Reporting Back the Conference Outcomes: Child Safeguarding Conference 2014

The Child Safeguarding conference – Keeping Children Safe in Africa: Identifying and Addressing the Challenges, September 2014 – examined the Africa context for children and the implication for child safeguarding. Over three days the speakers discussed responsibilities for safeguarding children, are they meeting their obligations, are they being accountable and transparent, and a final day for presenting practical tools, resources, and approaches for creating safer environments for children.

This publication presents a summary of each participant’s presentation as well as a summary of the discussions that followed each presentation. A number of issues were highlighted during the conference: a wider range of organisations need to practice child safeguarding; child need to be included during the planning process to insure that their needs are being met; the experiences and expertise in Africa needs to be utilized so that customized solutions for the regions varying contexts can be developed.

Keeping Child Safe will work to ensure that the ‘community of practice’ begun at the conference will continue to exchange ideas, resources and tools on child safeguarding in Africa.