CHILDREN NEED adult champions, people who will listen to them and are accessible to them, to ensure that their voices are heard and their rights upheld, according to President McAleese, who was speaking at the opening of the conference of the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children in Dublin yesterday.
In recent years we had heard stories of those who were abused in institutions, she said.
"We also know of family homes which can be places of relentless misery for children, rather than refuge. We know of children's awesome capacity for suffering in silence."
The best interests of children required that their voices and their views are given a shape, she said. She referred to the slogan of bodies representing people with disabilities when they said, "Nothing about me without me," which was a blow against the "long-standing culture of paternalism".
She said we had high hopes for our children and desired for them a childhood in which they were loved and protected - but often that was not how life panned out.
"We have a host of laws, institutions, voluntary and State organisations, government departments, international treaties; we have the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified international human rights instrument, and the network they create between them is those children's safety net. The smaller and tighter its mesh, the less are the chances of any child slipping through to that underworld of vulnerable silence where their lives can leach away cruelly and unnoticed."
She said that in Ireland, the once relatively homogeneous society had been opened up in recent years by inward migration. "All these new children are now our care, our kith and kin, for they are the human building blocks of tomorrow's Ireland and we need them to be strong, healthy, educated, confident and fulfilled."
She praised the work of the Irish Ombudsman for Children,Emily Logan.
The conference, which brings together 32 offices of Ombudsmen for Children from 26 Council of Europe member states, is chaired by Ms Logan, who was elected chairwoman of the network for the next year. The conference continues for three days.
Full text of President McAleese's speech at www.irishtimes.com/indepth/