Defence for Children International [DCI] is an international children`s rights movement that has been active at the local, national and international levels for some 20 years now.



DCI - a non-governmental and non-profit organization - was born in July 1979. The movement was founded by Nigel Cantwell and Canon Moerman, the chair of the International Year of the Child, at a time when children`s rights were not the main focus of many organizations. The International Year of the Child instigated the dissemination of an unprecedented amount of information about children`s rights violations such as torture, prostitution, economic exploitation, arbitrary detention, and trafficking and sale. DCI was established in direct response to the lack of international structures dedicated to a human rights-based approach to the multi-faceted problems faced by the world`s children.



The Convention on the Rights of the Child

DCI mobilized the NGO community to become actively involved in the drafting process of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The resulting NGO Ad Hoc Group, established in mid-1983, contributed a great deal to the Convention`s final text. In 1987, the NGO Ad Hoc Group joined with UNICEF in publicly promoting the objective of having the Convention ready for adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989.



Following the unanimous adoption of the Convention by the General Assembly on 20 November 1989, DCI sections successfully lobbied their governments to ratify the new Convention. DCI sections were often the first to take the initiative of making an NGO Alternative Report for the Committee on the Rights of Child, or to initiate national coalitions.



DCI continues to defend the Convention on the Rights of the Child by monitoring its actual implementation and systematic application by States parties.



Our Mission:

Defence for Children international [DCI] is an independent non-governmental organisation set up during the International Year of the Child [1979] to ensure on-going, practical, systematic and concerted international action specially directed towards promoting and protecting the rights of the child. The organisation`s aims are:



--to advocate for children`s rights so as to achieve the acknowledgement of children as equal legal subjects, within the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, its optional protocols, and all other human rights instruments;

--to foster awareness about, and solidarity around, children`s rights situations, issues and initiatives throughout the world;

--to seek, promote and implement the most effective means of securing the protection of the rights in concrete situations, from both a preventive and curative standpoint.



Our Vision

Children should enjoy and exercise their rights in a just, solidary society.



To achieve these aims, DCI`s methods include:

--publishing information on all aspects of children`s rights, through regular and ad hoc publications;

--taking up specific cases of violations of children`s rights referred to it as an independent agency;

--undertaking action-oriented investigations, alone or jointly, on serious global problems which are found to be inadequately documented internationally, e. g. the sexual exploitation of children, children in prison;

--taking direct action in response to situations involving the violation of rights of specific group of children;

--monitoring and evaluating the practical implementation of accepted children`s rights;

--working for improved international standards in the children`s rights sphere;

--stimulating co-operation and action, nationally, regionally and internationally, to improve responses to children`s rights problems.