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Tag: policy input

Assessing a National Educational Policy on Trans, Gender Variant and Intersex Children

We’ve spent the past few months working on a policy assessment tool that we’ll be using to review Malta’s policy on trans, gender variant and intersex children. The policy was published on 16 June 2015.

Running from January to December 2015, this project brings us together as partners with, MGRM, the Ministry for Education and Employment and the Ministry for Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties.

The project will conduct a qualitative research exercise assessing the immediate impact on schools of Malta’s new national Educational Policy on Trans, Gender Variant and Intersex Students.

Following the development of specific indicators in consultation with policy-makers, the project will base this assessment on attitudes and approaches of schools to trans, gender variant and intersex children and youth, and their families, in order to ascertain the effectiveness and sustainability of the policy.

The project’s assessment tool will lend itself to future further assessments for on-going evaluation, as well as possible use in other educational policy areas such as racism.

Our Director commented, “we are extremely happy to partner with governmental and non-governmental entities in such an important initiative as this further strengthens our potential impact on national human rights standards. We are also keen to advocate for the introduction of regular and inclusive policy review exercises on the basis of human rights indicators.”

Visit the Project Page.

This project is funded by ILGA-Europe, through the Documentation and Advocacy Fund (funding cycle 2014).

integration human rights Malta immigration

NGO Submissions to the Public Consultation on National Migrant Integration Strategy 2015- 2020

aditus foundation, Integra, Jesuit Refugee Service Malta, KOPIN and Organisation for Friendship in Diversity presented joint submissions as part of their input into the Public Consultation on the National Migrant Integration Strategy 2015-2020 launched by the Ministry of Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties (MSDC).

Our submissions were presented in response to the key areas and questions identified by the Consultation Document, namely

  1. Defending rights and fulfilling duties;
  2. Resolving social barriers and providing opportunities;
  3. Promoting intercultural relations / Raising public awareness on integration;
  4. Civil participation; and
  5. Institutional Dialogue

In our submission document, we outlined our recommendations in order to further develop the identified key areas into a comprehensive national integration strategy. Furthermore, we outlined a number of other sectors that need specific reference in any long-term national strategy on integration, these being long-term residence, family reunification, citizenship, political participation and health.

Specific mention was also made of the need to target the most vulnerable migrants including those at risk of extreme poverty, persons suffering from health (including mental) problems, persons with a disability, single heads of households, unaccompanied minors and separated children, and victims of torture, human trafficking or other forms of severe human rights violations.

Finally, we recommended that the national strategy should be backed up by valid disaggregated data which must be collected and analysed regularly and that monitoring of such is a key in order to continuously assess the implementation and effectiveness of the strategy itself.

Our full submissions are available here (.pdf). It can also be found on our Publications page, under the Policy Input heading.

Joint submissions on Malta’s draft National Children’s Policy

This morning aditus and JRS Malta submitted their joint submissions to the Malta Ministry for Education and Employment on the draft National Children’s Policy.  The draft Policy was launched for public consultation in November 2011.

In our joint submission with JRS, we gathered our proposals under two main headings.  Firstly, we urged the Maltese authorities to ensure a mainstreamed approach to any national children’s policy, to ensure that all migrant and refugee children are included in all policies adopted at a national level in an indiscriminate manner.

Secondly, we focused on key areas of concern to us with regard to the situation of migrant and refugee children in Malta including: detention, legal guardianship, the asylum procedure and the age assessment procedure.

You can download and read our submission here.