HarvardX: FXB001 Child Protection: Children's Rights in Theory and Practice

Agnes is a 2018 Aspen New Voices Fellow. She heads Uganda’s Immigration Training Academy and until recently was the Deputy National Coordinator for Prevention of Trafficking in Persons. She has represented Uganda in several regional inter-governmental committees on migration, peace and security and provided expertise to organizations like the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Organization for Migration.

Agnes is a 2017/18 Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) Commitment mentor. As a CGI U Commitment maker, she built a center for human-trafficking survivors in Uganda, trained over 2000 law enforcement to counter human trafficking, and fundraised and delivered over 92,000 textbooks for education of vulnerable children in Uganda. She is the founder of End child trafficking campaign and the Huts For Peace program.

Agnes was named one of the 100 most influential people in Africa by New African Magazine in 2015. In 2017 Agnes made the global list of 100 Vital Voices most exceptional women. She received CGI U Alumni Honor Roll from President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, and became a CGI U Ambassador in 2018.

Agnes is a recipient of the 2016 Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) International Award, Distinguished Leadership award for Internationals - University of Minnesota, and the 2012 and 2014 Inspirational Woman of Uganda. In 2013, she was selected as one of 50 emerging Global Women leaders by the Women in Public Service Project.

Agnes is a Harvard Kennedy School Mid-Career Master in Public Administration graduate, receiving the Edward S. Mason Program most Outstanding Fellow award. She is the 2010/11 Fulbright/Hubert Humphrey Fellow and studied Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. She received a Global Development and Social Justice Certification with a special session with President Jimmy Carter at Emory University in 2011.

Her research focuses on:

• Developing new interventions and approaches to promote early child development with a particular interest in how to strengthen child and caregiving related outcomes through existing health, nutrition and education systems.
• Understanding the implementation structures and processes for early childhood interventions to achieve sustainable impact at-scale.
• Promoting capacity development in local communities, services and systems for the effective delivery of interventions to promote early child development.
• Inclusion of children with disabilities in health and development services.

She has extensive experience in evaluating early childhood interventions in south Asia, east Africa, and in central and east Europe. One of Dr. Yousafzai’s most significant studies is the Pakistan Early Child Development Scale-Up (PEDS) trial, a cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating responsive stimulation and nutrition interventions to strengthen early child development and growth outcomes. The PEDS trial cohort is currently being follow-up at age 8 years old to investigate early intervention effects at school-age. This is one of the few studies to test the effects of integrating a psychosocial stimulation intervention in a large-scale community health service and to examine the long-term intervention effects on development and growth in a low- and middle-income population. She is also the PI of a randomized controlled trial in Pakistan investigating the impacts of community youth leaders delivering early childhood care and learning interventions on a host of early childhood and community outcomes. Her work aims to bridge evidence and practice through implementation research that advances interventions which promote early childhood development. Dr. Yousafzai has written extensively about early childhood interventions in low- and middle-income countries including recent articles in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, Annual Review of Psychology, Lancet, Lancet Global Health, and Pediatrics. She also serves on a number of Advisory Groups on early child development for international organizations including the Interim Executive Group of the Early Childhood Development Action Network-ECDAN.

A public health specialist with 10 years of experience in health programs management and coordination in Africa. She has experience working on several development projects in Africa and has lead projects aimed at empowering the youth to be change agents of their community. She also has experience working with the private, non-governmental and public health sector and in managing large multicultural teams in complex environments. Prior to HKS, she was the Programme Officer for DFID founded project on Adolescent Reproductive Health with the Palladium Group in Ghana, where she provided technical support to government institutions on policy and evidence based strategies to reduce adolescent morbidity and mortality and advocated for better policies for young people. She has a BA from the University of Ghana, an MPH from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Benyam Dawit Mezmur is an academician and practitioner who specialises on children’s rights law. He is a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and served as its Chairperson from 2015-2017, and as Vice-Chairperson from 2013-2015. At the regional level, Professor Mezmur continues to serve on the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), a treaty body of the African Union. He served as its Chairperson twice, from 2012-2014, and from 2015-2017, and is currently its special rapporteur on children and armed conflict in Africa. He was also appointed by Pope Francis to serve on the Pontifical Commission on the Protection of Minors.

