A/HRC/RES/16/12
(b)
Strengthening efforts at all levels to eradicate poverty so as to help ensure the
realization of the right of all children and members of their families to the enjoyment of the
highest attainable standard of health and to an adequate standard of living;
(c)
Ensuring the full enjoyment of their right to education on the basis of equal
opportunity and non-discrimination by making primary education compulsory, available
and free to all children, ensuring that all children have access to education of good quality,
as well as by making secondary education generally available and accessible to all, in
particular through the progressive introduction of free education and by ensuring school
attendance, in particular for girls and children from low-income families and children living
and/or working on the street, including, where appropriate, through the implementation of
incentives relating to school attendance in the context of social policies;
(d)
Upholding children’s rights to protection and their access to services by
establishing child-friendly, accessible and effective counselling, complaint and reporting
mechanisms;
(e)
Supporting and assisting families’ and caregivers’ capacities, including with
regard to child development and non-abusive parenting, to enable them to provide children
with care in a safe environment;
4.
Urges States:
(a)
To adopt, strengthen and implement legislative and other measures, crosssectoral strategies and plans of action to eliminate, as a matter of priority, all forms of
violence and discrimination against children working and/or living on the street and to end
the impunity of all perpetrators of these violations and abuses and the criminalization of
children living and/or working on the street;
(b)
To prosecute and/or provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions
for sale, trafficking and all forms of exploitation of children working and/or living on the
street, and to ensure protection, assistance and support for child victims of these practices;
(c)
To take appropriate measures to protect children affected by armed conflict,
taking into account the best interests of the child, in order to reduce the risk of these
children resorting to working and/or living on the street;
(d)
To recognize that it is generally in the child's best interests that survival
behaviours, such as begging, loitering, vagrancy, truancy, running away and other acts, be
dealt with as child protection issues by the relevant State authorities, and to ensure, in
accordance with their legal systems, that laws on such behaviours do not constitute an
obstacle to effective assistance, support and protection for children working and/or living
on the street;
(e)
To ensure that children working and/or living on the street who are involved
in judicial proceedings have effective access to child-friendly justice systems and, where
they are party to proceedings, to legal representation, and are enabled to participate actively
in the proceedings and are informed about their rights in a way understandable to them;
(f)
To ensure that all interventions directed at children working and/or living on
the street take into account the best interests and the views of the child in question, in
accordance with his or her age and maturity, and are undertaken by adequately trained
professionals in order to prevent further victimization;
5.
Encourages States to take measures to address the stigmatization and
discrimination of children working and/or living on the street, including through awarenessraising campaigns and sensitization to the situation of these children;
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