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Historic Cairo Meeting Convened on Child Abduction and Exploitation

Posted on: Thursday, 19 February 2009, 10:00 CST

First Ladies and Royalty from Seven Nations Collaborate on the Global Problems of Missing and Sexually Exploited Children

CAIRO, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Her Excellency Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of the Arab Republic of Egypt and President of the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement (SMWIPM) in partnership with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) convened an historic child protection conference today in Cairo. The theme of the conference was "Crossing Borders to Protect the Children of the World."

The conference coincided with the first meeting of the Honorary Board of ICMEC to be scheduled in the Middle East and Africa region. The meeting of the Honorary Board and the child protection conference were both hosted in Cairo by H.E. Mrs. Mubarak.

Honorary Board members attending the conference included:

H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of the Arab Republic of Egypt

Her Majesty, The Queen of the Belgians

Her Royal Highness, Princess Lalla Meryem of the Kingdom of Morocco

Her Highness, Shaikha Sabeeka Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, Wife of the King of Bahrain

Mrs. Margarida Sousa Uva Barroso, Wife of the President of the European Commission

Mrs. Bernadette Chirac, Former First Lady of the French Republic

The Honorable Valentina Matvienko, Governor of Saint Petersburg

H.E. Mrs. Mubarak convened the Honorary Board in Cairo, saying "the problem of abused and exploited children has remained in the shadows for too long. This issue is a global phenomenon. If not attended to, it may reach epidemic proportions."

Approximately two hundred child protection officials attended the conference which focused three issues: Cyber Safety and the global epidemic of child pornography on the internet; Effective Legislation against Child Pornography and ongoing efforts to adopt legislation around the world to prevent the exploitation of children; and Cooperation and Respect between Legal Systems and the need to work in a collaborative manner to develop jurisdictional approaches to protect children on a global basis.

Baron Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer, Chairman of the ICMEC Board of Directors, said, "our challenge is not just to increase awareness and persuade individual governments to act, if we are to truly be successful, we must launch a global movement."

The conference culminated with the Honorary Board members releasing a Cairo Declaration urging global leaders and leading international business organizations and technology leaders to take immediate steps in six areas:

• Enact new and improved legislation and review existing laws periodically to ensure effective redress of any form of exploitation of children.
• Join with ICMEC in a global movement to protect children, including expanding efforts to build new national and regional centers around the world to better address the problems of child abduction and exploitation.
• Explore bilateral and multilateral approaches to resolving family disputes, including mediation, in order to ensure that the children are not the victims.
• Make eradication of child exploitation a top priority.
• Join together in a global campaign to build greater awareness and to stimulate concerted action to protect the world's children.
• Develop new tools and technologies to protect children and to redouble efforts to ensure that technology is not used as tool to exploit and victimize children.

Ernie Allen, ICMEC's President & CEO, said, "Crossing Borders to Protect Children is the perfect theme for this historic meeting. No person, no nation, no organization can do independently what all people, all nations and all organizations must do together."

This was the third meeting of the ICMEC Honorary Board. Former First Lady Bernadette Chirac hosted the previous meeting in 2007 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. At that meeting the board was described by "Le Figaro" as the "G-8 for Children." The first meeting of the Honorary Board was hosted by Her Majesty Queen Paola of Belgium in 2004.

The Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement is a non-profit, non-governmental international association whose principal goal is to advocate and work towards peace and human security, and empower women and youth to participate as key influencers, change agents and active partners in peace processes. For more information, visit www.womenforpeaceinternational.org

The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization. It is the leading agency working on a global basis to combat child abduction and exploitation. It is the sister organization of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. For more information, visit www.ICMEC.org.

SOURCE National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Source: PR Newswire

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