Terre des Hommes: advocating children's rights worldwide

By Ria Scheele (Reprinted from Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development Newsletter 11: October 9, 2005)

What is their strategy? Jennifer de Boer explains:
We do not implement projects ourselves but work through local organizations. Our strategy addresses the 3 A's: awareness, assistance and advocacy. In developing countries assistance is important, but awareness and advocacy, for instance at the level of policy makers, is important as well. We also advocate on European, international and national (Dutch) levels and raise awareness in the Netherlands.

What is the place of the disability issue in your programs?
We have three main intervention areas, one, for instance, is health and education. The disability issue is a cross-cutting issue. Disabled children are a disadvantaged group and therefore we also focus on them as a target group in our education, health and socio-economic programs.

Do you have an earmarked budget for disability?
No, we don't have an earmarked budget for disability projects. Which projects we support depends on the specific problems identified by our partner organizations. They have strong roots in their communities and address the needs of that community. At the moment, more than ten percent of our supported projects target children with disabilities.

Which Millennium Development Goals are incorporated in your work?
We do a lot of lobbying. In the Netherlands we campaign for more attention to be given to the rights of disabled children in development cooperation, but we also lobby in other countries. In Tanzania we are lobbying for a school curriculum which will give more focus on the needs of disabled children. We also pay attention to networking. In South America and East Asia we have a network of partner organizations in order to exchange information, do research and advocate on disability issues.

Awareness raising?
In 2004 we worked on a documentary about the Paralympics which was broadcasted in the Netherlands. A good way to show what disabled people can achieve!

Your future plans?
We will continue to work for deprived children and, unfortunately, disabled children are still a part of that group. So disability remains a focus of our work.

Have you seen changes in your work in the last 40 years?
There has been a shift from charity to ensuring children's rights. For instance, education is a basic children's right. It is not an issue whether or not to give special education to disabled children. No, it is the right of every child to be educated and this is now the way we look at things. People also started to realize that disabled children can also achieve things. The Paralympics were a good example of this.

A final comment?
Disability issues do not belong to the field of charity; it is about every human being having the same rights and the right of every child to have access to the same opportunities!

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