Legal Safeguards for Children without Parental Protection in Romania: A Study of Minors with Parents Serving Prison Sentences

In the 30 years since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified, despite ongoing improvement and change in perspective regarding these rights, we remain in the early stages. This is especially so for vulnerable groups such as children whose parents are serving a custodial sentence. In Romania, the rights of the child have evolved slowly since the communist era, when children were considered an asset to socialism – during this period, the Roman law designation of the ‘pater familias’ as the father was assumed by the state. Despite Romania’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as early as 1990, the road ahead was long, and significant steps were taken long after that point. We observe that it took 14 years from the ratification of the convention for the law on the protection of children’s rights to be adopted, and another 19 years to admit that the legal instrument itself was insufficient for defending the rights of minors and even for preserving the family, the rights of parents, and their roles in society. This study analyses the situation of children whose parent or parents were incarcerated, with their parental contact limited, consequently affecting their fundamental rights as children. We demonstrate how children’s rights have evolved in Romania and how the legislature has come to identify categories of risk, focusing on the situation of children with parents serving a custodial sentence and their protection methods. We consider it important to provide an overview of this category of children, especially with the enforcement of Act No. 156/2023 regarding processes for preventing separation of children from families, which is an integrated instrument in domestic legislation aimed at implementing the protection that vulnerable children should receive in practice and providing the instruments for social workers to support these children.