Gwanak-gu Strives to Promote Children's Rights and Participation

‘Wagle Wagle Gongronjang’ and ‘Everyone's Roundtable’ Successfully Held... Proposing and Implementing Policies for Children through the Open Debate for Children and Adolescents ‘Wagle Wagle Gongronjang’... Gwanak-gu Child Rights Monitoring Group Shares Achievements and Actively Proposes Policies for Children at ‘Everyone's Roundtable’

Gwanak-gu, a child-friendly city (Mayor Park Jun-hee), is making efforts to uphold children's rights and participation.

Last month, the district held the ‘2023 Gwanak-gu Child Rights Monitoring Group Performance Sharing Meeting, "Everyone's Forum."’ The "Everyone's Forum" is a place to share the activities of the Child Rights Monitoring Group and explore future development directions.

Since 2019, the Gwanak-gu Child Rights Monitoring Group has been actively engaged in various activities such as brainstorming ideas for children's rights, field investigations, promotional activities, and policy proposals.

The performance sharing meeting proceeded in the order of ▲commendation of outstanding members of the Gwanak-gu Child Rights Monitoring Group ▲sharing of monitoring group activities ▲policy proposals on the theme of ‘environment’ ▲carbon neutrality education and Environmental Golden Bell quiz.

In particular, at the performance sharing meeting, policies were proposed including ▲installation of logo lights and mobile cameras to prevent illegal dumping reflecting children's voices ▲creation and expansion of environmental playgrounds ▲addition of mandatory child participation clauses in the appointment of Green Growth Committee members. There was also a response time from relevant department heads for proposals that had undergone prior departmental review.

Following this, on October 14, the district held the Children and Youth Open Debate ‘Wagle Wagle Public Forum’ to listen to the diverse voices of children and youth, the main actors of the child-friendly city project.

At the ‘Wagle Wagle Public Forum,’ in-depth discussions were held on six content areas of Gwanak-gu’s child-friendly city project ▲play and leisure ▲participation and civic consciousness ▲safety and protection ▲health and social services ▲educational environment ▲residential environment, and children's opinions were also gathered.

The district plans to actively use the collected opinions as basic data to reflect in Gwanak-gu’s child-friendly policies and implementation plans.

Park Jun-hee, Mayor of Gwanak-gu, said, “We are promoting child-friendly policies and projects based on the four fundamental rights of children stipulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,” and added, “We will carefully consider policies and opinions for children's participation and rights enhancement and do our best to achieve higher-level certification as a child-friendly city.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.