In his full-time post, he is an Associate Professor of Law, and Coordinator of the Children’s Rights Project at the Dullah Omar Institute (named after its founder, the first Minister of Justice of Democratic South Africa) for Constitutional Law, Governance, and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa. In early 2018, he was appointed as Deputy Dean for Post-Graduate and Research Matters of the Faculty.

Professor Cécile Aptel is Director of Policy, Strategy and Knowledge at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, where she manages international humanitarian programs. She is also Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights of the Pretoria University, Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts’ University, and Visiting Professor at Harvard.

A recognized expert in the areas of international criminal justice, transitional justice and child rights, she has over 20 years of experience in international affairs, working primarily with the UN, managing legal and policy programs, notably at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the International Independent Investigation Commission, and the UN Internal Oversight Services. Prof. Aptel has also worked for the European Union, think-tanks and NGOs, including the International Centre for Transitional Justice, where she established and directed the Program on Children and Transitional Justice. She was awarded the Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship by the United States Institute of Peace in 2010.

Her recent publications include: “Child Slaves and Child Brides” (Journal of International Criminal Justice, Oxford Uni. Press, 2016); “The Rights of Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law: a Human Rights’ Perspective’ (Africa and the ICC, 10 Years On, 2015); “Des limites et du potentiel de la justice pénale internationale” (Etudes interculturelles, 2014); and “Unpunished Crimes: The Special Court for Sierra Leone and Children” (The Sierra Leone Special Court and Its Legacy, Cambridge Uni. Press 2014). Her forthcoming publications include: The protection of children in armed conflict (International Children’s Rights Law, forthcoming 2018) and Transitional Justice and Children: Prioritizing Reform of the Education Sector (co-authored, forthcoming 2018).

Cornelius Williams is the Associate Director and Global Chief of Child Protection for UNICEF's Programme Division. He has over 25 years of experience in managing child protection programmes in Western, Eastern and Southern Africa with UNICEF and Save the Children. As a child rights advocate he has been involved in advocacy that led to improved protection of children from sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, reduced recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups and increased access of children to identity documents/ birth certificate and social assistance and other services.

Mr. Williams has played a leading role in coordinating UNICEF’s engagement with governments and other partners in the development of programmes for the prevention and response to violence against children in countries in Eastern and Southern Africa. He is a national of Sierra Leone and holds a Masters Degree in International Child Welfare from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom.

David Tobis is a senior partner of Maestral International, is the founder and former Executive Director of the Child Welfare Fund and the Fund for Social Change. The Fund for Social Change administered collaborations between governments, service providers, communities and foundations.

For the past four decades, he has worked to reform child welfare in New York, the United States and internationally. Beginning in 1991, he worked as a consultant to UNICEF when the horrors of the Romanian orphanage system became known to the world. He conducted the first assessment of the child protection system in Romania which contributed to a dramatic reduction in the number of children in institutional care. He subsequently worked as a consultant to the World Bank to prevent children, the disabled and the elderly from being placed in long-term residential institutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His monograph, published by the World Bank, Moving from Residential Institutions to Community-Based Services in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union became the basis for the World Bank’s strategy in the area of social welfare. He has worked with UNICEF, the World Bank and several foundations in dozens of countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Asia, and Africa. He recently worked with the state government of Tabasco, Mexico where he lead a team to implement major reforms in the state’s social welfare system, including establishing the first governmental foster care program in Mexico. He is currently working with UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Affairs in Lebanon developing the country’s National Strategic Plan for the Protection of Women and Children.

Previously he was director of Human Services for New York City Council President Carol Bellamy and led that office’s successful efforts to reform New York’s foster care system. He was a Fulbright scholar to Guatemala and co-edited a book, Guatemala: And So Victory is Born, Even in the Bitterest Hour. David’s most recent book, From Pariahs to Partners: How Parents and Their Allies Changed New York City’s Child Welfare System (Oxford University Press in 2013) documents efforts in which he was involved to dramatically improve New York’s child welfare system.

