Current activities
Launch of the new edition of the ARC resource pack
On 7 December, the ARC resource pack, a capacity building tool for child protection in and after emergencies, was launched at a reception at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. The resource pack is the product of an interagency collaboration led by Save the Children together with UNHCR, UNICEF, OHCHR, International Rescue Committee and Terre des Hommes.
In his remarks, the Ambassador of the EU Delegation to the UN, Eckart Guth, said that the decision to speak at the launch was not difficult, as child protection is an important issue and one that concerns everyone. Ambassador Hans Dahlgren, of the Swedish Mission to the UN, recounted visiting with former child soldiers in a recent visited to the DRC and stressed the value of a tool like ARC in addressing the protection issues that children in emergencies face. Both ambassadors highlighted the importance of ensuring that ARC is widely disseminated and used in the field.
Volker Türk, director of UNHCR’s Division of International Protection Services praised the cooperation between UN and NGO agencies that led to the ARC resource pack and said it would be a valuable tool for UNHCR in fulfilling its mandate. “This product will have a very important impact,” he told those attending the launch. “We will use it in our training, we will put it on our website, we will also use it in our responsibility as global protection cluster lead because obviously child protection is a big theme. It is very important for the children that we will care for.”
Henrik Häggström, Save the Children’s interim director of its Child Protection Initiative, ended the remarks by noting the further activities that are planned for ARC, including the finalization of a translation into Spanish, which is underway, translations into French and Arabic and regional workshops using the ARC resource pack. He stressed that continued commitment from the Steering Committee agencies and donors would be needed to ensure that the ARC resource pack reaches its full potential.
ARC Workshop in East Africa, October 2009
Save the Children Sweden hosted a regional technical workshop using new material from the Action for the Rights of Children resource pack on 26-28 October, 2009 at the Jacaranda Hotel, in Nairobi-Kenya. This workshop brought together 42 participants from both ARC Steering Committee members (Save the Children, UNICEF, UNHCR, Terres des Homes) as well as partners and Civil Society organisations with an interest in child protection. All the participants had a child protection or training role in their agencies, and several had participated in the ARC pilot workshop in Mombassa in November 2008.
The objectives of the workshop were:
- To familiarize participants, who deal with child protection issues, with the new ARC content
- To build on the already existing capacities of participants so that they are able to use ARC to deliver quality training on child protection in emergencies and post emergencies.
- To plan follow through ARC activities at Country and Regional level and build network relationships between participants to stimulate collaboration that will continue after the workshop.
- To promote interagency collaboration to address child protection issues.