Siena 2006

We, the working children from Africa, Latin America, and Asia have met in Siena for our 3^rd Meeting of the World Movement to share our experiences and living conditions, and to structure and strengthen our World Movement through common actions.

This meeting, which has seen the effective establishment of our World Movement, is the fruit of processes over 10 years, which started in Kundapur in 1996, and developed throughout several meetings. The last of these was the Berlin meeting in 2004. Such processes have been carried on by us, the working children, thanks to the help of our supporting structures and of our partners.

During our working sessions we have set up a structure that will coordinate our actions and will represent us on each occasion. Our three-year plan of action includes the activities that have resulted from this meeting;  through this plan of action we will make ourselves better known, and we will train ourselves in order to reach out to an increasing number of working children.

Our World Movement can help us to improve solidarity among us and our strength, and to express ourselves everywhere with a single voice.

Through our World Movement, we are committed to promoting our rights, developing actions aimed at reducing poverty, and improving our working conditions; we are committed to fighting against child trafficking and exclusion, and also against violence perpetrated against children – and working children in particular.

• We promote and defend the dignified work of children.
• We are the main actors in changing our working and living conditions.
• We have decided to create a label of protection for the products that we produce.

Our Movement is also a way to promote protagonist participation of children.

Through the questionnaire “A World fit for us…children” we will share actions with other children in order to follow up the UNGASS recommendations.

In this meeting the working children have decided that they will celebrate the “World Day  of Working Children ” on the 9^th December, as this is the day on which the working children  made their first Declaration in the Kundapur meeting in 1996.

Within our Movement, we have achieved several results, but we have further to go:

• We ask for more consideration and respect of our rights by our governments and by all the peoples. We would like them to support us and to see us as children who have rights, as all other children have. They must listen to us and they must involve us in the decision-making processes that concern us: our proposals must be taken into account.
• National and international organisations must open spaces for us to engage in dialogue and negotiation on problems that regard children. They have to recognize our movement and support our initiatives.
• Other children have to accept us and see us as brothers and sisters.

Let us together respect the voice and the rights of working children.

Yes to dignified work of working children!

Siena, 25th October 2006

The World Movement of Working Children

Updated: 14.12.2020