Children in the Union - Rights and Empowerment (CURE)

CURE is a project run by the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority in Sweden together with its partners in nine member states of the EU - Belgium, Croatia, Romania, Finland, France, Italy, UK, Portugal, Slovakia. It is devoted to the problem of children as victims of all sorts of crimes in the criminal justice systems of the European Union. The project is focused on the legal status of child-victims as well as on raising awareness on best practices aimed to protect the child victim from experiencing hardship in criminal justice system. In the frame of the project information on the situation of children victims of crime will be gathered and recommendations directed to the European Commission will be developed.

The main target group are professionals and policy makers in the criminal justice systems, as well NGOs working in this field.
The foundation for the project are two documents, UN Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime and EU Framework Decision on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings.

The focus in the CURE project are the four themes: information to child victims, situation of the child during the investigation, legal representation of child victims and the appearance of the child in court. The themes will be applied in the light of the results of the two studies of the CURE project: the study of the legal position of the child victim as well as on the study on good practices developed to assist the child victim in the criminal justice procedure.

 

• Information to child victims. This theme relates to one of the most fundamental of crime victims' rights, namely the legal right to be promptly and adequately informed.

• The situation of the child during investigation. This theme could be viewed from two main perspectives: the conditions according to which the child victim is interviewed (sensitivity for the child by means of routines for the questioning, the numbers and the duration of the interviews) and the persons involved in the questioning (the professional groups responsible for interviewing the child and the persons who are allowed to be present at questioning)

• Legal representation for child victims. Given the legal position and the vulnerability of the child victim, an appointment of a legal representative forms an important part of the consideration for the child victim in the judicial procedure. This is particularly relevant if the suspect is a member of the victim's family.

• The appearance of the child in court. A key matters related to this theme is whether the child is regarded as a competent and reliable witness and measures taken to facilitate the child's appearance in court.

CURE is co-funded by the Prevention of and Fight against Crime-programme (ISEC) of the European Commission, Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security.

More information about the project: www.childvictims.se