The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination's Project on Gender in the Global Community will co-sponsor a one-day workshop, "Priorities for the UN's Children and Armed Conflict Agenda, 2020," on Wednesday, January 29, 2020, at the Princeton Club of New York. The workshop is co-sponsored with the NGO Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict and will discuss specific, concrete, and targeted actions that can be taken within the framework of the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) agenda to improve and strengthen the CAAC agenda, and UN responses to grave violations against children. This is the sixth annual policy workshop co-sponsored by LISD and Watchlist bringing together Security Council members, other UN Member States, relevant UN departments and offices, civil society representatives, academica, and other key constitutents to consider key priorities of the CAAC agenda for the upcoming year. The workshop sessions are private and by invitation only.

The workshop will include three working sessions. The first session will highlight ongoing challenges and concerns impacting the implementation of the CAAC agenda. These include effective monitoring, reporting, and response to grave violations on the ground; engagement with non-State armed actors; the development and signing of action plans to end and prevent grave violations against children; addressing persistent perpetrators; and child protection capacity on the ground, including during mission drawdown and transitions. The second session will focus on emerging concerns and situations with implications for the CAAC agenda moving forward. Presentations will focus on military detention of children in the context of armed conflict, the impacts on children of efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism, sexual violence against children (girls and boys), and attacks on education, links to other grave violations, and emerging situations of concern. Participants will discuss the implication of these situations and how the CAAC agenda can address the evolving needs of children caught up in armed conflicts. The third session will feature reflections by H.E. Ambassador Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve, Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations, on the first year of Belgium’s chairmanship of the Working Group on CAAC. Participants will discuss the state of the Working Group agenda, challenging negotiations, and working methods and effective use of the toolkit, and brainstorm priorities for this year. 

In a closing wrap-up session, based on the recommendations from the previous sessions, participants will provide input for priorities and exchange views on how to best to take forward key workshop findings in 2020.