African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of Children meeting starts in Algiers.

The proceedings of the 18th Ordinary Session of the African Committee of Experts On the Rights and Welfare of the Child began Sunday in Algiers.

The Session was organized by The Commission of the African Union (AU).  More than a hundred participants are taking part to the five-day meeting, including government officials, United Nations specialized agencies including UNICEF, and African NGOs.

The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, is a mechanism for human rights. Actions of the Committee include a mission to promote and protect the specific rights of the African Child, as adopted by the African Charter on the Rights and welfare of the Child.

The ‘’Child’’ charter was adopted by the AU summit in Addis Ababa in 1990 and was ratified by most member states of the AU, including Algeria.

The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is a statutory body of the AU, put up on the top organizations of the pan-African Union held in Lusaka (Zambia) in July 2001 under section 32 of the African Charter on the Rights and welfare of the child.

The committee is composed of 11 members elected for five year term by the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the AU. Executive Members of the committee, currently chaired by Mrs Agnes Kabore Ouattara (Burkina Faso), are from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, South Africa, Tanzania, Madagascar, Nigeria, Libya, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

Algeria is represented in this AU body by Ms. Fatima Zohra Sebaâ Delladj, elected at the AU Summit held in Kampala in 2010.