[Statement] The Government Must Fully Review the “Plan to Strengthen the Child Abuse Response System” from a Child Rights Perspective

On 19 January 2021, the government announced the “Plan to Strengthen the Child Abuse Response System.” It is the result of the first Social Affairs Ministerial Meeting, attended by officials from across ministries, including the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Justice, and the Korean National Police Agency. The plan is set against the background of the case last 13 October in which a 16-month-old child died of abuse by adoptive parents about eight months after being adopted (hereinafter the “Yangcheon case”). However, the government’s plan avoids diagnosing the root causes of the problem and merely lists fragmentary solutions. We cannot help but ask whether the government has seriously reflected on what the best interests of the child are and on what the role of the state is in guaranteeing children’s rights.

The essential problem of the Yangcheon case is that the child protection system, meant to prevent child abuse and rescue abused children, did not function properly. There were three reports of abuse in total, and there were ample opportunities to save the child. Neighbors, a daycare teacher, and medical institution staff each played their part in protecting the child, and it is the role of the public sector to support their responsibilities. Yet none of the public institutions that held a defined role in the child protection system properly grasped the particularity and urgency of the case. The lack of sensitivity and understanding among public institutions regarding children’s human rights, which civil society has pointed out every time a child abuse death has occurred for several years, has not improved at all.

The government should therefore have considered how to improve the entire process of the child protection system from the perspective of children’s human rights. But this government plan shows no trace of such consideration. For example, it repeatedly stresses strengthening the expertise of frontline staff, but the methods and details for strengthening expertise are very scarce. The “expertise” of staff in the child protection system must be built through education and training grounded in a deep understanding of children and placing the protection of children’s human rights as the core value, and such education and training must presuppose the organization, staff, and budget to support it. Without concrete measures to design the education and training curriculum from the perspective of children’s human rights and to strengthen expertise through internal and external monitoring, calling for stronger expertise with measures that amount to little more than increasing job training and refresher training hours for dedicated public officials and banning job rotation will only add to the burden on the field.

The system of immediate separation upon “two reports,” which the government has stressed since November last year, is also not a sufficient measure. Immediate separation of a child from abuse is extremely important, but the number of reports alone must not be the criterion. Even for a first report of child abuse, officials must go to the scene promptly and investigate, and separate the child urgently if this is necessary to protect the child. If necessary to properly judge the child’s risk of abuse, emergency measures such as a health examination of the child must be taken. To judge the urgency and gravity of a case, the expertise of child abuse response staff and their sensitivity to children’s human rights are essential. After separation, support for and intervention with the child and the family must be prepared. If unconditional separation measures are carried out without preparation, the child will be suddenly forced to move to an unfamiliar living environment, and life in a large-scale care facility restricts the child’s freedom of individual life.

Because child abuse results from a combination of various social, economic, and personal factors, international human rights norms take support for the child’s family of origin as a principle. Where unavoidable, an alternative care system for child protection should be provided, but separation of a child from the family should be carried out only temporarily and as a last resort, and efforts for the child’s return to the family of origin must not stop. Furthermore, the child’s opinion must be heard at every stage of deciding on protective measures for the child; even when a child is separated from the family, the environment in which the child lives must be similar to a family; institutional care must be kept to a minimum; and the ultimate aim must be deinstitutionalization. These points are repeatedly emphasized.

Separation from the family of origin must be judged according to the principle of the best interests of the child, and the child’s right to be heard must be fully guaranteed throughout the process. The child’s right to a stable life calls for an important duty of the state, including providing appropriate information to the child concerned, enabling the child to express opinions, and informing the child of the discussion process and the results for decision-making. Even so, the fact that the government is still presenting mechanical immediate separation of children and institutional care as its countermeasures is an idea of administrative convenience that forgets that children, too, are dignified and independent subjects of their own lives.

In addition, no concrete measures are presented to strengthen public responsibility in the adoption system, an important pillar of the child protection system. In the case of the death of a Korean child adopted to the United States in 2014 (the so-called “Hyunsoo case”), the government also announced a plan to inspect adoption agencies “quarterly,” but it never properly carried this out. Under the current 「Special Adoption Act」 (입양특례법), the Minister of Health and Welfare and the heads of local governments already have the authority to guide and supervise adoption agencies and to manage and supervise them, for example by suspending operations or revoking permits when an agency infringes the rights and interests of the person referred for adoption, but it is hard to find cases in which this authority has been exercised meaningfully. The plan to “strengthen public responsibility in adoption procedures,” presented without fundamental reflection on an adoption system that is detached from the public child protection system and operated mainly by private agencies, is nothing but a fine-sounding wrapper.

It is also a great disappointment that, even though deaths of children whose births were not reported keep occurring, the government did not consider introducing the birth notification system and the universal birth registration system, which are the foundation of the child protection system. It is self-evident that gaps in child protection and welfare will shrink only if every child born in Korean society is registered in public records. As recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, it is urgent to prepare measures that can equally protect all children in Korean society by introducing the birth notification system and the universal birth registration system.

We can only see this government plan as a list of policies hastily put forward to calm public opinion for the moment, without a serious diagnosis and evaluation of the causes of the Yangcheon case. Although there were several opportunities to save the child in the course of events, the plan contains no thorough investigation of what problems in the child protection system were revealed at each stage, and no concrete institutional improvements to prevent recurrence. We therefore strongly demand that the government fully review this “Plan to Strengthen the Child Abuse Response System” from the perspective of children’s human rights and give priority to the following points in preparing improvement measures.

1. Submit practical measures to expand the public child protection system and its staff.

2. Immediately establish a community-based child protection system.

3. Secure expertise among child abuse response staff.

4. Prepare a system for communication among the ministries and institutions responsible for responding to child abuse.

5. Devote the capacity of the state as a first priority to supporting the protection of the child within the family of origin.

6. Build a support system for crisis pregnancy and childbirth, and strengthen the content and accessibility of child-rearing support services for the family of origin.

7. Have the public sector take responsibility for adoption and operate it in an integrated way with the child protection system.

8. Inspect the entire child abuse response system through a thorough state-level fact-finding investigation.