VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN: New NGO Advisory Council for Follow-up to the UN Study

A new NGO council is being formed specifically to support strong and effective follow-up to the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children. Its primary purpose is to encourage and maintain NGO involvement at national, regional and international levels in follow-up advocacy with governments, UN agencies and others for full implementation of the Study's recommendations. The new NGO Advisory Council will have 18 members: 9 representatives from international NGOs, and 9 representatives selected at regional level from national and regional NGOs.

The nine international representatives have already been selected based on nominations invited from INGOs around the world. Each representative was selected based on the representative’s/organization’s commitment to the study, expertise on violence against children, ability to relate to broader networks during the follow-up, past history of participation in the study process, and potential contribution to the follow-up process. Paulo Pinheiro and Jaap Doek were each consulted for the final selection process.

The selected organizations and their representatives are: CRIN (Veronica Yates), Defense for Children International (Virginia Murillo), ECPAT (Theo Noten), Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children (Peter Newell), Human Rights Watch (Jo Becker), OMCT/World Organization Against Torture (Cecile Trochu Grasso), Plan International (Ann-Kristin Vervik), Save the Children Alliance (Roberta Cecchetti) and World Vision (Sara Austin). Brief bios of each of the members appear below.

The process of selecting the 9 regional representatives is still underway, but will be announced shortly.

The mandate of the NGO Advisory Council is:

• To encourage and maintain NGO involvement at national, regional and international levels in follow-up advocacy with governments, UN agencies and others for full implementation of the UNSG’s Study recommendations;
• In particular to advocate for a Special Representative to the SG on violence against children and to work with a SR when appointed;
• To work with the Independent Expert and the Inter-Agency Working Group, particularly in identifying key priorities for the working group and its members and developing follow-up activities and strategies to ensure effective implementation of the Study’s recommendations; 
• To identify and transmit important information regarding VAC from the field level to the SRSG and other appropriate UN bodies; 
• To use and strengthen existing information channels/mechanisms (e.g. CRIN, NGO Group mailing lists, etc.) to inform the child rights NGO community regarding the follow-up of the UNSG’s Study on VAC and its implementation;
• To be strongly and systematically connected to the proposed Youth Council in order to support continued and increased participation of children in follow-up; 
•  To participate in monitoring the implementation of the Study’s recommendations by member states.

Cristina Barbaglia will be working part-time, based in New York, to support the work of the Advisory Council during the lead-up to the 2007 UN General Assembly session. The Advisory Council can be contacted through Cristina at [email protected]