Committee on the Rights of the Child

List of issues in relation to the seventh periodic report of Seychelles *

1.The State Party is requested to submit in writing additional, updated information, of 10,700 words maximum, by 15 October 2026. The Committee may take up all aspects of children’s rights set out in the Convention during the dialogue with the State Party.

Part I

2.Please provide information on the efforts made:

(a)To finalize the review of legislation referred to in the State Party’s report to ensure its compliance with the Convention, specifying the status and the contents of the amendments to the Children Act (1982) and the Employment Act, the legislative proposals to address sexual offences and the processing of evidence, the Early Childhood Development Bill (2022) and the regulation on standards for childcare centres;

(b)To implement the legislation relevant to the rights of the child, specifying the resources allocated thereto;

(c)To develop a comprehensive policy and strategy covering all areas under the Convention and children in vulnerable situations and to allocate resources for its implementation;

(d)To strengthen the Social Services Division of the Ministry of Social Affairs, as the Committee recommended in its concluding observations on thecombined fifth and sixthperiodicreports of the State Party, and to ensure coordination, while avoiding duplication, between the various entities involved in the implementation of the Convention at the cross-sectoral, national, regional and local levels.

3.Please provide information on the progress made in:

(a)Assessing the budget needs of children and allocating adequate budgetary resources for the implementation of the Convention, establishing budgeting with monitoring and evaluation systems for assessing and tracking the impact of resource allocations on children’s rights and strategic budgetary lines for children in vulnerable situations;

(b)Establishing a comprehensive data-collection system to cover all areas of the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto and improving the collection, analysis and use of disaggregated data on children’s rights;

(c)Conducting a study on the socioeconomic and sociocultural factors, such as discriminatory perceptions and attitudes, that may impede the full implementation of the Convention, as previously recommended.

4.Please provide information about:

(a)The mandates of the Seychelles Human Rights Commission and the Ombudsman’s Office in relation to children’s rights, and the efforts made to raise awareness about their mandates, especially among children, their parents and caregivers, and to ensure their compliance with the principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles);

(b)Whether these bodies are mandated to visit institutions responsible for protecting children’s rights and to provide reports on such visits and their outcome;

(c)Pathways for access to justice and remedies for children, including under the Optional Protocol on a communications procedure.

5.Please provide information about:

(a)Systematic training provided to relevant professional groups on the Convention, the Optional Protocols thereto and the Committee’s concluding observations, specifying the impact of the training and awareness-raising initiatives on knowledge of the Convention and whether the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto are covered in the school curriculum;

(b)Progress made in establishing a regulatory framework for the business sector, as previously recommended, and in investigating any negative impact of companies on children, including in the tourism, fishing and farming industries;

(c)How civil society is involved in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of laws, policies, plans and programmes relating to children’s rights.

6.Please describe the progress made in implementing the Committee’s previous recommendations with regard to:

(a)Prohibiting discrimination on all of the grounds listed in article 2 of the Convention;

(b)Removing the gender-discriminatory provision on “carnal knowledge” from article 15 (3) of the Penal Code;

(c)Adopting a comprehensive anti-discrimination strategy;

(d)Collecting disaggregated data in relation to access to health, access to education, protection from violence, participation and other rights protected under the Convention and its Optional Protocols, to enable effective monitoring of de facto discrimination.

7.Please provide information on existing or envisaged:

(a)Procedures and criteria for the assessment and determination of the best interests of the child;

(b)Processes for impact assessments of legislation and policies on the realization of the right of children to have their best interests taken as a primary consideration;

(c)Rules and regulations to ensure that children’s views are given due weight in all proceedings, in accordance with their age and maturity, specifying which issues have been identified as most important to children, including through the Seychelles National Youth Assembly, Student Forums and Student Councils, and how children are engaged in developing and implementing legislation, policies and programmes on such issues;

(d)Measures taken to provide children with access to information from a variety of sources, including online sources, while protecting them from harmful content and guaranteeing their right to privacy.

