BackThe Ombudsman of Spain asks for a court-appointed lawyer for minors who want their opinions to be considered in legal proceedings. Ombudsman Soledad Becerril presented a paper analysing whether minors’ views are heard adequately in legal proceedings that affect them.
The Ombudsman of Spain, Soledad Becerril, has presented the paper “Active listening and the minor’s best interests: judicial review of protection measures and family proceedings” to Parliament. It analyses whether minors’ views are heard adequately in legal proceedings that affect them; whether their opinions are taken duly into account and whether their best interests, as set out in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, are respected. The Spanish version of the paper is available on the website of the Ombudsman.
The paper, which contains 17 recommendations addressed to the Secretariat of State for Justice and the Secretariat of State for Social Services and Equality, analyses two specific proceedings in which minors may be involved: those contesting protection measures (mainly about care and protection declarations) and family proceedings (separations and divorces).
The paper recommends that age criteria be eliminated and that minors be assumed to have sufficient capacity to have an opinion of their own, unless their lack of maturity is established in a technical report by the psycho-social team assigned to the court.
Court-appointed lawyers
The Ombudsman of Spain Institution also proposes that minors be given a court-appointed lawyer so that, independently of their parents or guardians, their opinions can be considered in proceedings in which issues are dealt with that have an impact on them.
The court-appointed lawyer would also help to make up for some of the shortcomings detected in the information given to the minors, and ensure communication by the child with the judge and the counsel for the prosecution.
For family proceedings, the Institution asks for a guardian ‘ad litem’ to be appointed when the counsel for the prosecution and the minor disagree over what is in the latter’s best interests.
The paper also recommends that the minor be informed of the court decision taken in matters affecting him/her, and that means of appeal be open for him/her.
Judges, counsels for the prosecution, lawyers and representatives of the psycho-social teams assigned to judicial organs worked together with the Ombudsman’s Office on this case study. They took part in four think-tank conferences held at the main office of the Institution in October 2013. One of the conferences was attended, also, by a number of representatives of Plataforma de Infancia, an alliance embodying most of the agencies and institutions working in this field.
Source: Office of the Ombudsman, Spain
