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Escaping from the cold breeze outside of the bus,we ran into cosy Angel’s heaven and spent the day there working hard in different sessions.
In the morning, we had 3 sessions to report on contextualization of forum within UNGASSoC and beyond,followed by a report on the key results and issues at UNGASS and ended by the session where delegates who were at UNGASS shared their experiences and thoughts. Ungass delegates reported on the World fit for Children and a World fit for Us.In the experience sharing part,Davakhuu from Mongolia talked about the opening ceremony while Khairul from Malaysia and Jose from East Timor shared their experience at the Children and armed conflict group. Lan Anh from Vietnam talked about side events including demonstration for child rights, Young General Assembly workshop,Amazing world and StreetVision galleries while YiYu from China reported on the Say Yes to Children Campaign and the Intergenerational Dialogues of Asia region.Ariel from China and Juan Paul also talked about some problems preventing full participation of some children at UNGASS and their memories about the closing ceremony and meetings with well known people such as Kofi Annan,Bill Gates etc.These children also answered questions raised by forum participants.
In the afternoon, after some cool refreshing energizer games,we had the first workshop entitled “Country updated regarding National Plan of Actions and Beijing Declration”. Each country was given some questions to brainstorm.We reported and reflected the progress of NPAs and Beijing Declaration.All reports were written and decorated on posters and each country was assigned a booth or an area on the wall.We then had informal debriefing and information sharing per country on the gallery walk.While the progress of NPAs are not the same, there was a good sign that all countries were actually putting their promises into actions.For example, many countries started to build laws on protection and care of children, cooperated with Ngos to carry out projects to support child development,supported child participation by organizing national children’s councils and national children’s conferences etc.However, the speed of implementation and the effectiveness of the process in different countries were different. Why was that? This was the question to challenge the forum delegates which they would explore furthur on the next day.
Evening was time to socialize and discover about exotic countries and culture.The computer’s room at YongSei Guesthouse became our chat box.That was also where a group of media youth got to know one another and exchanged experiences on promoting child rights through media.Lan Anh from Vietnam radio and student magazine,Peter Chung aTV host of the International Day of Broadcasting for Children in Fiji, Khairul and Sam from internet children magazine in Malaysia,Arnold the aspiring leader of National Children’s Council of Mongolia ,Thuy Trang a Vietnamese child photographer whose works were featured on States of the World Children 2003 and many others started networking quickly on the second day at no where else but that little chat box
On the second day of the forum, we spent the morning going through the country updates again before moving to workshop 2 where we discussed about similarities and differences in country updates on NPAs in 3 aspects : accompolishment,enabling factors and disabling factors.To ease the workshop process and ensure that all children could speak their opinions,we were devided into language/country groups.The children had watched dog their governments in NPAs implementation and reported that in most countries children’s issues were put on national agenda as one of the top priorities ,which was a positive change.In many countries, governmental delegations and children delegates at UNGASS had reported about the outcomes of UNGASS and spread the message of CRC and follow up UNGASS activities in their countries. Governments and Ngos also started spending more national funding on children issues.
The key factors that enabled this progress to happen,according to the children, were that governments started to be more awared and gained better understanding toward CRC after UNGASS process and Say Yes for Children Campaign ; better cooperations between governments and Ngos and children participation were being built or strengthened,and lastly governments and adults Ngos were committed and dedicated to the idea of “a world fit for children” and “ a world for us” more than ever before.
However, in many country this process was happening slowly and not yet effectively.The common disabling factor that challenged NPAs implementation was the lack of resources in terms of finance and facilities as well as knowledge and skills of the public,adult and social workers when it came to children issues.
The children delegates expressed that to turn this disabling factors into enabling factors required commitment between government,organizations and importantly children and young people participation.That was when workshop 3 came in.Workshop 3 focused on the assessing and evaluation of effectiveness of children and Young People’s Participation. The delegates talked about the factors that facilitated or hindered child participation,how their participation were responded by government and civil society and rationale for such.In some countries such as Vietnam,Cambodia,Mongolia,Philllipines,the children had national children’s forums and national children’s councils initiatives but had not yet established a mechanism for constant participation of children. In countries like Korea,Laos,China etc children participation was still limited. While there had been positive responses from public towar children’s participation,the children said there were still challenges toward child participation from grassgroot levels within their families,schools and communities.These reflected in the fact that many children could not voice their opinions in families or schools,abadoned to organize child-led organization etc. However,children with creativity and ability had several ways to lobby for child participation. Be it through media,regional networking or public advocacy on CRC and UNGASS in schools and local communities through children clubs,arts and other creative approaches.
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Ha Thi Lan Anh
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