He served on the Board of Directors of the Urban Justice Center (chairman 1987-99), Bridge Builders, High Tide Dance, Inc., the Global and Regional Aspergers Syndrome Partnership (GRASP, chairman 2008-2010), and the Carlo Pittore Foundation (President, 2005-2010). David graduated from Williams College and received a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University.

Hala Aldosari is a scholar-activist in women's health and violence against women research. She holds a Ph.D. in health services research from Old Dominion University with a focus on epidemiology. Her research and publications explores the impact of intimate partner violence on women's health and the effect of gender norms on women's health and legal position. She created an advocacy website to disseminate information on the legal positions of women in Saudi Arabia and to provide resources, educational materials and e-guides for women and various sectors involved in addressing violence against women and girls.

She has a masters in medical biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Surrey and worked previously as a medical scientist, health administrator, lecturer and consultant in Saudi Arabia. After her Ph.D., she finished a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in the social determinants of women's health and violence against women. In 2016, she worked as a visiting scholar at the Washington D.C.-based think tank, the Arab Gulf States Institute, in which she researched and published several papers and posts on the impacts of gender norms on women's health and legal rights in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf States. Her writings appeared in several international media outlets, such as the Foreign Affairs, the Guardian, the Carnegie Center for International Peace, the Foreign Policy Journal, among other media and think tanks publications.

She is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, researching gender and women's health in Saudi Arabia. Aldosari is also an activist, publicly advocating for gender equality and human rights in Saudi Arabia and serves on the advisory board of several human rights organizations. She won the Freedom House award for 2016, the 2018 list of women inspiring changes by Harvard Law, and the Human Rights Watch award for 2018 for her extraordinary activism.

Dr. Lombardi has made significant contributions in the areas of child and family policy as an innovative leader and policy advisor to national and international organizations and foundations and as a public servant. She currently serves as a senior advisor on a range of philanthropic initiatives affecting young children and families in the US and around the world. These include overall advisement to the Buffett Early Childhood Fund and to the Pritizker Childrens Initiative, among others. She also serves as the Guest Editor of Early Childhood Matters, the journal of the Bernard van Leer Foundation. In addition, during 2017-18 she is a Visiting Scholar at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University.

Joan served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development (2009-2011) and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and External Affairs in Administration for Children and Families and the first Commissioner of the Child Care Bureau among other positions (l993-1998). She is the author of numerous publications including Time to Care: Redesigning Child Care to Promote Education, Support Families and Build Communities and Co-Author of Beacon of Hope: The Promise of Early Head Start for America’s Youngest Children. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Save the Children and on the Board of Directors of the Global Campaign for Education-US.

Julie Boatright Wilson, the Harry Kahn Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at HKS, teaches courses in degree and executive education programs on family and poverty policy; research design and methods; and evidence generating strategies for managers. Wilson’s research focuses on child welfare issues, particularly child abuse and neglect, adoption of foster youth, and juvenile justice. She is currently working with others to develop strategies for improving services to Massachusetts children, youth and their families.

Wilson is working with Harvard colleagues to develop frameworks for more effectively generating evidence to manage individual organizations as well as collective initiatives to improve the well-being of children and families. Wilson joined the Kennedy School faculty in 1980 and has held a number of administrative positions, including Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy and Associate Academic Dean. From 1986 to 1989, Wilson took a leave to direct a research and policy unit for the New York State Department of Social Services.

Margareta Matache, PhD is a Roma rights activist from Romania, director of the Roma Program at Harvard FXB, and also a Harvard instructor. In 2012 she was awarded a Hauser postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard FXB and founded the Roma Program here at that time. In April 2017, she shepherded Culture Beyond Borders: The Roma Contribution, FXB’s very successful fifth annual event to mark International Roma Day. The University of Pennyslvania Press published her latest book Realizing Roma Rights in spring 2017. This volume, which she co-edited with Andrzej Mirga and FXB’s research director, Jacqueline Bhabha, investigates anti-Roma racism and documents a growing Roma-led political movement engaged in building a more inclusive and just Europe. From 2005 to 2012 Matache was the executive director of Romani CRISS (www.romanicriss.org), a leading NGO that defends and promotes the rights of Roma.

