Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and patron of the International Children's Peace Prize, has died on Sunday 26 December, aged 90. In 2014, the Economic Faculty Association Rotterdam and Erasmus School of Economics had the pleasure to welcome Desmond Tutu on Woudestein Campus, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the International Children’s Peace Prize.
Impressive debate with Children’s Peace Prize winners
In the presence of 600 students from university and Rotterdam secondary schools, winners of the International Children’s Peace Prize from previous years, Thandiwe Chama, Om Prakash Gurjar, Baruani Ndume, Francia Simon, Chaeli Mycroft and Kesz Valdez, shared their experience on how they were committed to the rights of the child. Guest of honor was Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu, patron of the International Children's Peace Prize and the KidsRights foundation and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
The event on Woudestein campus was opened with a beautiful dance performance by students of Theaterschool Hofplein Rotterdam, followed by speeches of Hugo de Jonge (at the time alderman with the portfolio of Education, Youth and Family in Rotterdam) and Marc Dullaert, director of the Kids Rights Foundation, founder of the International Children’s Peace Prize and at the time the Netherlands’ first Ombudsman for Children. The whole programme was professionally moderated by former Prime Minister Professor Jan Peter Balkenende and alumnus Arne Gast.
Special partnership between KidsRights and Erasmus University Rotterdam
In 2013, children’s rights organisation KidsRights presented the first KidsRights Index, a global measuring instrument that places emphasis on compliance with the rights of the child. The index is published annually in partnership with Erasmus School of Economics and the International Institute of Social Studies. It takes a scientific approach to charting the status of the implementation of children’s rights worldwide. It is based on existing data: quantitative data published annually by UNICEF in the State of the World’s Children and qualitative data for each country that signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, from the Concluding Observations published by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The KidsRights Index is a global measuring instrument that places emphasis on compliance with the rights of the child.
- More information
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media and Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, +31 6 53 641 846.