29 November 2005 - CRINMAIL 734
___________________________________________________________
- HIV/AIDS: World AIDS Day 2005 [call for information]
- DIGITAL DIVIDE: Outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society [news]
- CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT: Increasing the Participation of Adolescent Girls [publication]
- EUROPE: Information Management to Strengthen NGO Advocacy [seminar]
- COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: 41st Session [UN event]
- WEBSITE OF THE WEEK: Military Training for Officers on Children in Armed Conflict [resource]
- EMPLOYMENT: Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child [job posting]
___________________________________________________________
Your submissions are welcome if you are working in the area of child rights. To contribute, email us at [email protected]. Adobe Acrobat is required for viewing some of the documents, and if required can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html If you do not receive this email in html format, you will not be able to see some hyperlinks in the text. At the end of each item we have therefore provided a full URL linking to a web page where further information is available.
___________________________________________________________
- HIV/AIDS: World AIDS Day 2005 [call for information]
World AIDS Day is commemorated around the globe on 1 December. It celebrates progress made in the battle against the epidemic - and brings into focus remaining challenges. World AIDS Day 2005, themed 'Stop AIDS - Keep the promise', will focus on keeping commitments to stop AIDS at all levels: personal, community, organisational, governmental.
According to UNICEF, every minute of every day, a child under the age of 15 dies of AIDS-related illness. AIDS claimed three million lives in 2004. One of every six of them was a child under the age of 15.
On the occasion of World AIDS Day, the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) will send out a special CRINMAIL compiling recent news and publications on the epidemic, and how it affects children world-wide. For this purpose, we would be grateful if concerned organisations could forward their relevant information to [email protected], for inclusion in the HIV/AIDS CRINMAIL.
For more information, visit:
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6675&flag=event
--------------------------------
- DIGITAL DIVIDE: Outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society [news]
The second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Tunis, on 16-18 November 2005. It was a huge, 17,000-delegate, international gathering on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and development. It was also the conclusion of a long process that began well before the previous WSIS, held in Geneva in 2003.
Four stories dominated WSIS: financing, Internet governance, human rights and the $100 laptop. But these threw the spotlight away from issues that will be critical to the future direction of ICTs and development, and WSIS can only claim limited progress on its two official agenda items:
Financing for ICTs and development: it produced a useful report but not much else. Its main new financing vehicle - the Digital Solidarity Fund - will be only voluntary. It is unlikely to produce significant new money.
Internet governance: the summit failed to take control of core domain and file management from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a body strongly associated with the US government. It did agree the creation of a new United Nations body - the Internet Governance Forum - that will discuss cross-cutting issues such as Internet security. Its importance in practice, though, is unclear since its decisions will be non-binding.
That describes what was present. But what was absent?
Most projects publicised at WSIS focused on inputs: putting technology in place, developing skills, delivering information. But, of itself, this creates no basis for development. There's no point in giving a poor entrepreneur information on a new market opportunity if they don't know how to reach that market; and no point in giving a farmer information on new techniques if they can't afford the fertiliser or equipment involved. Projects must start thinking about how they resource users to turn information into development actions.
Consolidating existing agendas is important. Any area of development, though, must also create a sense of forward motion and innovation if it is to attract political attention and funding. The $100 laptop might help but that's too much of a new-solution-looking-for-a-problem for my taste. [the prototype of a US$100 laptop was launched by Nicholas Negroponte from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The aim being that every child world-wide will have one].
How about, instead, a major effort to see how the massive mobile telephony base can be used for development purposes? How about diverting outsourcing of IT from the private sector to social enterprise in developing countries? How about extending fair trade from coffee and chocolate to IT? These criticisms are serious. Not just for the come-and-gone summit but more importantly for the future of ICTs and the development agenda.
[Source: id21]
For more information on WSIS and to read the article in full, go to: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6674
--------------------------------
- CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT: Increasing the Participation of Adolescent Girls [publication]
[25 November 2005] - On the occasion of the International Day Against Violence Against Women, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and the Gender and Peacebuilding Working Group of the Canadian Peacebuilding Co-ordinating Committee have produced a fact sheet on "Adolescent girls affected by violent conflict".
Through this document, both organisations seek to raise awareness about the specific situations of adolescent girls affected by violent conflict and increase support for adolescent girls' participation in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and community development. In armed conflict situations, adolescent girls have distinctive experiences that are often different from those of older women, younger children and adolescent boys. Yet, adolescent girls tend to fall through the cracks of programming, in part because they are not women, and not children.
