Written by Harry Rutner, Senior Legal and Advocacy Officer at the Consortium for Street Children
The 7 – 8th of November 2024 marked a potentially significant turning point for ending violence against children, at the commencement of the First Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children (the Global Ministerial) in Bogota, Colombia. The Global Ministerial had representation of Ministers from over 100 member states, Members of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, INGOs, CSOs, and most importantly child and youth advocates. The Global Ministerial and the preceding satellite events set the stage for the largest discussion on how we can work together to end violence against children.
Felix Holman and I travelled to Bogota to take part in the Satellite Events, including one that we co-hosted, and Global Ministerial, which was a full four days of events, meetings and plenaries discussing ending violence against children, with voices from around the globe, especially of the voices of child and youth advocates. We were honoured to be one of the very few CSOs in attendance and to be able to give the voice of our member organisations to Global Ministerial, who we know are critical collaborators to ensure the implementation of interventions towards ending violence against children.
During the Global Ministerial, we heard promising practices from countries, such as emphasis on the need for child participation in creating programmes and policies to end violence against children, investing in education for children and families and accessible hotlines to report instances of violence against children to name a few.
While it was exciting to hear about the successful implementation of initiatives in countries, we were disappointed with how a lot of the interventions proposed by the countries dealt with children as a homogenous group, or at least focused only on children in school or home settings. This approach often ignores the most vulnerable populations. It is clear that interventions need to be tailored to the specific needs of marginalised groups, including street-connected children.
We were inspired by the voices of street-connected child advocates from our network partner, Voice of Children in Nepal, who were part of the child delegation. Their messages were clear: street-connected children must be included in policy making. We were particularly impressed when on a panel, the child advocate from Voice of Children directly questioned the Nepalese government on how they will protect vulnerable children, which prompted the Nepalese government to make a commitment on the global stage to support and work with street-connected children. The participation and loud voices of these child advocates reaffirmed what we already know, that street-connected children are immensely resilient and skilled and must be active participants in designing solutions for these to be effective.
Despite the powerful advocacy of the street-connected children delegates, we left the Global Ministerial feeling that overall governments and INGOs rarely turned their minds to the specific needs of street-connected children. We were keen to stress that the Consortium and its member organisations are well placed to provide valuable evidence and data to support successful solutions for street-connected children. We have to remind global stakeholders and duty bearers that none of the SDGs will be met unless we include and meet the needs of street-connected children.
The Global Ministerial saw countries pledging to end violence against children by proposing a range of promising interventions. This is an exciting next step, and it is now up to us, the Consortium for Street Children, the INGOs, UN and CSOs to hold the governments accountable to these pledges. While this is a huge task, it is achievable and we know that governments cannot do it alone and must be supported by CSOs, who are allies and specialists in the field and can help to achieve these goals.
As we all know, children are the future and as was repeated at the Global Ministerial, ending violence is an investment into a safer and brighter future for all. We look forward to seeing the progress of governments on their pledges and working with governments to end violence against all children.