Annual Report: “In 2007 again no system measures were undertaken to brake the flood of children to institutions ”.

At the Meeting, on 30 November 2007, of seven Russian Civil society activists with Dmitry Medvedev, now newly elected President of Russia, I emphasized the problem of sabotage by bureaucracy in many Russian regions of the above cited direct instruction of President (this 1,5 hour Meeting dedicated to problems of orphanhood in Russia was organized by the Commission of Public Chamber of Russia on Social and Demographic Politics where two “Right of the Child”’s members are experts, and both took part in this Meeting). Speaking at the Meeting Dmitry Medvedev supported the ideas of establishing Juvenile Justice, of creation of probation system and system of public control, he underlined again the necessity of developing the active family placement of orphaned children and of social restoring work with vulnerable families. And in conclusion he said: “The highest level of protection of childhood and of strengthening of family reached in some countries is connected, to my mind, first of all with development of institutes of public control, not because State in these countries became clever some moment and decided to fulfill these functions”. It is worthwhile to note that the idea of Public control is discussed in Russia for years. President Putin not once, beginning from 2003, supported the Law “On public control of observation of human rights in places of compulsory isolation” drafted by NGOs and considered in State Duma; unfortunately the Law has not been adopted yet.

As for the strategic task of developing of the Civil society initiatives as a basis for democracy, in connection with developing of effective social work in particular, it is appropriate to quote the following words said by President Vladimir Putin at the Session of Presidential Council on National Projects and Demography, on 28 February 2008: “New mechanisms to include institutes of Civil society, experts and professionals into the process of forming of social programs are demanded… Real competitive environment in social sphere must be created. We shall jog on the spot until State compete only with itself in this sphere”. It goes without saying that implementation of these important priorities demands practical steps like: to abolish the well known discriminating 2006 Law “On Nongovernmental Organizations”; to pass a package of the federal laws establishing the possibility of social public initiatives to be financed from the federal, regional and municipal budgets on the equal competitive basis with State social enterprises, and another package of laws stimulating charity of business in favor of nongovernmental social initiatives.

3. From Words to Deeds: Importance of cooperation with EU

I have participated in human rights movement in the USSR beginning from the early 70-ies of XX century. And I remember well how absolutely inessential – from the point of view of Soviet ruling elite - signature of that time the USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev under the Third Basket of the 1975 Helsinki Act proved to be the most important historical event with global consequences. This happened because founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group Yurii Orlov and his colleagues pretended to take this signature seriously and because West strongly supported this approach. It would be stupid to insist on exact parallels of this past epoch with modern realities. But the simple wisdom formulated by Andrei Sakharov “We must insist on our principles – on observation of human rights, openness, etc. – and results will possibly follow” is never out of date.

In the field of promotion of protection of children’s rights we see the great and yet unrealized potential of fruitful cooperation between EU and Russian Federation. This cooperation is always a two-way road since EU member-countries may also learn from the best-practices Russian experience. The dream of Russian children’s rights defenders is to make Russia as a whole (i.e. at the federal level and in all Russian regions) to learn from the best-practices Russian and European experience in this field. To be more concrete we see the following vitally important spheres of mutual cooperation of Governmental structures, of Parliaments, of social workers, of NGOs of Russia and Europe:

- Legislative and practical implementation of the non-punitive, restoring and reconciliation principles and technologies of Juvenile Justice.
- Establishment of plural mechanisms of public control, of intrusive public inspectorate of children’s institutions in particular. According to Dmitry Medvedev (see above in the Item 2) this is an indispensable condition for perfection of system of protection of childhood and family.
- Prevention of violence against children in the family setting, in schools and child care institutions. The problem is quite serious in many countries of EU and in Russia. The special, but painful, dimension of this problem is domestic violence against girls and women in families of “other culture”; here stubbornly understood principle of National Culture Autonomy comes in evident conflict with first principles of human rights, humanity and elementary compassion to victims of cruel and degrading treatment.
- To work together to combat the child poverty and social and educational exclusion, exclusion of disabled children in particular.
- Exchange of Know How of deinstitutionalization of care of children.
- Creation of legislative basis for the wide involvement of nongovernmental initiatives into the work in the interests of family and children.
- Organization of the developing children’s leisure activities and of the information space friendly for children. Etc.

I guess that proposals formulated above are in phase with general modern trend of mainstreaming Children’s Rights in EU Policy. And it seems evident that this mutual Russia-EU work must be fulfilled in close cooperation with UN, with UN CRC – as it was clearly said by Chairperson CRC Committee in 2001-2007 Jaap E. Doek in his presentation at European Parliament on October 9, 2007. I met Professor Doek not once in Geneva in the course of submitting to CRC of the Alternative Reports 1998 and 2005 drafted by the Coalitions of Russian NGOs. Also we are grateful to Jaap Doek and UN CRC Rapporteur Nevena Vuckovic-Sahovic (Serbia and Montenegro) who paid a visit to Moscow in November 2006 aimed at monitoring the fulfillment (unfortunately non-fulfillment) by Russia of the recommendations formulated by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in its Concluding Observations to Russia’s Periodic State Reports.

Boris Altshuler,
Head of the “Right of the Child” NGO, Moscow.
Member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Coordinator of the Child Rights Section of the Expert Council under Ombudsman for Human Rights of Russia. 
Expert of the Public Chamber of Russian Federation.
Member of the Public Council of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia.
“Right of the Child” is Member-NGO of the Coordinating Council of the All-Russia Union of Public Associations “Civil Society for the Children of Russia” and Member of the international “NGO Group for the Convention of the Rights of the Child”.