FMSI hosts child rights conference for its 10-year anniversary
Marist International Solidarity Foundation Onlus For the benefit of children (FMSI) is hosting a child rights conference on Nov. 20 in Rome, Italy, to celebrate its 10 year anniversary and to raise awareness on the migrant children’s right to education.
Speakers at the conference, titled ‘Children on the Move, diritti senza Confini’ (Children on the Move, rights without boundaries), will include representatives of Save the Children, Focsiv, Jesuit Refugee Service, Italian Red Cross and Terre des Hommes.
It is hoped that Brother Georges Sabe, a Blue Marist who looks after displaced children in Aleppo, Syria, will be able to give his testimony at the event.
According to the United Nations, there were over 244 million migrants in the world in 2015. Today, the number of migrants includes 21 million refugees, three million asylum seekers and over 40 million internally displaced persons.
The international community is currently engaged in negotiations for carrying out the Global Compact for Migration in a safe and orderly way.
The conference will be held at the Italian Chamber of Deputies at 10:30 am.
Participants can also visit a photographic exhibition at Galleria Alberto Sordi in Rome from Nov. 19 – Dec. 2. It will be an exhibition of 16 photographs chosen from a contest open to the participation of children and young people from schools around the world on the topic children on the move.
FMSI is the foundation created by the Institute to promote and protect the rights of children. FMSI carries on its mission through the activity of advocacy and lobbyingand with projects in the countries in which the Marists are present.
FMSI was constituted in 2007 in Italy as a non-profit organization of social usefulness (ONLUS).
From 2011 it has the special consultative status before the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.
FMSI is member of: Bureau International Catholique de l’Enfance (BICE), Centre Catholique International de Genève (CCIG), Child Rights Connect, Movimiento Mundial por la Infancia de Latinoamérica y El Caribe, FOCSIV (Federazione degli Organismi Cristiani Servizio Internazionale Volontario), Observatorio Niñez y Adolescencia (ONA), Santiago de Chile.