Making minor suspects understand their rights: a police duty?

Due to the vulnerability of minors, several European and international regulations on children's rights demand that, at the beginning of an interrogation, police informs minor offenders about their rights in a manner that ensures their full understanding. In this way, the European Court of Human Rights, ruled that the police should take steps to ensure that the accused minor has a broad understanding of the nature of the investigation, of what is at stake for him or her, including the significance of any penalty which may be imposed. According to the General Comment n° 10 the police should give an oral explanation as providing an official document is not enough, and this responsibility should not be left to the parents or the child's legal assistance.
First of all, questions arise on how this "duty to ensure the child's right of being fully informed" is practiced in daily police routine. By observing police interrogations of minor suspects in police youth divisions and by conducting complementary interviews with the police interrogators, we describe and investigate this duty of the police. Finally, to conclude, we will discuss the question whether it actually can and should be the duty of the police to fully inform minor suspects.