KidsRights Chairman Marc Dullaert believes: ‘A country that does not take good care of its vulnerable children has a big problem’. He says this in response to the KidsRights Index 2024 and the House of Representatives debate on this on 27 March.
The Netherlands is sinking further and further down this international ranking and is seriously lacking when it comes to children’s rights. For example, it is not possible to get youth care in order, to eradicate child poverty and to give shape to youth participation in law and policy.
Marc Dullaert believes: ‘It is a problem that we want to tackle together with the cabinet and the government. The Netherlands must tackle the problems for children, continuously test legislation and policy against the Convention on the Rights of the Child and ensure structural improvements’.
‘That is why I am reaching out’, says Marc Dullaert. ‘The KidsRights Index 2025 will be published halfway through this year. I cordially invite State Secretary Karremans to sit down with each other and with other children’s rights organisations shortly after this. Let us work together to create a better Netherlands for all our children. We are ready for this.’
Reactions in and to the House debate
Several factions in the House of Representatives debated the poor results that the KidsRights Index 2024 shows for the Netherlands last night. They did this in a so-called thirty-member debate. In this debate, Members of Parliament Lisa Westerveld (GroenLinks-PvdA), Jacqueline van den Hil (VVD), Faith Bruyning (NSC) and Sarah Dobbe (SP) spoke, as well as State Secretary Vincent Karremans (VVD) of Youth, Prevention and Sports (VVD). It was also painful that not all factions participated in this debate.
Lisa Westerveld (GroenLinks-PvdA) asked herself in the parliamentary debate last night: ‘How seriously do we take children’s rights? Thirty years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands. That should be a reason to celebrate. But for thirty years, children’s rights have been knowingly and deliberately violated’. According to her, excuses are constantly being made up, things are being postponed, and so-called ‘research is needed’. Westerveld is done with that.
Among other things, she emphasized the widely shared importance of education: ‘But why are there so many children at home without education?’ According to her, student transportation is not in order, and neither is education in correctional facilities.
She also wondered how it is possible that children’s rights are not anchored in the Youth Act. In fact, children’s rights are violated in youth care. Children are not asked what they want, not even in out-of-home placements, says Westerveld. She is astonished that child poverty exists in a rich country like the Netherlands. Moreover, aids for children with a disability are not reimbursed as standard. As a result, they are ‘at a serious disadvantage’, she believes.
Jacqueline van den Hil (VVD) also believes that children’s rights are being violated, ‘and one is too many’. She wants to look into sports, among other things, and calls resources ‘very important’. Van den Hil said she would do her best for this. If it is about reaching children for vaccination, she shares the importance of this. She wants to tackle this mainly practically by looking together at ‘how we can reach children’, in her eyes mainly through a neighbourhood-oriented approach.
Faith Bruyning (NSC) called the presentation last Tuesday of the report Een Jonge Blik op Kinderrechten by State of Youth NL and the KinderrechtenCollectief a celebration ‘but at the same time there was a ‘border of mourning’, because despite thirty years of children’s rights, there is a lack of structural embedding of children’s rights in everything we do’. Despite facilities in the Netherlands, there is still a lot of work to be done in her eyes.
She also asked herself in the parliamentary debate: ‘How is it possible that a country like the Netherlands scores so low’ on the KidsRights Index 2024? She believes, among other things, that politics should take a critical look at ‘how we deal with children’s rights in our legislation and policymaking. Children should also have a say in decisions that affect them’. Bruyning wants to focus on ‘working together so that every child is heard and protected’.
She asked the State Secretary whether he is aware of his role as coordinator of children’s rights and finds: ‘There is a lack of an overarching vision on youth in the Netherlands. What is the overarching vision of the cabinet on youth in the Netherlands? Does the State Secretary see the importance of the children’s rights test in policy and legislation and does he see it as his role to stimulate the use of such a test throughout the cabinet?’ Bruyning also urged investing in the participation of children and young people: ‘Their voices must be heard and included in policy and legislation’.
Sarah Dobbe (SP) pointed out the Netherlands’ decline in the KidsRights Index 2024: ‘That is serious’. She asked the cabinet what it is going to do about it: Every child has the right to necessary health care and also youth care and children without health insurance and residence permits too.
She also asked for attention for the homeless who live on the streets with children, attention for young people without a roof over their heads, attention for the many children without a permanent place of residence, without health insurance and/or without a residence permit who are not included in the National Vaccination Program and youth health care. The situation of children in asylum reception is also dire, Dobbe emphasized: ‘We must not forget children’.
State Secretary Vincent Karremans (VVD) of Youth, Prevention and Sports (VVD) believes, among other things, that it is not necessary to legally anchor children’s rights. According to him, it is about putting the Convention on the Rights of the Child into practice. According to him, youth is too broad a subject for a vision and is already included in other policies, such as in favor of education and against poverty. However, a strategy is being worked on, said Karremans.
If it concerns a children’s rights test, it is already the case that legislation must always be in line with international treaties, the State Secretary stated, and the Children’s Ombudsman is now developing an implementation strategy.
Karremans is also concerned about the vaccination rate in the Netherlands. He is working on putting positive news about vaccination on social media as well.
The State Secretary further stated that additional measures will be explored in the coming months to prevent people from not being insured for health care and to resolve this where it is the case.
KidsRights Index
KidsRights Index 2024 is a serious warning to the government that children’s rights in the Netherlands are under pressure. For example, the Netherlands has dropped twelve places in this global ranking in the field of health care, partly due to a declining vaccination rate. Especially compared to other Western countries, the Netherlands is doing increasingly worse.
In addition, there is still no improvement in other fundamental children’s rights in the Netherlands, including child poverty, youth care and the creation of a favourable climate for children’s rights, including the lack of youth participation and listening to the child’s opinion on issues that affect him or her.
The KidsRights Index 2024 has been published annually since 2013 by KidsRights and Erasmus University Rotterdam, assessing and ranking 194 United Nations (UN) member states on their compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.