Expert Seminar
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is my pleasure to welcome you all to Iceland to participate in this important expert seminar on Child Friendly Forensic Investigations. We are extremely happy that so many distinguished experts from almost all the member states of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) are attending.
As you may be aware of, it became the responsibility of Iceland to assume the presidency of the CBSS from mid year of 2005. Therefore we felt it would be appropriate to express our appreciation to the cooperation of the CBSS by suggesting that the Working Group on Children Risk would meet in Iceland, a meeting that took place couple of days ago. Furthermore, Iceland wanted to contribute to further cooperation in the forensic investigation of child sexual abuse, a topic that we feel that Iceland certainly has something very special to offer by the operation of the Children´s House. This is why Iceland suggested at the Ministerial Meeting in Oslo in May 2005 that this expert meeting be held now in Iceland.
Protecting children is one of the principles of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. It is the responsibility of every state and it´s citizens to protect children against sexual exploitation not least because such violence against children is a gross violation of the rights of the child to protection and self dignity. Helping the child to recover from such a traumatic experience and not least develop methods to gather evidence against the perpretrator is of great importance to Iceland as it hopefully is to every state in the world. Therefore the government of Iceland welcomes the fact that this expert seminar is held here in Iceland. Sexual exploitation of children is an international problem and therefore it can only be dealt with through international cooperation between professionals, governmental institutions and agencies and non-governmental organisations. This problem is a concern of all communities and societies around the world.
I wish you a good and productive meeting and I thank you for your important work in protecting children in Iceland as elsewhere in the world.
