Linda's ECE World

                                What children experience in Bosnia/Herzegovina

This week we are asked to look at other places in the world using the UNICEF site and choose a country to explore.  While I was paroozing the BiH pages two articles caught my attention.  The first is children who are in the criminal justice system there and the second about children going to school and having their language and culture being respected.

I chose this area of the world because in the West we don't hear about what is going on in other parts of the world unless it is some kind of crisis.  I remember when this part of the world was at war and wanted to see how things had progressed since the 1980's.  So here is a synopsis of the articles and links to them to read them for yourself.

Justice for Children: High-Level Visit to Zenica (2013)  

In 2010 a programme named Protection of children at risk and children in contact with the justice system in BiH.  Ambassadors from Sweden, Switzerland, BiH and UNICEF came together with their teams to see how children involved with the justice system were being treated and if any of those children were helped by the efforts.  The aim was to identify families and children at risk and look into prevention rather than punishment. „The reform of the juvenile justice system is but one of the requirements to ensure a proper implementation of the UN Convention on the rights of the child, a set of globally accepted rules which include the equal treatment of children without discrimination, the right to live and develop in a healthy manner, the right to be heard in all matters affecting him or her - in short – to always secure the best interests of the child..” – stated H.E. Fredrik Schiller, Ambassador of Sweden in BiH.  The delegations also visited various sites one a child friendly room at a police station.  The central theme was on focusing on prevention and reintegration.  Putting children in jail is not an optimal way to increase success but working on a strategy for prevention and reintegration back into society is something that has been shown to work.  

Justice for Children: High-Level Visit to Zenica (n.a.)(2013) Retrieved April 18, 2015 from http://www.unicef.org/bih/media_25305.html

The next article was just as interesting especially since we have been discussing  a child's right to have their culture and language honored. 

UNICEF: Children should go to school and their cultural and languages specificities should be respected

Keeping in the spirit with the Rights of the Child UNICEF has created a panel to look into the concerns or families who are questioning why their child should only learn in a language not familiar to them.  UNICEF representative  "Mrs Bauer also highlights that in parallel it is key to find a solution to the broad issues of discrimination, segregation and politicization in education. ”All schools should respect the language and cultural specificities of every child by teaching the three recognized languages and two scripts, providing common core curriculum “neutral” subjects with agreed same contents in any language and script, providing the national group of subjects in respective languages and scripts and making education materials available in languages and scripts chosen by the pupils.” 

UNICEF:Children should go to school and their cultural and languages specificities should be respected. (n.a.) (2013) Retrieved April 18,2015 from http://www.unicef.org/bih/media_24974.html 

While there are many places in the world that need attention I am always interested in what has happened in a country since the crisis.  So now I know at least some of it. 

Peace and all good 

Thanks for dropping by