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Smiling girl: "Children are tomorrow's society, they are our future"
Photo: Peathegee Inc / Getty Images
Skateboard courts, festivals, cultural projects: there are cities such as Hamburg and Leipzig where children and young people can help decide something like this.
Child and youth parliaments enable them to participate in political life and to exercise their rights.
According to Unicef, cities and municipalities should participate more in realizing children's rights.
Because whether children and young people can develop their abilities well and participate in social and political life is decided in their home, the neighborhood, the school, in the district.
A Unicef survey on World Children's Day on September 20 throws light on the measures municipalities are already taking to become more child-friendly.
For this purpose, 123 large, medium-sized and small cities and municipalities in Germany were surveyed.
The results are not representative, but they give a first impression of the state of children's rights in this country.
The bigger and richer a community, the more children can participate
The municipalities should answer, among other things, whether there are enough leisure activities, to what extent young people are supported in the transition from school to work or to what extent it can be guaranteed for children and young people that daycare centers and schools are close to their place of residence.
According to the survey, just under half of the municipalities (49 percent) state that they have binding action plans or catalogs of measures for realizing children's rights.
Three quarters of all municipalities surveyed enable children and young people to take part in surveys.
In less than half of the municipalities surveyed (43 percent), children and young people are allowed to make their own decisions about what budgets are used for.
In just over a third of the municipalities (39 percent) children and young people are allowed to get involved in institutions of the "adult world".
Interesting here: the bigger and richer a municipality, the more children can participate in decisions.
According to the study, this could be due to human resources that are necessary to effectively involve children and young people in decision-making in public institutions.
The researchers conclude that strengthening children's rights should play a bigger role for local authorities, as this would encourage young families to move there, or at least visit them.
In an interview, the President of the German Association of Cities, Helmut Dedy, explains what cities and municipalities in Germany are already doing to implement children's rights - and where they need to be improved.
To person
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Helmut Dedy
, 62, studied law at the University of Cologne.
In 1992 he started working as an environmental officer at the Association of Cities and Towns in North Rhine-Westphalia.
He has been with the German Association of Cities since 2012, and as General Manager since 2016.
Dedy is married and has one son.
SPIEGEL:
Less than half of the municipalities surveyed stated in the Unicef survey that they have binding action plans to strengthen children's rights.
Why do many municipalities not take children's rights seriously?
Helmut Dedy:
The Unicef survey doesn't show that at all.
The decisive factor is not whether you have an action plan, but what you do specifically to strengthen children's rights.
SPIEGEL:
What exactly are cities and municipalities doing?
Dedy:
There are children's representatives in Munich and Wolfsburg, Berlin has a children's parliament, Cologne has an action plan.
There are different paths, but all these cities say we want to stand up for the interests of children.
And that permanently.
But of course there is a lot of catching up to do in many municipalities, for example in how children and young people can be systematically and continuously involved in decisions.
SPIEGEL:
How can that work?
Dedy:
The municipalities have to
approach
the children and young people on site, ask about their specific wishes and ideas and enter into an exchange with one another.
An important success factor is then to support the children and adolescents in this process with competent educational staff.
It is also important not only to ask children what a playground should look like, but also to consider their own perspective.
At 80 centimeters, children look differently at a city than we adults do at 180 centimeters.
SPIEGEL:
How can cities and municipalities take the view of the little ones into account?
Dedy:
In Stuttgart, individual parts of the city are visited with small children.
Then the children receive a map of the city, where they can put green pins in the places where they feel comfortable.
They stick a red pin in places where they don't feel comfortable.
An unexpected cluster of red needles indicates a problem area in the city.
Municipalities must learn to understand what children have to say and ask accordingly.
SPIEGEL:
For example?
Dedy:
Eine Stadt in Finnland hat Kinder gefragt, wie sie sich den neuen Spielplatz vorstellen, der dort hinkommen soll, wo ein Gebüsch steht. Da sagten sie, hier müsse eine Rutsche hin und dort eine Schaukel. Als die Stadt dann aber danach fragte, wie die Kinder am liebsten auf dem Platz spielen, sagten sie, es solle unbedingt das Gebüsch auf dem Platz stehen bleiben.
SPIEGEL:
Und für Jugendliche gibt es dann nochmal eine andere Sprache?
Dedy:
Wenn Sie Jugendliche fragen, wir wollen mal hören, was ihr denkt, dann ernten Sie wahrscheinlich ein Gähnen. Wichtig ist es, sie ernst zu nehmen.
SPIEGEL:
How can that work?
Dedy:
Das schaffen Sie, wenn die Jugendlichen ein klares Ergebnis ihrer Entscheidungen sehen. In Biberach an der Riss in Baden-Württemberg etwa konnten Jugendliche ein Jugendhaus mitplanen. Am Ende wurde das Haus nach ihren Vorstellungen gebaut. Städte müssen Jugendliche aber auch bei ihren Vorlieben abholen.
SPIEGEL:
Aha, und wie geht das?
Dedy:
In Bad Krozingen in Baden Württemberg etwa hat ein Jugendbüroleiter das Computerspiel Minecraft genutzt, um Jugendliche an kommunalen Entscheidungen zu beteiligen. Mit dem Spiel konnten sie einen Skatepark entwerfen.
"Kinder sind die Gesellschaft von morgen, sie sind unsere Zukunft. Wir brauchen ihre Stimmen"
Helmut Dedy
SPIEGEL:
Warum ist es so wichtig, Kinder und Jugendliche mit entscheiden zu lassen?
Dedy:
Kinder sind die Gesellschaft von morgen, sie sind unsere Zukunft. Wir brauchen ihre Stimmen - etwa bei der Verkehrswende. Das ist demokratiefördernd. Und je mehr man alle Gruppen einer Gesellschaft beteiligt, umso mehr identifizieren sie sich mit ihrer Kommune. Identität ist Heimat.
SPIEGEL:
Laut der Studie scheitern aber vor allem ärmere Kommunen daran, Kinderrechte ernst zu nehmen.
Dedy:
Auch die nehmen Kinderrechte ernst. Durch Familienberatungsstellen und Jugendhilfe schützen sie ja die Schwächsten. Das ist ihr Job. So richtig Schwarze Schafe hatten wir in der Studie nicht, aber es haben sich wahrscheinlich auch eher die Kommunen beteiligt, die ohnehin schon etwas für Kinderrechte tun.
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