Today it is the UN Human Rights Council’s annual day on the rights of the child! This year, the theme is "Protection of the rights of the child in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. Several States, civil society organisations, UN agencies and other international entitities have contributed to a final a report on the protection of the rights of the child in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which will be presented to the Human Rights Council. You can see everyone's contributions here.   

When the CRB and BI task groups met in Leiden, in the Netherlands, a couple of weeks ago, we discussed how the Sustainable Development Goals connect to our work. Some very interesting points were discussed, including how: 

• SDG 16.2, to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children, is very relevant to us all
  
• Alignment to SDGs is  an increasing donor priority in some contexts    
  
• The SDGs have potential as a tool to lobby governments and strengthen accountability (including child participation) 
  
• SDGs are very relevant to the EA context. They are less well known in EE, perhaps because there is sometimes some regional resistance to ‘grand plans’ as a result of the region’s communist history