Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-15-Speech-1-062"
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"en.19991115.5.1-062"2
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"Mr President, seeing the Daphne programme come up for renewal is a happy moment indeed. MEPs’ determination, from 1996, along with the report by Marianne Eriksson through to today’s report by Maria Antonia Avilés Perea have all enabled violence towards children, young persons and women to become the object of political action.
In speaking of politics, I choose my words carefully, because this violence is quite unacceptable in the view of countries that have taken the principle of human rights as their basis for fifty years. Please allow me then to emphasise the dignity of the victims of violence and the need to ensure that the health of these victims is understood to be both their mental and physical wellbeing. I think that prevention is the appropriate word. If we look at the issue in its totality, which is a question of taking action on the causes as well as the consequences, then it is obviously a political one in the sense that we would like the causes of violence, most often inflicted by men – and like Mrs Gröner, I deplore the fact that there are so few men present here in the Chamber this evening – to be studied and combated in the framework of the forthcoming programme. In the same way, we hope that by taking into account the consequences of violence and the effectiveness of a remedy and more besides, the aim will be to end this violence.
This is why we must give full scope to this programme, both in terms of children on the one hand and of women on the other. These are two categories of victims that it is important to be able to distinguish between. Europe must establish a Children’s Rights day, following the example of France, and which the European Parliament has been requesting for some time. Are we not celebrating the tenth anniversary of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child today?
This is also why the dignity of women must not be subject to any ambiguity. If the term “sexual exploitation” indeed describes the trade involving another person’s body, then there is no good trade, neither trafficking in human beings nor prostitution. The States cannot, as States, accept, let alone organise or even encourage the trade in women. The awareness of rape for example is quite recent, as it was so recently still considered to be at worst a misdemeanour, whereas today, we know that it is in fact a crime. Awareness has come recently but I am delighted that violence towards children and women is no longer taboo. While this programme has an experimental value, we should understand it to be something powerful, to be a model, and not only as an ad hoc experiment for Europe’s forthcoming enlargement, but as the responsibility of a democratic Europe towards the whole world. To my mind, we are committed to our responsibility as Europeans.
I would like to see the new Daphne programme applied as quickly as possible and if possible, with greater resources of time and finances. But I also hope that, beyond a health-based approach, we see that it is a question of people’s fundamental rights; I hope that this programme is guided by the objective of fighting all violence directed at women and children."@en1
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