The new NGO Advisory Council for Follow-up to the UN Study on Violence
against Children
A new NGO council is being formed specifically to support strong and effective
follow-up to the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children. Its
primary purpose is to encourage and maintain NGO involvement at national,
regional and international levels in follow-up advocacy with governments, UN
agencies and others for full implementation of the Study's recommendations. The
new NGO Advisory Council will have 18 members: 9 representatives from
international NGOs, and 9 representatives selected at regional level from
national and regional NGOs.
The nine international representatives have already been selected based on
nominations invited from INGOs around the world. Each representative was
selected based on the representative’s/organization’s commitment to the study,
expertise on violence against children, ability to relate to broader networks
during the follow-up, past history of participation in the study process, and
potential contribution to the follow-up process. Paulo Pinheiro and Jaap Doek
were each consulted for the final selection process.
The selected organizations and their representatives are: CRIN (Veronica Yates),
Defense for Children International (Virginia Murillo), ECPAT (Theo Noten), Global
Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children (Peter Newell), Human Rights
Watch (Jo Becker), OMCT/World Organization Against Torture (Cecile Trochu
Grasso), Plan International (Ann-Kristin Vervik), Save the Children Alliance
(Roberta Cecchetti) and World Vision (Sara Austin). Brief bios of each of the
members appear below.
The process of selecting the 9 regional representatives is still underway, but will
be announced shortly.
The mandate of the NGO Advisory Council is:
- To encourage and maintain NGO involvement at national, regional and
international levels in follow-up advocacy with governments, UN agencies
and others for full implementation of the UNSG’s Study recommendations;
- In particular to advocate for a Special Representative to the SG on
violence against children and to work with a SR when appointed;
- To work with the Independent Expert and the Inter-Agency Working
Group, particularly in identifying key priorities for the working group and its
members and developing follow-up activities and strategies to ensure
effective implementation of the Study’s recommendations;
- To identify and transmit important information regarding VAC from the
field level to the SRSG and other appropriate UN bodies;
- To use and strengthen existing information channels/mechanisms (e.g.
CRIN, NGO Group mailing lists, etc.) to inform the child rights NGO
community regarding the follow-up of the UNSG’s Study on VAC and its
implementation;
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To be strongly and systematically connected to the proposed Youth
Council in order to support continued and increased participation of
children in follow-up;
To participate in monitoring the implementation of the Study’s
recommendations by member states.
Cristina Barbaglia will be working part-time, based in New York, to support the
work of the Advisory Council during the lead-up to the 2007 UN General
Assembly session. The Advisory Council can be contacted through Cristina at
barbagliac@gmail.com
International Representatives
Sara L. Austin – World Vision International (WVI)
Sara L. Austin has extensive policy and programme experience on child rights
issues in a variety of national and regional contexts. In addition to providing
strategic policy analysis and capacity building for World Vision Canada and
World Vision International, Sara co-convenes WVI’s Child Rights Network. Sara
has represented World Vision at several multilateral meetings, including the
former Commission on Human Rights, the Commission on the Status of Women,
and the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children. Sara possesses
particular expertise in children’s participation, and co-chaired the process for
children’s participation in the UNGASS on Children and the various Preparatory
Committee Meetings. She is also actively involved in the governance of various
Canadian NGOs, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Canadian
Coalition on the Rights of the Child, and the Refugee Reception Centre.
Jo Becker – Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Jo Becker is the Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch.
She served on the editorial board for the UN Secretary-General’s Study on
Violence against Children, and from 2004-2006, co-chaired the international
NGO Advisory Panel for the Study. She served on the steering committee for the
North American regional consultation for the Study, and organized a thematic
consultation for the Study on violence against children in conflict with the law.
She is the founding chair of the international Coalition to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers, and from 2000-2002, co-convened the Child Rights Caucus, a global
network of more than 100 non-governmental organizations that conducted a
two-year child rights lobbying effort for the United Nations General Assembly
Special Session on Children. She authored Easy Targets: Violence against
Children Worldwide, and other Human Rights Watch reports on violence against
children, barriers to education, the use of child soldiers, and children in
detention.
Roberta Cecchetti – Save the Children
Roberta Cecchetti is the Representative to the UN in Geneva of the International
Save the Children Alliance. Save the Children was involved extensively in the UN
Study process, including its regional consultations, providing support for children’s
participation, and making substantive submissions on thematic issues including
child sexual abuse, children in conflict with the law, gender based violence, and
physical and humiliating punishment. Roberta is a member of Save the Children’s
Task Force on Violence against Children and has actively contributed to the
design and implementation of the advocacy strategy on the UN Study.
Previously, she was in charge of the Children’s Rights Programme at OMCT and
actively participated in the drafting of the Tampere Declaration, which called
for the creation of a special procedure on Violence against Children.
