Today's meeting was excellent! Doris Shapira, our Task Force chairperson and I had a meeting with Ms. Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary General on Armed Conflict. We are looking for best practices carried out by countries that have ratified conventions and enforced legislation to protect children in armed conflict. Ms. Coomaraswamy was most gracious and helpful in directing us to her reports on best practices, written in 2003. She referred us to the Human Rights Council's summary of legal steps of actions of countries to criminalize domestic violence. Some successful stories of re-integration of child combatants are in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. UNICEF, as we know, has a very active child protection section, and continues to do fine work in re-integrating children back into their communities. Before leaving,
we met Mr. Solimeo, a staff member, with whom we will continue to liaison. This project is a year's effort to learn of countries commitments to protect children in armed conflicts, as also to encourage, through our network, countries that are not honoring what has been agreed to.
Meg
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