In the journey leading up to 20 years after liberation, Rwanda has registered great successes in various sectors among which is promoting the children’s right to participation, where an Annual Children’s Summit is regularly held to discuss about children’s issues. Since 2004, Rwanda has successfully organized 9 annual National Children’s Summit, bringing together children’s delegates from across the country, policy makers, and development partners with an objective of discussing matters that concern children.
This year 2014, the 10th National Children’s Summit will have particular significance as Rwanda celebrates 20 years of liberation where best practices will be showcased and future perspectives pledged. On the other hand, the year 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption by the UN General Assembly on November 20th 1989 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which presents a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact it has had and to provide a platform for reflection about the future of children’s rights implementation. It will also be a suitable moment to make an in-depth analysis of the significance of the National Children’s Summits for children of Rwanda throughout their inputs and recommendations drawn from the last National Children’s Summits.
The theme of the 10th National Children’s Summit is “20 Years and Beyond: Advancing Child Rights in Rwanda. This theme that is in line with celebrating the achievements made after 20 years of Rwandan liberation was selected based on children’s views obtained during their consultations conducted between 19th and 22nd April 2014 in all the Villages of the country.
This summit will take stock of all the progress made in child rights in Rwanda and provide a golden opportunity for children, policy makers and other stakeholders to renew their commitments and make more concerted efforts in addressing persistent challenges facing children and their families.
In order to have inclusive opinions of all children across the country, the 10th National Children’s Summit like the past summits will be preceded by pre-summit consultation meetings, which will take place on November 3, 2014. These meetings, which are organized by children forum committees at the grass roots levels, will gather all children between the ages of 6 – 17 at their respective cells to discuss about the theme of this year. These meetings are expected to capture the children’s thoughts about what the country has achieved in advancing child rights in the past 20 years which will be show cased during the summit.
During these meetings, children will also organize other entertainment activities such as competitions in games and sports, songs and plays among others to mark celebrations of what the country has achieved in protecting and promoting child rights.
In order to facilitate children in their meetings, children forum representatives, local authorities and non-government organizations engaged in child protection at Sector and District levels were briefed from October 28 – 31, 2014 on guidelines regulating how these meetings will be conducted.
Parents, local authorities and other stakeholders are therefore requested to facilitate and encourage children to actively participate in the pre-summit meetings. The official launch of this year’s pre-summit consultation meetings will be held in Gicumbi District on Monday November 3, 2014.