The Deputy Protector of Citizens for Children's Rights, Jelena Stojanović, stated today that the preventive action of competent authorities and the education of members of sensitive social groups are important in the process of protecting children from various forms of abuse and exploitation, especially from sexual exploitation.

"The Protector of Citizens believes that preventive action and education of members of sensitive social groups are the most important in the process of protecting children from all forms of abuse, violence and exploitation. To this end, we issued a large number of recommendations, opinions and legal initiatives to the competent authorities", Stojanović said at the workshop entitled "Protection of children from sexual exploitation and abuse".

At the meeting, organized by the Network of Organizations for Children of Serbia (MODS), Stojanović stated that with the new Law on the Protector of Citizens, this independent state body received a new competence – the national rapporteur in the area of human trafficking, and that in that direction, special focus will be on the protection of children against exploitation and human trafficking.

"Child marriages, in addition to being very harmful to the psychophysical development of children, put children at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking. That is why we requested that the amendments to the Family Law expressly prohibit the conclusion of marriages between persons who have not reached the age of 18, even with the permission of the court, and we are an active member of the National Coalition to End Child Marriage", Stojanović said.

The Deputy Protector of Citizens also indicated that poor children and Roma children are at risk of human trafficking and various types of exploitation, as well as children who live and work on the street, which is why we asked the competent authorities to fully recognize them, in the amendments to the law on public order and peace, as victims, not as perpetrators of offences.

The Protector of Citizens, Zoran Pašalić, said today that this institution will pay special attention to the regular elections for members of national councils of national minorities, which will be held on Sunday, 13 November 2022, at 949 polling stations in the Republic of Serbia. At the same time, he called on members of national minorities to contact him if their rights get violated.

Pašalić reminds that members of national councils are elected by 23 national minorities, of which 19 have fulfilled the conditions for direct elections, and four national minorities will elect their members through the electoral assembly.

National councils, as minority self-government bodies, exercise their powers in the area of culture, education, information and official use of language and script, and the Protector of Citizens calls on members of national minorities to use their right to vote and go to the polls in as large a number as possible.

According to the concluded special voter sheets, it was determined that 19 national minorities fulfilled the condition for direct elections (Albanian, Ashkali, Bosniak, Bulgarian, Bunjevac, Wallachian, Greek, Egyptian, Hungarian, German, Polish, Roma, Russian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Czech), and four of them for elections through the electoral assembly (Gorani, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Croatian), with the fact that the Executive Board of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia, by law, performs the function of the national council and does not participate in the election process.

After the launching of the control investigation by the Protector of Citizens, the Secretariat for Education and Child Care of the City Administration of the City of Belgrade enabled a child to use the service of a personal companion, who had the right to do so in the opinion of the Commission for assessing the need for providing additional educational, health and social support.

Following the complaint of the mother of the child who was not allowed to use this service and who was put on the waiting list, the Protector of Citizens launched an investigation to control the regularity and legality of work of the competent city secretariat.

As part of the investigation, the Protector of Citizens established that in October 2021, the child's mother submitted a request to the City Centre for Social Work in Belgrade – New Belgrade Department for the provision of the service of personal companion for the child, and that a month later, the Humanitarian Organization "Child’s Heart" from of Belgrade, as a licensed and authorized provider of this service, informed this authority that the current capacities are full and that the child is enrolled on the waiting list.

The Protector of Citizens also established that at the end of June 2022, the City Centre sent an urgent request to the organization "Child’s Heart" for the provision of the service of a personal companion for the child, as a priority, after which the waiting list was updated and the position of the complainant’s child was changed because another child stopped using this service as of 1 August 2022.

The Protector of Citizens was informed that the procedure for the inclusion of the complainant's child in the child's personal companion service is in progress, thereby meeting the legal conditions for the suspension of the investigation against the competent city secretariat.

Today, more than 50 public administration authorities opened their doors to students of five state universities in the Republic of Serbia and offered professional practice under their auspices, within the second Fair of student professional practice in public administration, which is held in an online format, through a platform specially created for that event.

The Protector of Citizens is one of the state institutions that, like last year, invited students to do professional practice in that institution in the 2022/2023 school year.

In an online presentation, the Protector of Citizens, Zoran Pašalić, stated that a total of 16 vacancies have been secured in that institution for the year 2022/2023 (12 for students of the Faculty of Law and 4 for students from the Faculty of Political Sciences). Student practice is carried out according to thematic units, within the sector for the protection of human rights and freedoms and the rights of persons deprived of their liberty, sector for the protection of children's rights, gender equality and the rights of persons with disabilities, sector for the protection of rights of members of national minorities and other minority rights and freedoms, the department of the National Preventive Mechanism and the emergency response department.

Pašalić told the students that during the practice they will have the opportunity to become familiar with the competences of the Protector of Citizens as an independent and autonomous body for the protection of human rights in the Republic of Serbia, as well as with the mechanisms for protecting those rights and the position of vulnerable groups, the improvement of which is in a special focus of work of the Protector citizens. Also, they will see the work performed on complaints, the issuing of recommendations, formulating opinions on legislative proposals and stressed that practice does not only mean listening to lectures, but also active participation in the work.

The fair was organized by the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government with the support of the European Union, and offers almost 800 places for professional practice in 56 public administration authorities, mostly for students of human sciences, i.e. the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Political Sciences and the Faculty of Organizational Sciences.