The DCI International Secretariat (IS) is the focal point for DCI as an international movement, focusing mainly on lobbying, research, networking and advocacy work, primarily around the issue of juvenile justice. Moreover, the IS offers technical assistance and capacity building to its 40 national sections and associated members across the globe. DCI national sections and associated members develop and implement programmes addressing a number of pressing child rights issues including: Child Labour, Juvenile Justice, Child Soldiers, Sexual Abuse/Exploitation, Violence Against Children, Child Trafficking, Education, Health
Our Mission Defence for Children International is dedicated to ensuring on-going, practical, systematic and concerted international action directed towards promoting and protecting the rights of the child, as articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), its optional protocols, and all the other human rights instruments.
MONITORING: To monitor and evaluate the practical implementation of children's rights according to universal standards; To monitor and follow-up the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
ADVOCACY: To advocate for children's rights so as to ensure that practices and policies concerning children respect the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, its optional protocols, and all other human rights instruments and follow the best interests of the child principle; To develop national and international strategies for interpellation and public denunciation of the infringements on the individual and collective rights of children.
AWARENESS-RAISING: To foster awareness about, and solidarity towards the rights of children, children's rights initiatives, situations and issues throughout the world; To create forms of massive social and educational communication which promote debate and raise awareness among the public regarding the realities of childhood and adolescence, helping to generate public opinion.
ACTION: To seek and implement the most effective means of securing the protection of children's rights in concrete situations, from both a preventive and curative standpoint; To implement projects and actions destined to protect the rights of children directly and effectively, specifically in those problematic areas not safeguarded by other organizations; To carry out follow-up activities to inspect the design and implementation of policies, laws and other provisions related to childhood; To guarantee that in the event that a child's rights are threatened, restricted or violated, the affected child will have easy and immediate access to optimal mechanisms of protection, legal defence and safekeeping.
PARTICIPATION: To promote spaces in which children have the opportunity to act as protagonists in societies and communities, to participate in decision making processes which involve them, as well as to create decent lives for themselves.
DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE: To approach the rights of children and adolescents from a development perspective, which implies a holistic approach that necessitates different levels of action: political, social, community and family-based and in collaboration with all stakeholders in the development of the child; To provide an institutional point of reference for local, national and international efforts oriented toward promoting, protecting, defending and developing the rights of all children, by influencing national and international legislation.
Our main tasks are: advocacy, lobby, research, and offering capacity building and technical assistance to national sections. Our priority area of focus for this work is juvenile justice.
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
Security and Public order
Justice and Reconciliation
The NGO Group has a number of thematic working groups on different issues including: violence against children, juvenile justice, the Human Rights Council, the establishment of a complaints procedure, children without alternative care.
DCI participates in a number of these groups and often undertakes joint initatives.
Governance and participation
NGO Advisory Panel for the Follow-up to the UN Study on Violence against Children
Group of NGOs mandated to monitor follow-up to the recommendations of the UN Study. Composed of international and national NGOs. For more information contact: www.violencestudy.org
Security and public order
Governance and participation
Interagency Panel on Juvenile Justice
(14 members, including DCI, are listed above)
Security and Public Order
Justice and Reconciliation