A/HRC/17/46 children’s rights into national, social and development policies, which would require at the same time the development of indicators to evaluate progress. 24. Father Shanahan pointed out that States should not be looking for magic answers, because there is none. If dedicated and trained workers were put on the streets of the cities, countries would start finding answers from children; he therefore urged countries to do so. Dedicated workers on the streets, together with the street children, could work out realistic plans of intervention. States should listen to children and take their opinions into account. He appealed to States not to treat street children only in terms of numbers. He believed that moving towards a rights-based approach would give children on the streets their voice back and that this would be the beginning to finding solutions. 25. The Rapporteur stated that countries had to cooperate with the South to obtain information on children in the street and to implement the main recommendations of the United Nations study on violence against children.5 He found the way in which many children of migrant families were treated in detention centres to be unacceptable. He regretted that the collective communications procedure was not included in the final draft of the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to establish a communications procedure of the Open-Ended Working Group.6 Respecting the rights of children in the streets implied respecting the rights of children generally by, inter alia, eliminating corporal punishment or the death penalty, which were still in force in certain countries. The best solution to any problem regarding children was for the States to guarantee their human dignity on a daily basis. 26. The youth representatives from programmes supported by Plan International stated that if everyone in society extended their hand, children would have a better life and education. According to the representative of the African Movement of Working Children and Youth, States should take care of children living in the street by providing free education for children, especially for girls, by building schools in isolated areas and vocational training centres for children who had left school. Governments should take measures to improve the purchasing power of parents so that they could provide for their children, and money should be allocated to maintain schools. III. Afternoon panel: “Conditions of children working and/or living in the street: prevention strategies and response” A. Introductory remarks and statements by panellists 27. The afternoon panel, which was moderated by the Vice-President of the Human Rights Council, Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, focused on the living conditions of children working and living on the street, as well as on the prevention strategies and responses. The panellists included the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, Marta Santos Pais; the Deputy Inspector General of Police of Sindh (Pakistan), Abdul Khalique Shaikh; the Director of Proyecto Meninos e meninas da rua (Brazil), Marco Antonio Da Silva Souza; the Senior Adviser of UNICEF, Theresa Kilbane; and the Special Adviser to the Director-General of ILO, Kari Tapiola. 28. The meeting was opened by the Deputy United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who underscored the urgent need for more reliable and systematic data 5 6 8 A/61/299. A/HRC/17/36.