In producing this fact sheet, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and the Gender and Peacebuilding Working Group of the Canadian Peacebuilding Co-ordinating Committee, urge the international community to recognise the roles and capacities of adolescent girls and to give them increased policy and programme attention. Doing so will help to protect girls from violence and its effects, and foster their participation in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, reconstruction and development processes.
For more information, contact:
Surendrini Wijeyaratne, Working Group Co-ordinator
Gender and Peacebuilding Working Group
Canadian Peacebuilding Co-ordinating Committee
1 Nicholas St. Suite 1216, Ottawa, Ontario, CA K1N 7B7
Tel: + 1 613 241 3446; Fax: + 1 613 241 4846
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.peacebuild.ca
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6643
--------------------------------
- EUROPE: Information Management to Strengthen NGO Advocacy [seminar]
Date: 15-16 December 2005
Location: Brussels, Belgium
The European Foundation for Street Children World-wide (EFSCW) is organising a seminar on "European Union - information management to strengthen advocacy of NGOs working for excluded children and youth". The purpose of the event is to convey application-oriented knowledge for effective use of relevant EU-information sources, systems and techniques to strengthen advocacy work and targeted campaigning of social NGOs working for excluded children and youth.
The seminar addresses participants from social NGOs from Europe and beyond, working for child and youth protection, with a particular interest in European information strategies. All speakers will be communications experts, either direct representatives from European Institutions and NGOs, concerned with issues of social exclusion and poverty, or high-profile consultants with a special emphasis on social and humanitarian affairs.
The consultation will provide participants with the necessary knowledge and expertise for professional EU-information management, with a special focus on the fortification of their organisation's profile, position and repute with potential partners and the strengthening of your advocacy work.
For more information, contact:
Melanie Vritschan, Information and Public Relations Officer
European Foundation for Street Children World-wide (EFSCW)
Square Vergote 34, B - 1030 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: + 32 2 347 78 48; Fax: + 32 2 347 79 46
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.enscw.org
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6573&flag=event
--------------------------------
- COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: 41st Session [UN event]
Date: 9-27 January 2006
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
The 41st Session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 9-27 January 2006. Scheduled for consideration are reports from Azerbaijan, Ghana, Hungary, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Peru, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. For the first time, the Committee will examine States' reports in two chambers.
In addition, Andorra, Italy, Kazakhstan and Morocco will submit reports under article 12 (1) of the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. Andorra, Bangladesh, Italy and Switzerland will submit reports under article 8 (1) of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.
Information about this session is available at: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/crcs41.htm. This link will include all the country documentation for the Committee's 41st session, including: States Parties Reports, lists of issues, States' written replies to the lists of issues, delegation lists and statements, as well as the Committee's concluding observations. It will be updated on a daily basis during the session.
For more information, contact:
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Committee on the Rights of the Child
8-14 Avenue de la Paix, CH 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Tel: + 41 22 917 9000; Fax: + 41 22 917 9022
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc
NGO Alternative reports for the 41st Session are available on the CRIN website at: http://www.crin.org/resources/treaties/list.asp?ID=45&type=session
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6512&flag=event
--------------------------------
- WEBSITE OF THE WEEK: Military Training for Officers on Children in Armed Conflict [resource]
A new microsite on "Military Training for Officers on Children in Armed Conflict" has been developed on the website of the Crisis States Programme. This website summarises the key rules for the protection of children in situations of armed conflict which should guide the actions of officers of national armed forces and the soldiers under their command.
Officers should know these rules, or at least know where to look them up. They should also make sure that their soldiers know the main rules, as appropriate in the particular circumstances. Ideally, non-governmental forces should also be guided by these rules.
The purpose of this website is to provide an accessible and simple summary of the relevant rules. However, for the convenience of those who want more detailed information, as well as references to other relevant publications, a link is given to the book on which this website is largely based: "Military Training and Children in Armed Conflict: Law, Policy and Practice", by Jenny Kuper.
For more information, contact:
Jenny Kuper: [email protected]
For more information about the book, visit:
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=5468
--------------------------------
- EMPLOYMENT: Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child [job posting]
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a national NGO working for the promotion and protection of child rights through awareness, advocacy and research, requires the services of a Programme Co-ordinator (Child Rights Promotion) for its Lahore Office.
Application deadline: 30 November 2005
For more information, contact:
HR Manager, SPARC
No.14, 4rth Floor, Sardar Begum Plaza
109-West, Blue Area, Islamabad
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.sparcpk.org
___________________________________________________________
The CRINMAIL is an electronic mailing list of the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN). CRIN does not accredit, validate or substantiate any information posted by members to the CRINMAIL. The validity and accuracy of any information is the responsibility of the originator.
To subscribe, unsubscribe or view list archives, visit http://www.crin.org/email.
___________________________________________________________
