Children’s Summit to focus on rights

The Seventh annual Children’s Summit, due January 4, will provide an ideal platform for children to discuss all issues affecting them as well as their role in the country’s economic development, officials have said. Organized under the theme ‘Children and equity; our contribution to EDPRS’, the summit will bring together children representatives from across the country, decision-makers and other stakeholders. According to a statement from the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, participants at the summit will include “child delegates representing the children from each sector and district; representatives of vulnerable children – children with disabilities, children from refugee camps, institutional care, street children and orphans.” Also in attendance will be government officials, Unicef and other partner organizations involved in child protection. The summit will be a culmination of consultations that have taken place with children from the sector and district levels, it added. The meeting will be held at Parliament Building and will attract at least 750 children, according to organisers. The Minister of Gender and Family Promotion, Aloisea Inyumba, said yesterday the meeting would help identify challenges that affect children and then come up with appropriate remedies. She pointed out that the government will also use the platform to discourage the habit of letting children grow in care centres, which she said are dangerous to the juveniles. “The best way to raise a child is in a home environment and not in such centres; we want to discourage these practices because they are not part of our culture”. She noted that it’s through such centres that children learn bad habits like use of drugs and others. Children are expected to use the opportunity to air their views on national policies, and issues that impact their lives. “The Summit displays the value the government attaches to protecting children and shows what a high priority it is to ensure the future of the nation by taking into serious consideration issues that affect the lives of the children who are our future,” the ministry said in the statement eric.kabeera@newtimes.co.rw.

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Children’s Summit to focus on rights