8.Please describe:

(a)The impact of the measures taken, including the adoption of the Civil Status (Amendment) Act (2021), which introduced mandatory birth registration, with regard to the birth registration rate, the delivery of identity documents and access to nationality, particularly for children born to unmarried, unknown and/or non-citizen parents, abandoned children and unattended births;

(b)Plans to revise legislation to ensure that all children born to unmarried parents have the right to know and maintain contact with their parents, as previously recommended;

(c)The measures taken to end and prevent childhood statelessness, including by establishing legal safeguards and ratifying the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness;

(d)The compatibility of the compulsory religious education with articles 2, 14 and 30 of the Convention.

9.Please specify the measures taken:

(a)To assess the impact of the legislative amendments harmonizing the minimum age of marriage at 18 years of age on the prevalence of child marriage, specifying plans to remove exceptions and the measures taken to address sociocultural norms enabling this practice;

(b)To promote positive parenting, address deep-rooted social norms and develop early intervention programmes, as an alternative to imprisonment, for parents who abuse their children, specifying the results of the implementation of the prohibition of corporal punishment in all settings;

(c)To establish a legal and institutional framework, policy, strategy and mechanisms to prevent and address all forms of violence against children, including the increased incidence of neglect and sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly in travel and tourism, and to establish special procedures to investigate sexual offences against children and a data-collection system on all forms of violence against children;

(d)To encourage the reporting of cases of violence against children, including in closed settings, specifying how the statistics collected from the single helpline established in 2021 were used to inform legislation and policies;

(e)To expand services for recovery and reintegration for child victims, providing statistics on the children who have had access to such services;

(f)To raise public awareness of the right of children to be protected from all forms of violence and abuse.

10.Please provide information on the measures taken:

(a)To strengthen family support, including through social protection services, to allow children to grow up in a family environment and to keep families together;

(b)To accelerate the legal reform on equal rights and responsibilities of parents, specifying the impact of the measures taken on the participation of fathers in family life and the upbringing of children;

(c)To pursue the reform of alternative care, with a view to transitioning to family-based care options and strengthening the regulation and monitoring of placements, including placements provided by faith-based organizations and informal placements, specifying the results of the inspection of residential care homes;

(d)To reintegrate children in alternative care with their families when in their best interests, and to support children leaving care, particularly regarding housing;

(e)To support children of incarcerated parents and encourage rehabilitative ties and family reintegration after release;

(f)To adopt a human rights-based approach to disability, prevent the institutionalization of children with disabilities and ensure access to healthcare, day-care facilities, mainstream education, public transport and infrastructure, leisure and play and support services tailored to the child’s needs.

11.Please provide information on measures taken:

(a)To reduce neonatal and under-5 mortality, ensure universal vaccination coverage and encourage exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life and an appropriate infant diet thereafter, including measures to address obesity and malnutrition;

(b)To prevent adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including by implementing mandatory sexual and reproductive health education at school, providing timely and age-appropriate sexual and reproductive health services and promoting and ensuring free and confidential access to contraception without parental consent, as well as access to safe abortion for adolescent girls;

(c)To prevent HIV infections among children and adolescents and mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS, and ensure access to antiretroviral treatment for children, mothers and pregnant women living with HIV;

(d)To develop mental health support services for children and adolescents, specifying the major mental health concerns that they experience;

(e)To address the prevalence of the use by children of alcohol, tobacco and drugs, promote healthy lifestyles and protect children and adolescents affected by drug use from falling into street situations and drug trafficking;

(f)To address the impact of climate change and environmental degradation on children’s health, promote awareness thereof among children and ensure child participation in environmental matters.

12.Please provide information on:

(a)Research undertaken to identify the root causes behind school dropout rates and the measures taken to address them, including by strengthening the quality of education, modernizing the curriculum, investing in teacher training and recruitment and addressing adolescent pregnancy and drug addiction, specifying the impact of such measures;

(b)The measures taken to provide support to pregnant girls and young mothers in continuing their education and to increase vocational training for girls in non-traditional fields;

(c)The results and challenges in the implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy, introduced in 2015, with regard to ensuring access to all levels of mainstream education for children with disabilities and other children in vulnerable situations, including through reasonable accommodation, accessible school infrastructure and transport, revision of the curriculum, teacher training and educational support;

(d)The results of the implementation of the Vocational Training and Rehabilitation Programme for children and young persons with disabilities;

(e)The measures taken to address multidimensional child poverty, including the review of the housing policy and social welfare assistance framework, and their impact, with particular attention to large and single-parent families, children affected by obesity and substance abuse and children not in employment, education or training.

