Children are our most precious resource

Co-Chairs of the Collegium of the Women's MP Group Branka Bošnjak and Vesna Pavićević met today with Prime Minister Dritan Abazović. The meeting was also attended by UNICEF Representatives for Montenegro Sabina Žunić, Acting Head of the UNICEF Country Office and Nela Krnić, Child Rights Monitoring Programme Coordinator. Ana Rašović, Chief of the Office of the Prime Minister, and Miloš Perišić, Adviser to the Prime Minister, were also present at the meeting.

The Government of Montenegro, the Women's MP Group of the Parliament of Montenegro and UNICEF agreed on realising activities in the coming period in order to amend and improve the legislative framework in the context of eliminating child and arranged marriages, but also to prevent and protect women and children from violence, in accordance with international obligations of Montenegro.

Co-Chair Bošnjak informed the Prime Minister about the activities of the Women's MP Group in the previous period and stated priorities for the work ahead, stressing the intention to establish a National Council for Combating Poverty, as well as a Tissue Bank within the Clinical Centre of Montenegro, with the Human Milk Bank as its essential part.

The priority of the Women's MP Group is the protection of children and women. In that regard, we need interdepartmental cooperation in order to successfully achieve our common goals. In the coming period, the Women's MP Group will continue, in cooperation with UNICEF, to contribute to amending the legislative and strategic framework in order to improve the position of women and children and combat child and arranged marriages, Co-Chair of the Women's MPs Group Vesna Pavićević said.

Acting Head of the UNICEF Country Office Sabina Žunić presented the recommendations of UNICEF, which aim to ensure respect for the rights of every child in accordance with international standards.

It is necessary to create legal environment that will enable the state to express strong commitment to ending the practice of entering into child marriages, Žunić said.

UNICEF Child Rights Monitoring Programme Coordinator Nela Krnić pointed out that UNICEF advocated raising the minimum age for marriage to 18 years of age, in accordance with the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, in all situations and without exception, as well as the introduction of a clear definition of child marriage, so that everyone equally understood and used it as part of common practice.

Prime Minister Dritan Abazović said that he was looking forward to the future strengthening of cooperation with the Women's MP Group and UNICEF, stating that they all carried out the same mission and that children were the most precious resource of the state. The Prime Minister congratulated the Women's MP Group on its productive work in the previous period and pointed out that the Government has had a long and successful cooperation with UNICEF.

I am grateful for everything you achieved in Montenegro in the previous period, Prime Minister Abazović highlighted.

Abazović informed his interlocutors about the plan of his Cabinet to raise the Child Rights Council to the level of the Prime Minister and the intention for the co-chairs of the Women's MP Group of the Parliament of Montenegro to be vice-presidents of that body, and said he was ever ready to support the establishment of an independent body of experts in the field of the rights of the child, in cooperation with UNICEF that would provide constant expert support to the Child Rights Council.

The interlocutors exchanged views on a number of upcoming activities related to improving the position and rights of women and children, drafting interdepartmental strategies to protect children from violence, establishing the project "Police Community Officer", implementation and future organisation of Barnhaus houses in Podgorica that would be intended to protect children victims of the most severe forms of violence and exploitation, as well as the implementation of sustainable solutions that would provide family life for children without parental care and children whose development has been hampered by family circumstances, currently living in large residential institutions, according to international standards.