Country Visits

Field visits by the Special Representative have been a central element of her advocacy strategy to bring high-level visibility to the situation and rights of children affected by armed conflict. In the past three years, the Special Representative has undertaken 12 country visits: Uganda (June 2006), Sudan (January 2007), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (March 2007), Burundi (March 2007), Lebanon and Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (April 2007), Myanmar (June 2007), Côte d'Ivoire (September 2007), Iraq (April 2008), Chad (May 2008), Central African Republic (May 2008) and Afghanistan (June 2008) The Special Representative also engaged a Special Adviser, supported by her Office, to visit Sri Lanka (November 2006).

June 08
Afghanistan		 May 08
Chad / CAR		 April 08
Iraq
Sept 07
Côte d'Ivoire 		June 07
Myanmar		 April 07
Middle East
March 07
DRC/Burundi 		January 07
Sudan		 November 06
Sri Lanka 		June 06
Uganda

The broad objectives of those visits were:

  • to make a first-hand assessment of the situation of children so as to enhance global advocacy for protection and programme interventions on their behalf, and to meet and speak with the children themselves to get a direct sense of their experience and their needs;
  • to support and facilitate the dialogue of United Nations actors with parties to conflict to conclude action plans in order to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers and release all children associated with fighting forces and to advocate for concrete measures and elicit commitments by parties to prevent other grave violations;
  • to assess, where applicable, the implementation of Security Council resolution 1612 (2005), on children and armed conflict, including implementation of the monitoring and reporting mechanism on the six types of grave violations against children;
  • to engage in dialogue with relevant national authorities at the highest levels to gain concrete commitments to prevent and address violations, and to ascertain and highlight specific child protection measures that may have been taken by Governments;
  • to engage with NGOs and local civil society groups on protection concerns for children affected by armed conflict, and to better support their work;
  • to strengthened coordination and collaboration of United Nations partners and other stakeholders on the ground around issues related to children and armed conflict.

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