The 6th Regional Meeting of NGOs Children’s Rights Coalitions in Europe, organized by the Italian NGO Group for the CRC, was hosted by the Istituto degli Innocenti, in Florence from the 20th to the 22nd of October 2010.
Started in Berlin in 1998, and followed-up in Stockholm (1999), Vilnius (2002), Brussels (2005) and Bucharest (2008) this three-day event was an excellent opportunity to share successes and challenges in children’s rights advocacy, monitoring and networking. The main aim was to increase knowledge so to improve our effectiveness as children’s rights coalitions.
Almost 70 people from 32 European countries (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greek, Italy, Ireland, Kosovo, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czechia, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Uk Galles, Ukraine) attented the Regional Meeting.
The three-day meeting were structured into plenary sessions and 9 different Working Groups. (download the programm).
During the Working Groups, National Coalitions and NGOs have shared experiences, ideas and best practices on various aspects concerning the monitoring of CRC: for example the collaboration of associations with national networks, the interaction with local and international institutions, the governance of National Coalitions.
The 6th Regional Meeting was chaired by Nigel Cantwell, who will also draw up the final report. The Report will be published later this year.
The plenary sessions have seen the interventions of relevant stakeholders involved in the promotion of children’s rights in Europe.
Among all, we would like to mentione: Luigi Citarella and Mary Herczog, members of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Tiina-Maria Levamo – Council of Europe and Roberta Ruggiero, ChildONEurope Secretariat.
The European meeting was closed with an interesting speech of Marta Santos Pais, UN Special Representative on Violence Against Children.
The Sixth edition of the Regional Meeting provided a good opportunity for many European Coalitions and NGOs to deepen and share methods, experiences, best practices and critical issues.
During the Meeting, the Italian NGO Group for the CRC handed out the english version of its 2nd Supplementary Report. (download the Report.
OUTCOME DOCUMENT
This document seeks to outpoint the major outcomes of the resentations and discussions in Florence that can help shape and orient future efforts by national coalitions. While attempting to provide useful hard information, this outcome document thus seeks to reflect the most important overall and new messages and issues that coalitions might want and need to take away for consideration in developing their work over the next two years.
Below some documents shared and presented during the Regional Meeting:
20th October 2010:
Maria Herczog, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Lisa Myers, presentation of the NGO Group for the CRC
Camilla Nygren, Save the Children Sweden. New initiatives to monitor and promote the CRC General Measures of Implementation
Jyothi Kanics, UNICEF. The UNICEF General Measures of Implementation Project
Conchi Ballesteros, Plataforma de Organizaciones de Infancia (Spain). Network Governance
21st October 2010:
Viviana Valastro, Italian NGO Group for the CRC. Monitoring the CRC from an NGO perpective
Maria Corbett, Children’s Rights Alliance (Ireland). Further Children Rights networking
22nd October 2010:
Olivia Lind, Save the Children Brussels. EU strategy and Children’s Rights. Role and Competence
Tiina-Maria Levamo, Conseil of Europe. The programme “Building a Europe for and with Children
Roberta Ruggiero, ChildONEurope. The European Netwrok of National Observatoriesd on Childhood, improve collaboration with NGO netwrok at bational level
Eurochild presentation
For more information about the previous Regional Meeting:
Download the Call for Action of the NGO Forum – Vilnius (Lithuania 2002).
Download the [“Proceedings of the fourth regional meeting of NGO Coalitions for
the Rights of the Child in Europe”->doc515] – Brussels (Belgium 2005)
Download the final report of the NGO Forum – Bucharest (Romania 2008)