Procurement Summary
Country : Montenegro
Summary : National Consultants to Provide Technical Assistance to the Ministry for Conducting Advanced Training for Professionals Who Obtained a Licence to Work as a Support Persons to the Child
Deadline : 12 Aug 2018
Other Information
Notice Type : Tender
TOT Ref.No.: 25299783
Document Ref. No. :
Competition : NCB
Financier : United Nations Secretariat
Purchaser Ownership : -
Tender Value : Refer Document
Purchaser's Detail
Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND
Stanka Dragojevica bb, UN Eco House
81 000 Podgorica
Tel: + 382 20 447 400
Fax: + 382 20 447 471
Montenegro
Email :podgorica@unicef.org
URL :http://www.unicef.org/
Tender Details
Tenders are invited for National Consultants to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro for conducting advanced training for professionals who obtained a licence to work as a Support Persons to the Child (2 positions).
Job title:National Consultants to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro for conducting advanced training for professionals who obtained a licence to work as a Support Persons to the Child (in Family Law related proceedings)
Post type: National, two positions
1. Background and Context: In previous years considerable progress has been made and strong political commitment was achieved in the reform of the country-s judicial system and juvenile justice as an integral component. The initiative proved to be fully aligned with Governments priorities within the EU accession process, and defined as one of the priority areas in the Montenegros Action plan for the Chapter 23 (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights). The Justice for Children Reform also proved to be of significant importance for Montenegros follow up actions in fulfilling the Concluding Observations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to Montenegro.Despite obvious and tangible progress achieved in the area of juvenile justice, the Government of Montenegro has recognized that the reform focus should be expanded towards broader children-s access to justice issues. This will ensure full protection of the rights of all children who participate in overall, mainstream criminal, civil and administrative justice processes. Throughout the implementation of the extensive juvenile justice system reform it became apparent that work with families at risk of breakdown and in particular the rights of children participating in civil proceedings are the two areas that have not received sufficient attention. Therefore, the Government of Montenegro noted the need for further harmonization of the Montenegros family legislation and related practice with international instruments and has set it as one of the priority areas in Montenegro's EU accession process. In that sense, the Government of Montenegro and UNICEF are looking forward to expand the reform focus towards protection of the rights of all children who participate in civil, criminal or administrative proceedings, the areas that have not received sufficient attention up to date. This implies introduction of child-friendly procedures in overall justice system (criminal, civil and administrative proceedings) and empowerment of the most vulnerable children and families to effectively access justice and meaningfully participate in the judicial and administrative proceedings.
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) sets out the best interests of the child and child participation as two out of four pivotal principles of the Convention. The General Comment No 12 on children's right to be heard provides ample guidance on the implementation of child friendly justice principles before, during and after legal proceedings and the General Comment no 14 says that State parties must respect and implement the right of a child to have his or her best interests assessed and taken as a primary consideration and is under the obligation to take all necessary, deliberate and concreate measures for the full implementation of this right. In the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, article 24 on the rights of the child sets forth the child-s right to protection and care, and to express her/his views and participate in proceedings, and the obligation by public authorities and private institutions to consider the child-s best interests as a primary consideration in all actions concerning a child.
Another important instrument for children-s access to justice in Europe is the European Convention on the Exercise of Children-s Rights, which has been ratified by Montenegro. 72 Article 1(2) sets out its objectives: “in the best interests of children, to promote their rights, to grant them procedural rights and to facilitate the exercise of these rights by ensuring that children are, themselves or through other persons or bodies, informed and allowed to participate in proceedings affecting them before a judicial authority” In the process of further harmonization of the Montenegros family legislation and related practice with international instruments and standards the Parliament of Montenegro adopted the Amendments to the Family Law of Montenegro in July 2016. The process of amending the Family law legislation was led by the Ministry of Justice with UNICEF technical assistance. As a result, Montenegros legislator provided the child with full standing capacity in all proceedings affecting the child, introduced the institute of Support Person to the child, provided better guarantees for children-s voices to be heard and opinions considered throughout the entire court proceeding, introduced provisions to facilitate child rights professionals in the process of the best interest determination, and generally provided better substantial and procedural guaranties for the rights of the child to be adequately addressed and protected throughout the entire court proceeding and more opportunities for addressing child rights violations.
An important novelty of the new Family law is also reflected in the fact that there is duty of everyone, including parents, when deciding on matters concerning the child's opinion they must give due consideration to the child, in accordance with the age and maturity of the child, taking into account the level of their physical, emotional, intellectual and social development. There is no age limits, bearing in mind that the child, as research shows, is able to form an opinion from the earliest times, even when it is not able to verbally express his or her opinion.
The new Institute of Support Person introduced in the Family Law proceedings, is supposed to care for the rights, obligations and personality of the child with due attention and thoroughness and to convey to court the child-s opinion. Due to envisaged criteria for education, recruitment and licencing of support persons to a child, 17 professionals have been licenced for the Support person to the Child in Family Law related proceedings.
In order to provide further support to build capacities and knowledge of professionals engaged as Support Person to a child and to give them a chance to exchange opinions of their work with children so far, possible ambiguity in their work, and to further strengthen their role, UNICEF will engage a team of 2 individual national consultants from social work science/ psychologist/pedagogue/special pedagogue field to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro for provision of advanced training for professionals who are licenced as a Support Persons to the Child (in Family Law related proceedings).
2.Purpose and Objective: The purpose of this assignment is to improve the status and rights of children participating in the family law related proceedings. The objective of this activity is to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Justice of Montenegro for conducting advanced training for professionals who obtained a licence to work as a Support Persons to the Child (in Family Law related proceedings). The focus of the training will be on the international standards with the special consideration on the CRC General comment no 12 i.e. the right of the child to be heard as one of the four general principles of the Convention and elaborate and discuss the right of every child to freely express her views, in all matters affecting her or him, and the subsequent right for those views to be given due weight, according to the child-s age and maturity. It will be, in addition, discussed about cases in practice so far where the Support Person was engaged to support a child during court proceedings and the reflection of it: obstacles, challenges and next steps for improvement.
3.Methodology and Technical Approach: The methodology will include desk review, written inputs, and consultations with the Ministry of Justice and other respective institutions, development of training methodology and delivery of the training. The two (2) national consultants are expected to work in a Team and will work both in the field and from home. Each Consultant will work from home in preparing the agenda and material for the training and is expected to conduct one time 2 days training for all 17 licenced Support Person to a Child.
4. Activities and Tasks: Under the guidance and supervision of UNICEF Child Protection Officer, and in close cooperation with the relevant representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the team of Consultants will be responsible for following:
· To familiarize with, within the preparatory phase, the new Amendments to the Family Law of Montenegro (2016), Bylaw on the education of the Support Persons to the Child in Family Law related proceedings (Official Gazette, No. 046/17 from 18/07/2017), Law on Free Legal Aid; Strategy for Judiciary Reform (2014-2018);
· To make reference to the following documents: Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); General Comments No.12 on children's right to be heard; General Comment no 14 on the right of the child to have his or her best interests taken as a primary consideration; European Convention on the Exercise of Child Rights; Council of Europe's Guidelines on Child Friendly Justice, UNICEF CEECIS Study: Children-s Equitable Access to Justice, etc.;
· To communicate with respective officials from the relevant institutions and UNICEF in order to receive in-depth guidance in order to develop a training materials;
· To determine agenda and develop training content and methodology in accordance with the requirements and needs on the basic inputs received by stakeholders, licenced Support persons to a child and UNICEF;
· Based on d
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