Palestinian Children Mark 20th Year Of UN Rights Treaty With Video Testimony

New York, Nov 20 2009 12:10PM

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugee children in United Nations schools in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have been clicking away with flip cams to create the region’s first ever online video yearbook to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The project, launched yesterday, is organized by the United Kingdom-based non-governmental organization (NGO), Hoping Foundation, together with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main body caring for some 4 million Palestinian refugees.

The “Hopes and Dreams” project encapsulates the youngsters’ aspirations, bringing together on-line a community divided and scattered by decades of statelessness and exile.

Each student is recording a 30-second message. These will form the basis of a living network for the future, to be added to each year. The yearbook has been endorsed by Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who is marking the Convention’s anniversary at an event at UN Headquarters in New York.

The segments show the youngsters outlining their hopes in various situations – in the classroom or library, sitting by the roadside, kicking a soccer ball.

“Twenty years on, what difference has it made in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestine refugee children?” UNRWA asked in a news release on the anniversary of the Convention.

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