Invitation to War Child Policy Forum
Wednesday 30th June 2010: 8.30am - 10.30am
Weber Shandwick, Fox Court, 14 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8WS

There are over 30 conflict affected fragile states, which are home to over 1 billion people. These countries are rapidly falling behind other developing countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Children and youth constitute the majority demographic in nearly all conflict affected fragile states and they are increasing in numbers. And so more children and youth are affected by the consequences of conflict in these countries than any other group of people.

As the scale of the problem continues to escalate, addressing the consequences of conflict on children and youth is fast becoming an imperative for international development policy, and crucial to the effective use of overseas development aid.

The new Secretary of State for International Development has recognised this as a priority issue and will be making one of his first key note addresses to map out the new government’s policy for conflict affected fragile states and how this will relate to children and youth.

The Secretary of State will depart after his key note speech and we will convene an expert panel, to be chaired by broadcaster Jon Snow, to discuss the key features of the policy address in more depth. This will include questions and answers from the audience.

It will be a small, exclusively invited audience, which will comprise journalists, politicians, representatives of development think tanks, academics and Chief Executives of key international humanitarian and development NGOs. We warmly invite you to be a part of this audience.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Radhika Coomaraswamy, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict
• Dr Caroline Harper, Associate Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, Overseas Development Institute
• Lyse Doucet, award winning BBC reporter
• Mark Waddington, CEO, War Child

The discussion will be chaired by Jon Snow, Presenter of Channel 4 News.

Tea and coffee will be served from 8.30am, with the keynote address from Andrew Mitchell MP at 9am. Please RSVP to Nicola Pallett on npallett@webershandwick.com / 020 7067 0899.