During her tenure as executive director, Romani CRISS took a stand against discrimination in landmark cases targeting the president, prime minister, and foreign minister of Romania. The organization’s advocacy and litigation efforts also contributed to the approval of the domestic School Desegregation Bill. Prior to this work Matache served as a youth worker and trainer on cultural diversity and minority rights. She has also worked as an election observer in the Western Balkans and has implemented well-known initiatives, including “Roma and the Stability Pact in South-Eastern Europe” and “Roma Use Your Ballot Wisely.” She completed her doctoral research work in the early childhood development of Romani children at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest, and holds a Master’s degree in European Social Policies. Her publications and research have covered the rights, agency, and social ecology of Romani children and adolescents, early childhood development, Romani women, anti-Roma violence, and segregation in education.

Marta Santos Pais was appointed as Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on Violence against Children as the first SRSG on Violence against Children and took her position on September 1st, 2009. As a high level global independent advocate, Marta Santos Pais promotes the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against children in all settings, including online and offline, the justice setting, in the home, in schools, in institutional care, in detention centres, in the workplace and in the community. She acts as a bridge builder in all regions, and across sectors and settings where violence against children may occur. Since her appointment, she has been strongly committed to mobilizing action and political support to maintain momentum around this agenda and to achieve steady progress across the world. A key concern has been the inclusion of a key target on ending violence against children in the global development agenda and at present to support national implementation efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal Target 16.2. With this in mind, SRSG Santos Pais promotes the adoption of a national agenda on violence prevention and elimination, the enactment and enforcement of a legal ban on all forms of violence against children, and the consolidation of a national data system to promote and monitor progress.

Marta Santos Pais has more than 30 years’ experience on legal cooperation and human rights concerns and an active participation in United Nations and intergovernmental processes. She was a member of the UN Drafting Group of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and of its Optional Protocols and participated in the development of other key international human rights standards, including on the abolition of the death penalty, protection from disappearances, human rights of juveniles deprived of liberty and human rights defenders. She has authored a large number of publications on international and comparative law and human rights and children’s rights. Before her appointment as SRSG on Violence against Children, Marta Santos Pais was the Director of the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, and before then UNICEF Director of Evaluation, Policy and Planning. Previously, she was the Rapporteur of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and Vice-Chair of the Coordinating Committee on Childhood Policies of the Council of Europe. She was a Special Adviser to the UN Study on Violence against Children and to the Machel Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. In September 2017 she was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the Maria Grzegorzewska University.

Maud de Boer-Buquicchio (the Netherlands) was appointed Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, on 8 May 2014, and her mandate was renewed in March 2017 for an additional three-year term.

Between 2002 and 2012, she served as Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, the first woman elected for this post.

She joined the Council of Europe in 1969 and worked in different capacities in the human rights protection mechanism set up under the European Convention on Human Rights. In 1998, she was elected Deputy Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights.

Throughout her mandates, she has focused her work on the fight against discrimination and violence, and the promotion of the rights of the most vulnerable groups, especially children. She launched the Council of Europe programme “Building a Europe for and with children”, advocating for a holistic and integrated approach towards the issue of eliminating all forms of violence against children and respect for children’s rights. She has spearheaded the development and adoption of three key Council of Europe Conventions, namely, the Convention on action against trafficking in human beings, the Convention on the protection of children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, and the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

She is President of the European Federation for Missing and Exploited Children (“Missing Children Europe”), and continues to dedicate herself to ending abuse and neglect of children.

Ms de Boer-Buquicchio studied French language and literature, followed by law at Leiden University, the Netherlands, specialising in labour law and international organisations. She is fluent in Dutch, English, French, Italian and German

Nigel Cantwell is a Geneva-based international consultant on child protection policies who has been working on the human rights of children for over 35 years with international NGOs and UNICEF, including as head of the 'Implementation of International Standards' unit at UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, 1998-2003. Focusing increasingly on safeguarding children’s rights in intercountry adoption and alternative care, he has carried out numerous field assessments of adoption and alternative care systems worldwide. He played a lead role in developing and drafting the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.

Olivier Peyroux is a sociologist. His work with child victims of trafficking notably from the Balkans has involved him with in-the-field consulting assignments on local and European child protection issues for national and international organizations including the United Nation and the Consil of Europe. His research has been widely published in scientific journals and he is regularly consulted by the media on trafficking and child protection issues. In addition to his non-profit commitments to children at risk, Peyroux is a legal expert on trafficking in human beings for the French judiciary.

