ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank all the partners, associated partners and experts of the project “Children’s Rights Behind Bars” for their extremely valuable contributions in reflecting, preparing, commenting and revising this practical Guide. The research conducted in 14 countries, the national reports that ensued, the European overview that summarises them, as well as the participation of the whole team to the 3 seminars in Brussels in 2014 and 2015 have been extremely useful and constructive in the context of preparing this Guide. We particularly appreciated the commitment and efforts as well as the flexibility of everyone involved. complaint mechanisms, judges, lawyers, officials, directors and employees of places where children are deprived of their liberty, experts, researchers and other key actors who have provided their support to the research and the work carried out in the framework of this project. We thank warmly Aishling Heffernan, Paula Jack and Claire Brisset for their precious proofreadings of this Guide. Last but not least, we sincerely wish to thank all the children and young people who agreed to speak as part of this project and in doing so, shared their experience about the deprivation of their liberty and respect of their rights in these circumstances. We also thank the principal funder of this project - the European Union – as well as the co-funders – the Council of Europe, the “Fonds Houtman”, the “Loterie Nationale” and “WallonieBruxelles International” – without whom this project would not have been possible. Finally, a very special and sincere thank you to all of the DCI-Belgium team and interns for their work and their dedication and endless investment in bringing this project to fruition over the last two years. Everyone has contributed to this project at different levels. Moreover, we would like to thank the partners such as the CPT for their voluntary participation in the project as well as all the organisations of the civil society, members of the monitoring and 5