We hare happy to announce that UN MGCY has joined the youth youth-led call to action, Justice for Every Child, demanding that the world's most marginalised children and young people receive their fair share of COVID-19 resources to prevent a child rights disaster happening as a result of the pandemic. 

Campaign context:

As elected representatives of the All-Africa Student Union, Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions, European Students' Union, and the Commonwealth Students' Association, along with youth activists from marginalised communities including former child labourers, we recognised that nobody will feel the impact of COVID-19 as painfully as the world’s most vulnerable young people. Children living in hard-to-reach villages, children in informal ‘slum’ settlements, children forced to work, children on the move - all of them and more will experience both immediate and longer-term suffering if the world did not act fast. Yet as governmental and multilateral COVID-19 responses unfolded and an unprecedented amount of money was pledged globally, hard commitments, actions and financial resources targeted at the world's poorest countries and citizens remained woefully inadequate. Amounts confirmed to date represent a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars committed by the world’s wealthier countries to supporting the richest corporations and countries.  Young people will be paying for our government's COVID 19 reponses for the next two decades and we strongly believe that these should be spent more fairly.

Campaign demands and progress:

That's why, as trustees of the 100 Million campaign we co-wrote the demand for global financial commitments worth $1 trillion to fund and deliver targeted interventions to protect the almost 20% of children living on $2 dollars or less per day from the short- and medium-term impacts of COVID-19. This amount (which is the equivalent to just 2 years of how much is lost annually to multinational companies' tax avoidance...) could be transformational for child rights and a strong foundation to build back better.

We believe that this money should be used to finance a combination of new actions based on an emergency response to COVID-19, and actions to deliver some of the core Sustainable Development Goals. For example, funding: 

• Multilateral and emergency appeals including the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Appeal and WHO COVID-19 appeal ($11bn)

• Closing the financing gap to help achieve the health Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 3) in all low and lower middle -income countries until 2030. ($523 bn)

• Provide 2 years of the financing needed to achieve the SDGs on Water and Sanitation (SDG targets 6.1 & 6.2) ($228 bn)

• Provide 2 years of the external funding gap to achieve good quality universal education from pre-primary to secondary education in all low- and lower-middle income countries. ($78b)

• Provide aid to start-up and initial costs for social protection schemes targeted towards children, which could end child labour and poverty for generations to come.

Our next steps and how to join the Justice for Every Child campaign:

Together we represent tens of millions of other young people across the world and are actively engaging our members to take up the campaign nationally, and we invite you as fellow youth-led and/or serving entities to join our call. So far social actions have been taken in over 63 countries, and we're proud to be working with UNMGCY and our 50 youth-led partners, ranging from large international entities, such as the Commonwealth Youth Network, to National Student Unions and grassroots groups, such as I Can South Sudan working in Uganda's BidiBidi refugee settlement. Our central demand of a fair share was also recently backed by this group of 87 Nobel Laureates and world leaders. 

We would highly appreciate your support and solidarity, especially as we accelerate our advocacy ahead of UNGA 75. 

ACTION: Sign on as a supporter organisation

If you agree with the Justice for Every Child joint statement we would be grateful if you could share your organisational logo for us to share publicly on the page alongside other youth-led or serving organisations. Please send to Sherry (sherry@100million.org) who can also answer any questions you have around this. 

Once we receive your solidarity, Georgia (georgia@100million.org) from the 100 Million campaign will be in touch with more information on the different ways partners can support based on your capacity and existing activities, from social media promotion, mobilising your own networks to supporting national advocacy efforts. We are also open to exploring any new ideas you may have to help grow and strengthen the campaign.

On International Youth Day (12th August) we hope to announce that the Justice for Every Child campaign is one of the biggest representative youth mobilisations for children's rights in history, and we would love to share your organisation's involvement in this moment if you are able to get back to us as soon as possible.