13.Please provide information on:

(a)The progress made in establishing a national legislative asylum framework with procedures for the determination of refugee status and appropriate conditions for the reception of asylum-seeking and refugee children, and in developing referral and case-management frameworks for services for such children, as previously recommended;

(b)The measures taken to prevent the economic exploitation of children, and to protect children from such exploitation, including in the context of travel and tourism and in the informal sector, specifying the progress made in the adoption and implementation of the list of hazardous work and the regulations on children working in mines;

(c)The status since 2021 of the draft national action plan to combat trafficking and the measures taken to prevent and eliminate trafficking in children, including for the purposes of sexual exploitation, begging and drug trafficking, to improve the identification of child victims and to ensure their protection and rehabilitation;

(d)The progress made in the implementation of the child justice system, in particular with regard to: (i) any plans to increase the age of criminal responsibility, which is currently 10 years of age; (ii) access to legal aid; (iii) the implementation of alternatives to detention at the pretrial stage; (iv) conditions of detention, specifying the measures taken to ensure that children are not detained together with adults and to address reported overcrowding and violence; and (v) any specialized detention facilities for persons under 18 years of age.

Part II

14.The Committee invites the State Party to provide a brief update, of no more than three pages, on the information set out in its report with regard to the following:

(a)New bills or laws, and their respective regulations;

(b)New institutions and their mandates or institutional reforms;

(c)Recently introduced policies, programmes and action plans and their scope and financing;

(d)Recent ratifications of human rights instruments.

Part III

Data, statistics and other information

15.Please provide consolidated information for the past three years on the budget lines regarding children and the social sectors, indicating the percentage of each budget line in terms of the total national budget and the gross national product. Please also provide information on the geographical allocation of those resources.

16.Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on the following:

(a)Child deaths due to accidents, violence or abuse and suicide;

(b)Children living with HIV/AIDS;

(c)Child marriage and adolescent pregnancy and abortions;

(d)Stateless children;

(e)Asylum-seeking, refugee and unaccompanied and separated migrant children;

(f)Children belonging to minorities;

(g)Working children, including those working in the informal sector;

(h)Children victims of violence, including domestic violence, abuse and neglect, sexual exploitation and abuse, including in travel and tourism;

(i)Child victims of trafficking;

(j)Children affected by drug and substance abuse;

(k)Children in street situations;

(l)Children of school age who do not attend school;

(m)Children living in poverty.

17.Please provide data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, socioeconomic background, type of disability, ethnic origin and geographical location, on the number of children deprived of a family environment who are or who have been:

(a)Separated from their families, including the duration of their separation;

(b)Placed in institutions, including in placements provided by faith-based organizations, including the number and type of institutions, with data on the children placed in each institution, disaggregated by age and sex;

(c)Placed with foster families;

(d)Placed in informal placements;

(d)Available for adoption;

(e)Adopted domestically;

(f)Adopted internationally.

18.Please provide data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of disability, ethnic origin and geographical location, on the number of children with disabilities who are or who have been:

(a)Living with their families;

(b)Living in institutions;

(c)Attending preschool;

(d)Attending regular primary schools;

(e)Attending regular secondary schools;

(f)Receiving individualized support, including homeschooling;

(g)Attending special schools, including the School for the Exceptional Child;

(h)Participating in the Vocational Training and Rehabilitation Programme;

(i)Out of school;

(j)Abandoned by their families.

19.Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of offence, ethnic and national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on children alleged as, accused of or recognized as having infringed criminal law who are or who have been:

(a)Arrested;

(b)Referred to diversion programmes;

(c)Placed in pretrial detention;

(d)Detained with adults;

(e)Convicted and serving a sentence in detention, indicating the length of the sentence in each case;

(f)Placed in solitary confinement.

20.Please provide information on how a children’s rights-based approach is integrated into the planning, implementation and monitoring of measures for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including with regard to the participation of children and data collection, and on how those measures promote the realization of children’s rights under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto.

21.Please provide the Committee with an update of any data in the report that may have become outdated by more recent data collected or other new developments.

22.In addition, the State Party may list areas affecting children that it considers to be of priority with regard to the implementation of the Convention.