UNU Update: Children in Turmoil

	UNU Update
	The newsletter of United Nations University and its network of research and training centres and programmes
		Issue 22: January 2003

Children in turmoil focus
of Tokyo Global Forum

The plight of the world's most vulnerable children will be highlighted at the third annual EU-UNU Tokyo Global Forum to be helf at UNU Centre January 16.

The high-level international conference, entitled Children in Turmoil: Rights of the Child in the Midst of Human Insecurity, will feature a keynote session and three thematic sessions focusing on:

Protecting children: putting a stop to crimes against children;
Improving children's lives: restoring joy, innocence and learning to childhood; and
Rescuing children: putting a stop to the theft of childhood.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) provides an international legal framework for the care and protection of children and their participation in society. It defines the fundamental rights of children and encapsulates an extraordinary consensus by governments on this subject. A UN General Assembly special session on children last year highlighted the vulnerability of the young to poverty, greed, crime, disease and exploitation. A specific article on children’s rights is also included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The 2003 EU-UNU Tokyo Global Forum will raise and confront the challenges of "making a world fit for children." The objective of the conference is to mobilize the private and public sectors to contribute to the fullest implementation of the UN Convention by sending a strong message, to politicians as well as to economic actors, that the rights and well-being of children must be fully integrated into all policy formulation.

The conference will bring together political leaders, academics, UN officials and NGO representatives to explore the debates and practical challenges regarding human rights through a focus on the rights of the child. Confirmed speakers include Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, UNICEF Ambassador for Goodwill; Lloyd Axworthy, former Foreign Minister of Canada; Nobuto Hosaka and Seiko Noda, members of Japan's House of Representatives; Glenys Kinnock, Member of the European Parliament; Shada Islam, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review; and Marta Santos Pais, Director of the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.

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