Major international organisations and institutions join forces to advocate for children on the move

London, January 20, 2011. Between 19-20 January, 2011 recently created Working Group on Children on the Move held its first meeting in London. The group gathered high profile representatives from leading international child-focused NGOs, UN and intergovernmental organisations (ILO, IOM, UNICEF and UNHCR) as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography and two independent consultants. The working group agreed on an action plan based around four main objectives and some joint initiatives.

• Mainstreaming children on the move in research and data gathering with an emphasis on re-analysing the existing data, identifying the best available research methods to capture children on the move, documenting good practices and lessons learnt in term of policy formulation, and examining the extent to which children on the move is covered in the policy including the impact of currently existing policies on health, education, youth employment just to name a few.

• Increasing the visibility of children on the move in key policy-development spaces and events by developing concept paper on children on the move for external audiences, formulating a joint engagement strategy at key processes sand events over the next 24 months (giving children an opportunity to be a part of these processes), and identifying key allies and building partnerships with them.

• Promoting the development of child protection mechanisms in the corridors where most children move through strengthening children groups and movements to engage in child protection at local level, reinforcing community-based and traditional protective mechanisms, and promoting good practices

• Ensuring that children who have experienced mobility influence policies and strategies on children on the move collect and disseminate research with children’s views, analyse and illustrate cases where children have taken central role in protection (self-protection, peer support networks), explore the engagement of child-led movements in Latin America and the Caribbean in national and regional policy development, and more.

Participant agreed to continue working on the above outlined objectives and joint initiatives in the forthcoming month of February.    

This Working Group is a follow up to the International Conference on Children on the Move held in Barcelona, Spain in October 2010.

Below is the full list of organisations having representation at the meeting:

• ENDA Tiers Monde
• Global Movement for Children
• ILO
• IOM
• Intervida
• MAEJT - Mouvement Africain des Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs
• Oak Foundation
• Plan International
• Save the Children International
• Save the Children UK
• Terre des Hommes
• UNICEF
• UNHCR
• UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography,
• World Vision International