Major children's conference with UN Special Representative in Kenya

Kindernothilfe and terre des hommes support the demands of working children

Duisburg/Osnabrück, April 5, 2023 – A unique conference kicks off on Easter Monday in Nairobi, Kenya: the African Children Summit. This conference, initiated and led by their peers, will bring together around 700 children from across Africa. The summit unites children and young people with key political decision-makers to share their experiences and recommendations for realizing their rights. Among the participants are Philip D. Jaffé, Vice-Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and Najat Maalla, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Children. The summit aims to empower children and create a space where they are seen, heard, and included.

Among the guests is a group of working children from the Dialogue Works campaign , a joint initiative of Kindernothilfe and terre des hommes with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Together with other working children, they adopted the Kigai Declaration at the Dialogue Works Children's Conference in Rwanda this January – a list of political demands they now want to share with the world in Nairobi. A total of 63 children from 16 countries contributed to the declaration. In particular, they demand the following from political decision-makers:

1. Effective measures to combat poverty, in particular ensuring decent jobs so that basic needs can be met,
2. To treat education as a priority and to ensure that every child has access to high-quality education and training,
3. To protect children from exploitation and poor working conditions and to enable them to have appropriate and dignified work alongside attending school,
4. To involve children in laws and decisions that affect them, to listen to them and to include their point of view,
5. To ensure protection from violence and discrimination.

These measures are intended to make political decisions more realistic and context-specific, and to take into account and improve the living conditions of working children.

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