Rights of the Child

Children are born with fundamental freedoms and the inherent rights of all human beings.
Every citizen – adults and children – should know and take into consideration rights of the child. Every child should be familiar with their fundamental rights in order to become aware of their existence, means of acquiring them and of protection in case of endangerment of the very rights by the other party.

At the same time, by acquiring knowledge on personal rights, children should create their attitude on personal responsibility towards rights of the other. Due to their mental and physical immaturity, children are an extremely vulnerable category and for that reason it is necessary to emphasize and point out rights that are guaranteed to them.

Dependent on legal system, definition and notion of a "child" is different. The UN Convention on Rights of the Child defines a child as "every human being below the age of 18 years unless, except the law apllicable to the child, majority is obtained earlier". In Croatian legal system, in criminal-justice cases, child is a person below the age of 14 years, while a juvenile is a person aged from 14 to 18. Regarding Family Law, a person obtains civil capacity with age of majority, that is, with marriage before age of majority, or when a person is more than 16 years old and has become a parent.

With the aim of acquiring higher level of protection and promotion of children's welfare in the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Justice, within its jurisdiction, and in cooperation with other state administration bodies continuously promotes legislative decisions in order to enable such a protection.

The Ministry of Justice also participates actively in international projects whose objective is to advance the level of children's rights protection ("Children in the Union – Rights of the child and strengthening child's position", Project in partnership with the Kingdom of Sweden).