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Madrid Autonomous Region Child Ombudsperson
Madrid Autonomous Region Child Ombudsperson is the Madrid General Assembly High Commissioner for Children’s Rights. The post is actually held by Mr. Arturo Canalda González, who was elected by Madrid Autonomous Region General Assembly on November 2006. The first Child Ombudsperson was Mr., Javier Urra Portillo, who held the post since July 1996 to October 2001. Mr. Pedro Núñez Morgades was the second one, from 2001 till October 2006.
According to the law, Child Ombudsperson’s duties are as follows:
Madrid Autonomous Region Child Ombudsperson, Mr Arturo
Canalda González
- 1. Supervise all actions of the Madrid Autonomous Region public and private institutions which main activity is service providing to children or youngsters in order to ensure that children’s rights are being respected.
- 2. Receive and handle all complaints about abuses on Children’s Rights or about situations that may threaten Children’s Rights. Complaints may be presented to him or her by any citizen.
- 3. Propose reforms of legal proceedings or laws that he or she may consider relevant to further improve legal protection of children.
- 4. Inform the general public about Children’s Rights.
- 5.• Implement all actions he or she may consider necessary for him or her to get a good knowledge about the degree in which Children’s Rights are enforced by minors, respected by adults and known by the general public.
Since its creation, Madrid Autonomous Region Child Ombudsperson as an institution has proved very sensitive to the problem of sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. In 1999, the then Child Ombudsperson, Javier Urra, redacted a report on the lack of legislation about child pornography in Spain and put it forward to the Madrid Autonomous Region General Assembly. In addition to this, he was responsible for the presentation to the media of an informative campaign on children’s security, both on the street and on the net. This campaign was elaborated by a Spanish NGO called “Action against Child Pornography” (ACPI on its Spanish acronym) and it is centered on the distribution of educative materials to parents, educators and children. In addition to this campaign the Child Ombudsperson financed the production of a videotape about children’s security that is still today freely distributed to schools. The videotape is focused on parents and aims at informing them about basic rules for children’s security.
Since the election of the current Child Ombudsperson, Arturo Canalda González, the institution has turned its attention towards child pornography. Following a proposal of the Child Ombudsman himself, a Working Group against Child Pornography on Internet was created. This working group is composed by the main Child Welfare Organizations, like ACPI, PROTEGELES, UNICEF and SAVE THE CHILDREN among others; Police Forces; Guardia Civil, representatives of the main teacher-parents associations: CEAPA and CONCAPA; representatives of the Internet-related Industry and RED.ES, an semi-public commercial entity associated to the Spanish Science and Technology Ministry.
On November 2002, the Child Ombudsperson called in ACPI and PROTEGELES for the elaboration of a study on “Child safety and Habits on Internet”, the conclusion of which were presented to the Media and published by the Ombudsperson institution itself.
The study meant the starting point for the intensification of the relation between both entities resulting on a very fruitful collaboration, as proved by the studies and campaigns developed together since then, mainly: “Anorexia and Bulimia Defense and Support on Internet” and “Cybercentres and Chid safety on Internet”.
Nowadays, children’s security on internet is still one of the main concerns of the Child Ombudsperson. For this reason, he has recently participated in two campaigns on this matter run by the Spanish Science and Technology Ministry, called “navegacion-segura” (safe netsurfing) and “chaval.es” (chap.es).
Spanish Science and Technology Ministry
From right to left: Carlos López Blanco- Ministry- Francisco Martín - Optenet's president and
Guillermo Cánovas - PROTEGELES' president.
The Spanish Science and Technology Ministry (now renamed Industry, Tourism and Commerce Ministry) has an associated semi-public commercial entity, called RED.ES, which has been legally empowered to carry on some activities aimed at the development of the telecommunications and the Information Society in Spain.
For the last two years, RED.ES is also working on the tackling of offence committing on Internet, including child pornography. For this purpose, it has elaborated some preventive campaigns, like the ones it presented to the media in December 2002 and 2003: “navegacion-segura” (safe netsurfing) and “chaval.es” (chap.es). Both campaigns are based on comprehensive web pages specifically designed for parents, educators and children.
www.navegacion-segura.es hosts recommendations for parents and educators; information about some security tools, like internet filters and links to pages about child pornography where hotlines for the report of illegal contents can be found, like www.protegeles.com .
- www.chaval.es is a web page devoted to children’s free time. However, on its latest version, links to educative pages and related institutions have also been included.
PROTEGELES has collaborated on many of these actions, as mentioned above.