Virginia Murilla Herrera – Defense for Children International (DCI)
Virginia Murilla Herrera has been the Executive President of Defense for Children
International – Costa Rica since 1994. A sociologist by training, she has worked
on human rights issues and in particular on children’s rights and development for
16 years. She served as both the NGO Child Rights representative as well as the
Vice President of the Costa Rican National Council of Children and Adolescents
Rights. She is a member of the Subregional Campaign on Violence Against
Children: “Eduquemos con Ternura: Ni Golpes que Duelen, Ni palabras que
Hieren”, and National Coordinator of the Campaign Working Group on Violence
Against Children. She is also the co-founder and an active member of Latin
America’s Regional Secretariat for the UN Study on Violence. She participated in
the national consultation process with children in Latin America to review the
Latin America Report and participated in the Regional Consultation for the UN
Study.
Peter Newell - Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children
Peter Newell is a long-term advocate for children's rights in the UK and
internationally. He is Coordinator of the Global Initiative to End All Corporal
Punishment of Children. In England he chaired the NGO Children’s Rights
Alliance from 1992 to 2002 and is Coordinator of the Children are unbeatable!
Alliance, campaigning for abolition of all corporal punishment. Together with his
partner, Rachel Hodgkin, he prepared UNICEF’s Implementation Handbook for
the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He has worked frequently as a
consultant for UNICEF, in particular advising on general measures for
implementation of the Convention and on establishment of independent human
rights institutions for children. He is also Adviser to the European Network of
Ombudspeople for Children. Peter was a member of Professor Pinheiro's Editorial
Board for the UNSG's Study, and also of the NGO Advisory Panel.
Theo Noten – End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children
for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT)
Theo Noten has managed ECPAT - The Netherlands since 1996. He is a member
of the executive board of ECPAT International, chair of its credentials committee
and advisory on trafficking, child pornography and child sex tourism issues. He
was in the ECPAT international preparatory team for the Yokohama Review for
Europe and CIS. Since 1998, he has been a member of the board of the Dutch
Hotline on child pornography on the Internet, which is part of the international
INHOPE association. He is a partner in the worldwide Code of Conduct for the
protection of children from sexual exploitation in tourism. He was coordinator of
the ECPAT Europe Law Enforcement group responsible for the 2002-2004
research on trafficking in children for sexual purposes in 16 countries and for the
2004-2006 Multi Stakeholder Training Program on Trafficking in Children for Sexual
Purposes in 19 countries in Europe. Since 2004, he has been a member of the
Expert group of the OSCE Alliance against Trafficking in Human Beings.
Cécile Trochu Grasso – World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Cécile Trochu Grasso is the manager of the Child Rights Programme at the World
Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), which fights against torture and other
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, summary executions and
forced disappearances. It coordinates the SOS-Torture network of 282 national,
regional and international organisations in 92 countries. Regarding the rights of
the child, OMCT conducts urgent campaigns in cases of grave violations of
children’s rights; it provides assistance to child victims of torture and submits
alternative reports to the UN treaty bodies (to the Committee on the Rights of the
Child, the Human Rights Committee, and the Committee Against Torture with the
aim to mainstream the rights of the child). Cécile’s main areas of action at
OMCT are juvenile justice, corporal punishment and other forms of violence
against children.
Ann-Kristin Vervik– Plan International
Ann-Kristin Vervik is head of the human rights section in Plan Norway and is part
of Plan’s global working group on follow-up to the World Report on Violence
Against Children. She has a higher law degree from the Universities of Oslo and
Bergen. She specialised in Public International Law and her main field of study
was the human rights based approach to development, with special focus on
the complementarities of the CRC and CEDAW. Her work is particularly devoted
to gender-based violence and non-discrimination and equality for indigenous
children, children of ethnic minorities, children without parental care and other
socially excluded children. She is a member of the NGO Group’s subgroups on
violence against children and children without parental care. Ann-Kristin has
grass-root experience from Burkina Faso and Norway and is currently involved in
program follow-up in South-East Asia, Latin America and Southern and Eastern
Africa.
Veronica Yates – Child Rights Information Network (CRIN)
Veronica Yates is currently the Coordinator of CRIN, which promotes the
implementation of the UNCRC by capturing the expertise and the knowledge of
over 1,700 members around the world and making it available to all actors
involved in the implementation of the CRC, encouraging them to link up with
other child rights organisations, in their own country or elsewhere. Veronica has
been working for CRIN for five years, and has focused much of her time over the
past two years on the UN Study, setting up and managing an email list that has
grown to almost 1200 subscribers. In her direct involvement in the Study,
Veronica participated in most of the subgroup meetings leading up to
preparations for Regional Consultations. She participated in six of the regional
consultations reporting on processes on a daily basis, with a particular focus on
documenting children’s involvement in the meetings. She edited a CRIN
Newsletter on Violence and supported the NGO Advisory Panel and Subgroup in
their campaign on achieving a Special Representative.