Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

In Ireland, the Convention is not fully integrated into domestic law, but the State Party has at least established a Department of Children and Youth Affairs to coordinate the implementation of the Convention. On the negative side, there was no child rights approach in the preparation of the state budget. On the positive side, however, Ireland has national strategies and legal provisions for almost all children's rights, but there is a lack of perfect implementation of these rights. The church has a strong say in Ireland, so that conservative and Christian moral concepts are prevalent and schools are also mostly denominational.

Abortion is only allowed when there is a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother. The Committee recommends to decriminalize abortion and to develop and implement a policy to protect the rights of pregnant teenagers, adolescent mothers and their children and combat discrimination against them.

The Committee is concerned that there is no comprehensive strategy for the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream education and the encouragement of their autonomy. The Committee recommends to train and employ a sufficient number of specialized teachers and professionals in order to provide special needs education support and early childhood education for children with disabilities.

The Committee is deeply concerned that the state of health of children in single-parent families, children in poverty and Traveller and Roma children is significantly worse than the national average. Therefore, the Committee urges the State party to address socioeconomic disadvantages and to undertake all necessary measures, to ensure that such children enjoy the same access to and quality of health-care services as others.

Children are being admitted to adult psychiatric wards owing to inadequate availability of mental health-care facilities for children. Also, there are long waiting lists for access to mental health support and insufficient out-of-hours services for children and adolescents with mental health needs, in particular eating disorders.

The Committee recommends to establish independent mechanisms to monitor the implementation by business enterprises of international and national environment and health standards and appropriately sanction and provide remedies when violations occur. Furthermore, the Committee recommends that the State party ensure that appropriate international certification is sought.

The Committee recommends that the State party establish and implement regulations to ensure that the business sector, including in the context of public procurement, complies with international and national human rights, labour, environment and other standards, particularly with regard to the rights of the child. In particular, it recommends that the State party strengthen its regulatory framework for the industries and enterprises operating in the State party to ensure that their activities do not negatively affect the rights of the child or endanger environmental and other standards.

The age of criminal responsibility has been lowered to 10 years for serious crimes and 17-year-old boys are detained in adult prison facilities. The Committee recommends to increase the legal age for the application of measures for deprivation of liberty.

The Committee is concerned about the impunity for publicly expressed discriminatory remarks by public representatives against Roma and traveller children and their families.

The Committee is concerned about the insufficient attention to the rights and interests of children born as a result of assisted reproduction technologies, in particular with the involvement of surrogate mothers, and the lack of measures to ensure that children fathered by Catholic priests are able to access information on the identity of their father. Children are not ensured the right to opt out of religious classes.