to create the situation for children ensured to them by the Constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and legislation”. We would be pleased if the described trend were already the result of such activities. Since the project began, 490 children have had advocates appointed for them. In 2015, 55 requests to appoint an advocate were received. 2.15 CHILDREN’S RIGHTS Slovenia has not yet eliminated the violation of Article 17 of the European Social Charter, which was determined by the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe (it failed to prohibit corporal punishment of children). The Ombudsman thus recommends that corporal punishment of children be defined by amendments to the Family Violence Prevention Act, which is subject to public discussion at the time of writing this report. In the 2014 report, we stressed that the Republic of Slovenia was unjustifiably delaying the ratification of the Third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Slovenia signed on 28 February 2012. The Ombudsman proposed that the Government systematically monitor the signing and ratification of international treaties in the field of children’s rights, and order the competent ministries to establish actual and legal barriers to the prompt ratification of treaties (recommendation no. 107). In its response report, the Government failed to clarify substantive reasons for delaying the ratification, but merely partially described the procedure of inter-ministerial cooperation. Such practice displays a lack of seriousness regarding international obligations and the unacceptable practice of state representatives who conclude international agreements to gain political support and then fail to ratify and transpose these policies to the internal legal order. These issues were also discussed at the meeting of the CRONSEE network (Children’s Rights Ombudspersons’ Network in South and Eastern Europe) in autumn 2015. The majority of the network’s member states had already ratified the Optional Protocol. Cooperation with non-governmental organisations continued regularly within the Centre ZIPOM. In 2015, we anticipated a conference on the participation of children, where the realisation of proposals and requirements of young people formed at the conference in November 2014 would be determined. Due to the complexity of preparing the conference and other obligations at the anticipated time, we rescheduled it for 2016. In 2015, we also attended discussions in local and regional children’s parliaments and at the national children’s parliament which addressed the issue of education and vocational orientation. The Ombudsman is certain that children’s parliaments are a good way of enforcing children’s right to freedom of opinion and expression, and all relevant authorities should pay more attention to them at all levels of discussion. Our cooperation in the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC) was implemented mainly by e-mail; we discussed violence against children at the conference in Amsterdam in September 2015. At the conference of the CRONSEE network in Osijek, we discussed a very interesting aspect of enforcing children’s rights: between the interests of parents and obligations of the state. 2.15.2 Advocate – A Child’s Voice Project In 2015, the Government again failed to realise the National Assembly’s decision in 2013 to draft a special act on advocacy. We thus continued and upgraded the pilot project. It was revealed in practice that more attention must be paid to the work of advocates and their relationship with all participants in the procedure. In addition to supervision and intervision, we also appointed an ethics commission, which assesses individual actions, particularly from the aspect of compliance with the Code of Ethics. The procedure of periodically establishing advocates’ competence (licence renewal) will be arranged legally in 2016, and thus, almost all expert groundwork for preparing suitable legal solutions will have been done. It was agreed with the Minister of Justice that we would examine the possibility of including advocacy among the Ombudsman’s regular tasks within the anticipated amendments to the Human Rights Ombudsman Act. An advocate was appointed in 27 cases to 41 children. The appointment of an advocate was initiated by social work centres in 15 cases (out of 27 appointments), by a primary school in one case and by one of the parents in eleven cases. In six cases, an advocate was appointed by the decision of a social work centre and with parents’ consent in remaining cases. At the time of writing this report, the possibility of appointing an advocate is being considered in seven cases. The majority of appointments, i.e. six, were in the wider Ljubljana area, followed by the Notranjska region, the Karst and the southern Primorska region with five cases. The Gorenjska, Dolenjska, the north-eastern part of Slovenia and the Celje and Koroška regions each had four cases. No advocates were appointed in the Goriška region in 2015. So, in cooperation with Nova Gorica Social Work Centre, we organised a panel discussion for this region at the beginning of 2016, where we introduced the advocacy project to all interested parties. Many people attended the panel; however, no representatives of the judicial branch of power were in attendance. We were unable to appoint an advocate in 21 cases, because the conditions for appointing one were unfulfilled. The reasons for non-appointment were various and included: - In three cases, a social work centre required a guardian for a special case, i.e. for a baby in two cases, and once to represent a child in a compensation claim. The social work centres’ requests were rejected in these cases, since an advocate would not be able to fulfil their purpose substantively. - In seven cases, one of the parents refused to consent, and the social work centre did not find it necessary to appoint an advocate with a decision in spite of our appeal. - An advocate was not appointed in five cases because matters were resolved during the discussion of the request and the child no longer needed an advocate. -A  n advocate was not appointed in one case because the adolescent was of age. More attention was paid to the promoting the project in 2015 and presenting it to the public. We believe that certain social work centres still do not trust advocates and frequently do not know in which situations an advocate can be most beneficial to a child. Another problem lies in the fact that, when appointing a guardian for a special case with a decision, the tasks of the guardian must be defined in detail, since an advocate in the role of guardian is not a suitable representative in court. The role and tasks of the advocate will have to be defined in more detail by an act. A special introduction of the project to judges is planned for 2016, because many of them have reservations when appointing advocates, while others appoint them frequently and are also pleased with their work and results. 2.15.3 Family relationships In the 2014 report, we recommended that the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities accelerate the preparation of a new family code (recommendation no. 110). Unfortunately, we established that this work has been suspended due to the amendments to the Marriage and Family Relations Act, which was rejected in a referendum, which in accordance with the law also prevents the National Assembly from taking a different decision on the contents of the Act within one year after the referendum decision. Of course, the referendum decision does not prevent the preparation of expert groundwork from being continued, which should, among other things, divide in more detail the work of social work centres and courts. It has namely been detected in practice that social work centres still decide on contacts between a child and persons the child holds dear. What is more, the Act should also define in more detail decisions related to a child that may not be taken only by the parent to whom the child was entrusted after divorce. Example: in the case of a change of a child’s permanent residence, administrative units are usually satisfied by the proposal of one parent, while schools do not request consent from the other parent when enrolling a child. At the end of 2015, the project included 51 active advocates; for various reasons, six advocates were inactive. 148 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA FOR 2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA FOR 2015 149 2.15 CHILDREN’S RIGHTS The nature of the issues in this field remained the same as in previous years. There is a growing need for new family legislation which consistently determines the division of jurisdiction between the executive and judicial branches of power, the obligation to acquire children’s opinion in all legal procedures, establishes the prohibition of corporal punishment of children and, above all, ensures prompt and effective action by the competent authorities upon every violation of children’s rights.