Morocco to host Euro-Mediterranean meeting on child's rights
Regional-Morocco, Culture, 5/10/2002

Morocco's Princess Lalla Meryem, personal representative of King Mohammed VI to the UN special general assembly on children, meeting May 8-10 at the UN headquarters in New York, announced in New York Wednesday that Morocco will host before this year's end a Euro-Mediterranean meeting on human security and child's rights.

Princess Lalla Meryem, who was speaking at a round table on the "renewal of commitment and future action for children in the next decade," held part of the UN special session on children, said the Euro-Mediterranean meeting will be held under her chairmanship, in her capacity as a UNESCO Good-Will Ambassador, and will be co-sponsored by the UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the UNICEF.

"This outstanding international meeting will work out a new approach to this issue from a new perspective on the basis of the principle of human security, child's rights, the United Nations Convention on Child's Rights and the two appended protocols as well as on the recommendations of the international conferences on children's mistreatment and exploitation, the document "A World Fit for Children" that we are poised to adopt, and on the commitments that will stem from this historic meeting," the Princess said.

After she surveyed the progress scored worldwide with regard to improving the indicators related to children's survival and development, such as reducing child mortality rate, eradicating several killer diseases, and increasing children's schooling rate and after she renewed Morocco's unfailing resolve to carry on efforts at the service of childhood issues, she noted however that "during the past decade, a new problematic and worrying phenomena affected large numbers of children, who are threatened by ill-treatment, and by all sorts of odious exploitation, especially economic and sexual exploitation."


"Other children, on an equally large scale, are suffering from margining and from the plague of drugs and aids, a fact putting in jeopardy their rights at the level of human safety and security, any time, in any country," said Princess Lalla Meriem before underlining the negative impact of armed conflicts on the physical and psychological safety of the children affected by sieges and forced exile.

"The tragic situation of the children of Palestine is but a blatant example of this kind of serious violations of children's rights and humankind rights in general," she pointed out.

Princess Lalla Meryem recalled further that part of the pondering on the means to face up these phenomena Morocco hosted last year several high-level regional meetings, including the summit of African First Ladies, the conference of civil society organizations -specializing in childhood issues in the Arab world, the Arab-African conference of finance ministers and the regional forum against children's sexual exploitation. These high-level meetings, she said, had a clear scientific nature and helped identify new dimensions of these problems, that should be at the focus of the world community's attention "in view of their intrinsic link to the concept of children's human security, a concept that we present today as a basic issue, as it relates to child's rights to physical and psychological safety and the basic right to survival, to protection, to psychological rehabilitation and to social integration."

"This issue should be handled, like all humanity's global issues, on the basis of a new equation founded on regional and international cooperation," she insisted.

King Mohammed VI, accompanied by Princess Lalla Meryem, chairwoman of the National Observatory of Children's Rights, has attended earlier Wednesday the opening session of the UN special general assembly on children.

Princess Lalla Meryem, the sovereign's eldest sister, is leading the Moroccan delegation to this landmark three-day special session that will explore long-standing obstacles to young people's well-being and development and provide opportunity to appraise developments since the World Summit for Children in 1990.

The special session is bringing together over 60 heads of State and government, as well as non-governmental organizations, children's advocates and children themselves.

Previous Stories:
  Mrs. Mubarak at UN children's session: Have we lost our conscience?   (5/9/2002)
  Morocco, an example in fight against child labor, ILO   (5/8/2002)
  Princess Lalla Meriem to attend UN special session on children   (5/8/2002)
  Syria participates in UN General Assembly session on Children   (5/6/2002)
  Morocco's Princess Lalla Hasna chairs charity gala   (5/3/2002)
  Arab states to devise an action plan regarding children   (4/26/2002)
  Casablanca Hosts Arab Conference on Child Labor   (4/16/2002)
  Morocco takes part in Yokohama congress on sexual exploitation of children for commercial ends   (12/15/2001)
  Cairo's Arab extraordinary summit on women   (11/10/2001)

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