Investing in Children – the Key to Prosperity
Ásmundur Einar Daðason, Minister of Education and Children in Iceland, and the Council of Europe will host a conference on March 30 on the advantages of investing in children. The event is organized as part of the Icelandic Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
The conference will focus on the benefits of investing in children as the key to prosperity for nations and individuals alike. Keynote speakers at the conference include Ásmundur Einar Daðason, Minister of Education and Children of Iceland, Dr. Najat Maalla M’jid, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, Ramesh Raghavan M.D., PhD., Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work and Benjamin Perks, Head of Advocacy and Campaigns, UNICEF. Regína Jensdóttir, Head of the Children´s Rights Division and Council of Europe Coordinator for the Rights of the Child, will moderate the conference which will also feature input from specialists at the forefront of the implementation of the Prosperity Act in Iceland.
In 2021 the Icelandic Parliament passed the Act on the Integration of Services in the Interest of Children’s Prosperity (the Prosperity Act). The Prosperity Act entered into force on 1 January 2022 with an implementation phase of three to five years.
Ásmundur Einar Daðason and Dr. Najat Maalla M’jid signed an agreement on cooperation regarding children's issues in New York in February 2023. The agreement is based on the Prosperity Act and stipulates the development of integrated procedures and resources for the protection of children against violence, along with the development of a new methodology that analyses and maps the benefits of communities from investing in better services for children. The cooperation includes the development and publication of procedures and tools that protect children from violence while demonstrating the economic benefits of such actions. Dr M’jid will address this collaboration and what it means in her presentation.
The conference will be streamed live on Thursday 30 March 2023 from 9:00–16:00 GMT here: