AGENDA AND SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Protecting Children. Providing Solutions.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: FAMILIES NOT INSTITUTIONS –
EU EXTERNAL ACTION CHAMPIONING CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
15 June 2018, 10:30–16:00
European Commission, Charlemagne building, Rue de la Loi 170
TIME
SESSION
SPEAKERS
9:30–10:30
WELCOME COFFEE AND NETWORKING
10:30–10:55
Introduction and
•
Irena ANDRASSY, Deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Mimica
opening remarks
•
Youth representative, Emerging Global Leaders Summit
•
Georgette MULHEIR, CEO, Lumos
10:55–11:00
ANIMATION: FAMILIES NOT ORPHANAGES
11:00–11:45
No Child Left Behind
•
(Chair) Georgette MULHEIR, CEO, Lumos
•
Neven MIMICA, European Commissioner for International Cooperation
and Development
•
Christos STYLIANIDES, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis
Management
•
J.K. ROWLING, Author, Founder and Life President, Lumos
11:45–12:00
Joining forces to end
•
Georgette MULHEIR, CEO, Lumos
institutionalisation
12:00–12:10
SHORT FILM HIGHLIGHTING REFORM AROUND THE WORLD
12:10–12:45
Strengthening child protection
•
(Chair) Lotte KNUDSEN, Managing Director, Human Rights, Global and
systems around the world
Multilateral Issues, European External Action Service
•
Zornitsa ROUSSINOVA, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Bulgaria
•
Dr. Claudine UWERA KANYAMANZA, Executive Secretary, National Commission
for Children, Rwanda
•
Aaron GREENBERG, Senior Regional Advisor for Europe and Central Asia,
Child Protection, UNICEF
12:45–13:30
LUNCH
13.30–13:55
The human and financial cost of
•
(Chair) Sophie MORGAN, TV Presenter and Entrepreneur
institutionalisation
•
Prof. Charles ZEANAH, Mary Sellars-Polchow Chair in Psychiatry; Vice Chair,
Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Tulane University School of Medicine
•
Prof. Manfred NOWAK, Independent Expert leading the UN Global Study
Children Deprived of Liberty
•
Mihaela IVANOVA, Self-advocate, Representative, Emerging Global Leaders
Summit
13:55–14:05
SHORT FILM HIGHLIGHTING REFORM AROUND THE WORLD
14:05–14:30
Emerging responses
•
(Chair) Cécile KYENGE, MEP, Vice Chair of the Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint
Parliamentary Assembly
•
HRH Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-HUSSEIN, President of the Higher Council for
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), Jordan
•
Myria VASSILIADOU, EU Anti-Trafficking Coordinator
•
Sophie MAGENNIS, Officer in Charge, UNHCR Regional Representation for
EU Affairs
14:30–15:00
Closing remarks and
•
(Chair) Georgette MULHEIR, CEO, Lumos
recommendations
•
Neven MIMICA, European Commissioner for International Cooperation and
Development
•
J.K. ROWLING, Author, Founder and Life President, Lumos
•
Elisabeth RIEDERER, Deputy Head PSC/POL Department, Permanent
Representation of Austria to the EU
•
Paul d’AUCHAMP, Deputy Regional Representative for Europe, OHCHR
•
Youth rapporteur, Emerging Global Leaders Summit
15:00–16:00
NETWORKING RECEPTION
Neven Mimica
European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development
Mr Neven Mimica is a Croatian politician and diplomat, currently holding the
position of European Commissioner for International Cooperation and
Development (since November 2014).
After his diplomatic career, from 2000 he served as Deputy Minister for Economic
Affairs, Minister for European Integration, Chairman of the European
Integration Committee and Deputy Speaker of the Croatian Parliament, and as
Deputy Prime Minister responsible for Internal, Foreign and European policy.
In July 2013, he was appointed European Commissioner for Consumer Policy.
Mr Mimica was born in 1953 in Split, Croatia. He is married, with two children.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Trade and a Master’s degree in Economics
from the University of Zagreb.
Christos Stylianides
European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management
Christos Stylianides has been the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid
and Crisis Management since November 1st 2014. On October 24th 2014 he was
appointed as the EU Ebola Coordinator by the European Council.
He was elected Member of the European Parliament in the May 2014 European
elections, where he served until October 31st 2014. He was twice appointed
Government Spokesperson of the Republic of Cyprus (2013–2014 and
1998–1999). He was responsible for the management of the Government’s
communication strategy and was head of the Government’s centralised
Press and Information Office.
During 2006–2013, he served as a Member of the Cyprus House of Representatives
(elected in 2006 and 2011). During his tenure, he served as Vice-Chair of the
Committee on Foreign and European Affairs (2011–2013) and member of the
Committee on European Affairs, the Committee of Internal Affairs and the
Committee of Employment and Social Affairs (2006–2011). Between 2006–2011
he was a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and he was elected
Member of its Bureau in 2012.
J.K. Rowling
Author, Founder and Life President, Lumos
J.K. Rowling is the author of the record-breaking, multi-award-winning Harry
Potter novels. Loved by fans around the world, the series has sold more than
500 million copies, been translated into over 80 different languages and made
into eight blockbuster films.
In 2006, J.K. Rowling founded Lumos, an international non-profit organisation
dedicated to ending the institutionalisation of children. Through her charitable
trust, Volant, J.K. Rowling supports a number of other causes to do with social
deprivation, particularly concerned with women, children and young people at
risk. She continues to fund research and treatment of Multiple Sclerosis and other
neurological conditions through the Anne Rowling Clinic at Edinburgh University.
As well as receiving an OBE and Companion of Honour for services to
children’s literature and philanthropy, J.K. Rowling has received many other
awards and honours, including Légion d’Honneur and Denmark’s Hans Christian
Andersen Award.
HRH Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-Hussein
President of the Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(HCD), Jordan
His Royal Highness Prince Mired R. Z. Al-Hussein earned his BA degree from Tufts
University in 1987, and then his MA degree from the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy in 1995. He continued his education at Cambridge University, England,
where he received an M.Phil. degree in 1998. In addition, HRH Prince Mired
attended the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1990 and served for
several years in the Jordanian Armed Forces.
HRH Prince Mired is the Chairman of the National Committee for Demining &
Rehabilitation and the President of the Hashemite Commission for Disabled
Soldiers. From 2007–2008 he served as the President of the 8th Meeting of States
Parties to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC), and since 2009 he
has been (alongside Princess Astrid of Belgium) the ‘Special Envoy’ of the APMBC.
Prince Mired was appointed by Royal Decree in 2014 as the President of the
Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and, since July 2017,
he also serves as President of the Jordan Paralympic Committee.
Irena Andrassy
Deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Mimica
Ms Andrassy is a Deputy Head of the Cabinet of Commissioner Neven Mimica,
responsible for International Cooperation and Development. She was also Deputy
Head of Cabinet in his previous mandate as Commissioner for Consumer Policy.
In the current Cabinet, she is responsible, inter alia, for human and children’s
rights as well as youth in development cooperation.
She joined the Commission in July 2013 from the Croatian Mission to the EU,
where she had a function as the Croatian representative to COREPER I. Prior to
that, she worked as a diplomat in the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European
Affairs/Croatian Mission to the EU. This included various functions during Croatia’s
EU accession process, as Chief Legal Advisor and as Negotiator responsible for
legal issues and the Accession Treaty preparations.
Ms Andrassy has a Law Degree from the Zagreb Faculty of Law and Master of
Science Degree in European Studies from the London School of Economics and
Political Science.
Georgette Mulheir
CEO, Lumos
For more than two decades, Lumos CEO Georgette Mulheir has worked in 29
countries around the world, leading large-scale programmes to transform
(and at times save) the lives of tens of thousands of disadvantaged children.
She pioneered a model of ‘deinstitutionalisation’ now followed by many
governments, preventing the separation of children from families, returning
children from institutions and so-called ‘orphanages’ to families, and shifting
finances from harmful institutions to community services that support children
in families. She provides advice to colleagues at the European Commission on
using EU funds for reforming children’s services, and has published four books
on children’s and women’s rights.
In 2014, she was named in the US as ‘one of the world’s 30 most influential social
workers’ by socialworkdegreeguide.com In 2015, also in the US, she was honoured
in the prestigious 6th Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards for her work.
Zornitsa Roussinova
Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Bulgaria
Zornitsa Roussinova has served as Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy
of Bulgaria since May 2017. She is responsible for EU funds, European affairs
and international cooperation, and preparation for the Bulgarian Presidency
of the Council of the EU in 2018.
Zornitsa Roussinova served as Minister of Labour and Social Policy from May
2016 to January 2017. She held the position of Deputy Minister during March
2012–March 2013 and November 2014–January 2016, in charge of labour market
policy, international relations, labour and social law, incomes and demographic
policies, and international and European funding programmes.
Since 2010, she has been actively involved in the development and
implementation of deinstiutionalisation (DI) policy in Bulgaria. She has a
Masters degree in international economic relations from the University for
National and World Economy and Masters degrees in Bulgarian and English
from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She is fluent in English and Russian.
Dr. Claudine Uwera Kanyamanza
Executive Secretary, National Commission for Children, Rwanda
Claudine Uwera Kanyamanza has been the Executive Secretary of the National
Commission for Children (NCC) since August 2015. The mission of the NCC is
to enhance child rights through coordinating, implementing, overseeing and
monitoring the child protection system in Rwanda.
By profession, she is a psychologist and psychotherapist; and a Senior Lecturer at
the University of Rwanda.
She graduated from the National University of Rwanda in Psychology in 1999, and
did a Masters in Clinical Psychotherapeutics at Brussels Independent University in
2005. She has also finished her PhD studies in Psychology and Education Sciences
at the Catholic University of Louvain in 2012. Her thesis concerned child-headed
households:
Ménages d’enfants et enfants chefs de ménage dans l’après génocide au
Rwanda. (Re) création d’appartenances.
Aaron Greenberg
Senior Regional Advisor for Europe and Central Asia, Child Protection, UNICEF
Aaron Greenberg joined the UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia as
Senior Child Protection Regional Advisor in July 2017. Prior to this, Aaron served
for nearly a decade as chief of child protection in Georgia and then in Myanmar
where he directed UNICEF’s support to government and NGO partners around
social welfare, child care and justice reforms. Aaron has also worked in the
Strategic Planning Unit of the United Nations Office of the Secretary General;
at Columbia University’s Center for International Organization and Security;
and for local government in his hometown of New York City in the US.
He has an M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia’s School of International and
Public Administration, and a B.A. in English Literature from Union College.
Sophie Morgan
TV Presenter and Entrepreneur
Sophie Morgan is a British television presenter, artist and entrepreneur. Morgan
suffered a T6 spinal cord injury in a road traffic accident in 2003, resulting in
paralysis from the chest down. In 2016, she was a lead presenter for Channel 4’s
TV coverage of the Summer Paralympics in Rio.
Sophie is also an award-winning campaigner, Patron of Scope, Ambassador for
Aira Wheels and Batec mobility and was voted in the top 100 most influential
people with a disability two years running.
Professor Charles Zeanah
Mary Sellars-Polchow Chair in Psychiatry; Vice Chair, Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, Tulane University School of Medicine
Charles H. Zeanah, M.D., is the Mary Peters Sellars-Polchow Chair in Psychiatry,
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, and Vice-Chair for Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the
Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He also directs the Institute
of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health at Tulane.
Throughout his career, he has studied the effects of adverse early experiences on
development. He also has studied interventions designed to enhance recovery
following exposure to adverse experience and published widely on these topics.
He is the editor of four editions of the Handbook of Infant Mental Health, and
with Charles Nelson and Nathan Fox, the co-author of Romania’s Abandoned
Children: Deprivation, Brain Development and the Struggle for Recovery. He is a
distinguished life fellow of both the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association.
Professor Manfred Nowak
Independent Expert leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived
of Liberty
Manfred Nowak is the Independent Expert leading the UN Global Study on
Children Deprived of Liberty, a function he carries out in close cooperation with
the European InterUniversity Center for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC)
in Venice, of which he is Secretary General, the partner universities of the Global
Campus of Human Rights, and the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human
Rights, which he founded and co-directs. Manfred Nowak also has a part-time
Professorship of International Human Rights at the University of Vienna and has
been Professor of International Law and Human Rights at various prestigious
universities, such as Utrecht, Lund, Stanford and the Graduate Institute
in Geneva.
He served for many years in various expert functions in inter-governmental
organisations, most importantly as UN Expert on Enforced Disappearances (1993
to 2006), as one of eight international judges in the Human Rights Chamber for
Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo (1996 to 2003), and as UN Special Rapporteur
on Torture (2004 to 2010).
Mihaela Ivanova
Self-advocate, Representative, Global Youth Leaders Summit
Mihaela is a passionate self-advocate and emerging leader in the
deinstitutionalisation movement. She was a founding member of Lumos’
self-advocacy groups, taking a lead role in the EU-funded project Turning
Words into Action: Enabling the Rights and Inclusion of Children with Intellectual
Disabilities in Europe (2012).
In 2015, Mihaela became Lumos’ first professional young self-advocate, joining
the Bulgaria team as a member of staff. She assists child participation activities,
national and international advocacy campaigns and events, and has spoken at
numerous international arenas including the United Nations, UNESCO Global
Youth Forum, EU Self-Advocacy Assembly and the European Parliament.
Mihaela has personal experience of both spending time in an institution and
growing up with her family. She uses this experience and her empathy for
others to advocate for children’s rights to family-based care, inclusive education
and youth participation. Through passionately speaking out she has influenced
policy makers, professionals and NGOs.
Mihaela is a Bulgarian national and won two gold medals at the 2011 Special
Olympics.
Cécile Kyenge
MEP, Vice Chair of the Delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly
Cécile Kyenge, former Italian Minister for Integration, has been a Member of
the European Parliament since 2014. As an MEP, she is a member of the Group
of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), of the Committee
on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and of the Committee on
Development (DEVE). She is also Vice-President of the Joint Parliamentary
Assembly ACP-EU and member of the delegation for relations with the
Pan-African Parliament.
She is co-President of the European Parliament “Anti-Racism and Diversity
Intergroup” (ARDI). She was the co-rapporteur for the European Parliament’s
report on the situation in the Mediterranean and the need for a holistic approach
to migration. In 2015 and 2016 she was appointed Chief Observer of the EU
election observation missions in Burkina Faso and Zambia. She was also part of
the EU Parliament’s delegation for the EU election observation missions in Nigeria,
Haiti, Gabon and Gambia.
Myria Vassiliadou
EU Anti-Trafficking Coordinator
The EU Anti-Trafficking Coordinator, Dr Myria Vassiliadou, is responsible for
improving coordination and coherence among EU institutions, EU agencies,
Member States and international actors and developing existing and new EU
policies to address trafficking in human beings. The position of EU Anti-Trafficking
Coordinator is based on the EU Anti-Trafficking Directive 2011/36/EU.
Dr. Vassiliadou has monitored the implementation of EU Strategy towards the
Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings. She holds a doctorate in Sociology
from the University of Kent at Canterbury and has worked as an Assistant
Professor of Sociology at the University of Nicosia, at the European Commission
in the Directorate General for Research, as Secretary General of the European
Women’s Lobby, and, as director of the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies.
Sophie Magennis
Officer in Charge, UNHCR Regional Representation for EU Affairs
Sophie Magennis is Officer in Charge at UNHCR’s Regional Representation for EU
Affairs in Brussels. Prior to her appointment in Brussels, she was UNHCR’s Head
of Office in Ireland. Previously, she was Head of Policy and Legislation at the Irish
Ombudsman for Children’s Office and administrator of the Irish Human Rights
Commission. She co-founded “Human Rights Consultants” in 2000. Prior to that,
she served as Deputy to the Irish Ambassador to the Council of Europe. She has
worked with the Council of Europe as a Legal Consultant for the Monitoring Unit
of the Secretary General and as a Legal Expert at the Council of Europe’s Section
for equality between women and men.
She is an Attorney and Counsellor at Law at the New York State Bar and holds a
European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the
European Inter-University Centre in Venice, Italy.
Elisabeth Riederer
Deputy Head PSC/POL Department, Permanent Representation of Austria
to the EU
Elisabeth Riederer is the Deputy Head of the PSC/POL Department at the
Permanent Representation of Austria to the EU and will be chairing the
RELEX Working Party during the incoming Austrian Presidency of the Council.
After joining the Austrian Foreign Service she worked in the UN and Human
Rights Departments in the Austrian Foreign Ministry. She served at the Austrian
Mission to the UN in Geneva and the Austrian Embassies in Budapest, The Hague
and Copenhagen before moving to Brussels in 2015.
Elisabeth Riederer graduated from the University of Vienna and completed her
studies in international relations at the University of Oxford.
Paul d’Auchamp
Deputy Regional Representative for Europe, OHCHR
A political scientist by training, Paul d’Auchamp began his career in the City of
Copenhagen, working on integration issues and inter-ethnic relations. He joined
the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2000,
initially working at HQ in Geneva on the rights of indigenous people and victims
of torture. In 2003, he joined the OHCHR Africa Branch, where he covered the DRC,
Somalia, and the Portuguese-speaking African countries. In 2009, he moved to
Dakar, Senegal, as OHCHR’s Deputy Representative for West Africa. Since 2012,
he has been based in Brussels, as OHCHR Deputy Representative for Europe.
Paul, who is a national of Brazil and Denmark, was born in Santos, Brazil.
He has also lived in Indonesia, Romania and Spain. He is married to Marie
Lemaître-d’Auchamp, a French human rights lawyer and anthropologist,
and they have two daughters – Sarah, 14, and Eva, 11.
Pavel, Martina, Ilove, Michael, Ruth, Alice, Shalyce, Maicol, Antonio,
Veliko, Mihaela and Nujeen
Emerging Global Leaders Summit
Listening to children and young people directly affected by institutionalisation
is vital when developing solutions. As part of this conference, a group of
self-advocates from Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle
East and Sub-Saharan Africa have come together to share their experiences
of growing up and leaving orphanages and other institutions. In the two days
prior to this conference, they have worked together to develop a set of
recommendations to present.