The Dialogue Works campaign is proud to launch the Kigali Declaration – the outcome document of our Global Gathering of Working Children and Youth, which took place in Kigali/ Rwanda in January 2023.
This declaration summarizes the key demands of working children and has been elaborated by 63 child participants from 16 countries.
In particular, they demand from political decision-makers to:
- Take effective measures to combat poverty, in particular ensuring decent jobs, in order to meet basic needs
- Prioritize education and give every child access to quality education and skills training;
- Protect them from labour exploitation, harsh conditions and risks, and allow children to do suitable dignified work
- Listen to children, understand them and implement laws that respect their rights
- Ensure protection against violence and discrimination.
These measures aim to make policy decisions more realistic and context-specific, and to take into account and improve the living conditions of working children.
During the Global Gathering, the Kigali declaration was elaborated in a participatory process by the CAC delegates and builds upon three existing documents:
- Dialogue Works “Let our Voices be Heard” global advocacy paper
- Global Gathering group work findings from the a activity called “Problem and Solution Trees” which build upon the 5 key advocacy message themes from “Let our Voices be Heard”. As well as any relevant findings from other skill building workshops during the Global Gathering (e.g. about Climate Change/Climate justice; Disability inclusion,…)
- The Joint Declaration of Movements and Adolescent Workers that was developed in April 2022 by representatives of working children and adolescents from associations and movements of working children in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
After final revisions, the full statement was read out in plenary on the last day of the Global Gathering and adopted consensually in plenary.
As the CACs from India unfortunately did not have the chance to participate in the Global Gathering in Rwanda for administrative reasons and the CAC delegates decided to discuss the draft of the declaration with their peers from their local CACs, it was decided to give another 6 weeks after the event for final discussion of the text in all CACs and for final comments and revision.
The final declaration is translated into several languages. For more information find here:
On 12th April 2023, a delegation of the 11 Dialogue Works Children’s Advisory Committees (CAC) presented this declaration through different creative expressions in the main program of the African Children Summit. They CAC delegates also officially handed the Declaration over to Vice-Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Phillip D. Jaffé, and the UN Special Representative on Violence against Children, Najat Maalla. The video of the Session can be watched here (starting at minutes 39).
