Thanks to the joint efforts of UNICEF, the EU Delegation to Montenegro, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, national and local authorities, the Parliament of Montenegro, civil society, media, academia and the international community, the number of children placed in institutions in Montenegro decreased by 50 percent between 2010 and 2019, while in 2017 the state achieved an important milestone of no children under the age of three in institutions, according to UNICEF Montenegro.
Montenegro’s child protection system reform, supported by UNICEF and the European Union over the last decade, has been identified as one of six good practice models globally in a report by UNICEF and the Universal Rights Group, which will be launched at 3 pm today by Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights; Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, President of the Human Rights Council; Walter Stevens, Head of the EU Delegation to the UN; Luis Pedernera Reyna, Chair of the CRC Committee and Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.
The report reminds us that, in 2010 in Montenegro, a country of 620,000 people, 367 children were in institutional care. This was one of the highest per capita rates of child institutionalization in Europe. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child should grow up in a safe family environment. For children who cannot be raised by their own families, an appropriate alternative family environment should be sought in preference to institutional care, which should be used only as a temporary measure of last resort.
This global report is a first-ever attempt to measure the impact of the international human rights system on children’s lives. It presents six country case studies, which illustrate the positive impact that results from States’ cooperation with the UN human rights mechanisms, UNICEF offices and partners to reduce the gap between the Convention on the Rights of the Child on paper and the lived reality of millions of children around the world.