‘Building a child-friendly Europe: Turning a vision into reality’ - this was the objective the Council of Europe discussed with its partners at a conference in Monaco in late November 2011. Chaired by Princess Caroline of Hanover, around 200 representatives from governments and civil organisations debated topics such as justice, migration and violence against children. One special focus this year was on children and new media.

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"It is vital that children and youths are involved on all levels in the consultation about their rights" said Janice Richardson, coordinator of the Insafe network, in the workshop titled ‘Making children the masters of the game: data protection and the new media environment’. To further boost youth participation in online matters, she added, European Schoolnet has developed the Pan-EU Youth project and will soon be appointing youth ambassadors so that young people can report about their experiences on the internet and can be sure that policy makers listen.

Further objectives of the workshop included a discussion on children's rights on data protection (that is, for example, the minimum age requirement in online environments), data conservation of children's online activities, data abuse and the general need to remove children's traces on the internet. Some speakers emphasised the need for privacy options by default for children.

Other topics on the conference agenda included ‘Empowering children through learning: democratic citizenship and human rights education’ and ‘Children's rights start at home: strong families for strong children’. The conference was a follow-up to a 2006 conference in which the Council of Europe programme ‘Building a Europe for and with children’ was launched.

The delegates assessed where progress has been made on the issues identified earlier. The overall feedback was positive: "The protection of children’s rights has been improved in important policy areas," a speaker of the Council of Europe stated, however adding: "Despite the progress achieved, many challenges remain, while new threats to children’s rights have emerged."

Further information is available from the conference website.