Sergio Aguayo has been a full professor at El Colegio de Mexico since 1977. He has taught at various universities in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. Since 2014 he has been affiliated with the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has written dozens of books and scholarly articles. He writes a weekly column in Reforma, as well as 14 other newspapers. Since March 2001, he has been a member of Primer Plano, Canal 11's weekly TV talk show. In 2014, he founded at El Colegio de Mexico the influential Seminar on Violence and Peace that conducts research, organizes courses for public officials and victims’ organizations, and has a monthly public discussion with the protagonists of war and peace.

Sumnima Tuladhar is a pioneers child rights defender in Nepal. She has extensive experience in child protection issues, child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation of children, street children, trafficking in women and children, child participation and children in armed conflict. She has conducted and published various researches on the issues of child rights and child protection. As an expert on child protection issues in Nepal, she is engaged in policy advocacy on child rights and conducts awareness programs and trainings to different sections of the society, such as—social workers, health officials, teachers, law enforcing agencies on a regular basis.

As a founding member of CWIN-Nepal, (the first child rights organization in Nepal) Sumnima has been working passionately towards these causes for the past 30 years in various capacities within CWIN. She currently serves as the Executive Director of CWIN-Nepal.

Sumnima is a member of Board of Trustees of ECPAT International representing South Asia, member of AATWIN (Alliance against trafficking in women and children) and Women's Network for Peace (Shanti Malika). She is also a member of board of Duke of Edinburgh Award (Saksham Yuva), Nepal.

Sumnima has worked directly with children and young people for their social reintegration, creative development and social empowerment. She has travelled to different areas of various districts to promote child rights and raise awareness on child protection. She has also led national interventions for the protection of children in armed conflict and recovery for children affected by earthquake.

Sumnima has a Masters degree in Literature and has received number of trainings on various subjects such as child protection, young people’s participation, conflict transformation, fund raising, psycho-social counseling, etc. from different prominent organisations. She has carried out number of research and studies on different child protection issues such as trafficking, child sexual abuse, commercial sexual exploitation of children, children in conflict, child labour, etc.

Susan Bissell’s career has focused on the rights of children. Having spent over twenty-five years working in various capacities for UNICEF, from January 2016 to March 2018 she was the Founding Director of the emerging Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children. The primary purpose of the partnership is to "end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children." From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Bissell served as Chief of Child Protection in UNICEF's Program Division. Author of a number of research studies, she has worked with UNICEF in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Italy (at the Innocenti Research Centre), and New York City, and earned a PhD in public health and medical anthropology from the University of Melbourne in Australia. While completing her doctorate, she joined Trudie Styler and the Bangladeshi film team Catherine and Tareque Masud to produce the documentary "A Kind of Childhood," which has won awards and been screened widely. She holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto.

On behalf of her UNICEF Child Protection colleagues, Susan Bissell has accepted awards including an honorary professorship at Barnard College/Columbia University, the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship award from Tufts University, the Flambeau D’or from Panathlon International, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Last month she served as the week-long honourary Weissberg Chair in International Studies, at Beloit College.

Dr. Digidiki is an Instructor at Harvard University and a Forensic and Social Psychologist. She completed her post-doctoral studies on Child Protection in Humanitarian Crises at the Harvard FXB Center, and now leads the Center’s research on Migrant Child Protection in the Mediterranean Basin. Dr. Digidiki’s research focuses on the sexual exploitation of migrant children, the impact of repatriation on children, and strategies for increasing resilience and agency among stranded migrant children. Dr. Digidiki also works closely with the Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on issues of forced migration and religion. Prior to joining the Harvard FXB Center in 2014, Dr. Digidiki worked extensively on human trafficking, prostitution, and victim blaming. Along with her teaching activities at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she has guest lectured at different universities including Boston College, Brandeis University, and Northeastern University. She holds a PhD in Clinical and Social Psychology from the Aristotle University, Greece and two Masters on Forensic and Social Psychology from the University of Central Lancashire, UK.