Jaap E. Doek is emeritus professor of Law (Family and Juvenile Law) at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (since July 2004) . He has been the Dean of the Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit (1988 –1992). From 1998 – 2003 he was professor of Juvenile law at the University of Leiden. Currently he is a deputy justice in the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam and he has been a juvenile court judge in the district court of Alkmaar and the Hague (1978-1985).
He has been a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (1999 – 2007) and a chairperson of that Committee (2001-2007).
He is the chairperson of Aflatoun. Child Savings International (since Dec. 2006), an International NGO promoting Social and Financial Education for Children (Amsterdam) , a member of the Advisory Committee of the Innocenti Research Centre of UNICEF in Florence , a member of the Board of Trustees of the African Child Policy Forum (Ethiopia) and a member of the expert committee for the selection of candidates for the Annual Children’s Peace Prize (initiative of KidsRights, The Netherlands).
He is currently as an advisor/consultant involved in among others activities of the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN on Children and Armed Conflict, the regional office of UNICEF for East and Southern Africa, a number of UNICEF country offices and some governments of States Parties to the CRC

Prof. Doek has been founding member of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) and board member 1976-1992 (President 1982-1984 and Vice President for developing countries 1984-1992) and in that capacity involved in the establishment of the African Network for Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN). He was also involved in the creation of Defence for Children International (DCI; 1979) and established the Dutch Section of this organisation (1984). He has been a member of an ISPCAN/DCI working group on Child Labour which conducted a large study on Child Labour (1994-1997).
He was a member of the Board of the International Association of Juvenile and Family Court Magistrates 1982-1986)

In 1993 he was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law School in Washington DC (Febr.-July) and at the Michigan University School of Law in Ann Arbor (Sept. – Dec.). In the Spring of 1999 (Jan.-May) he was a visiting professor at the North Western University School of law in Chicago. In 1999-2000 he was the president of the European Law Faculties Association (ELFA)

Prof. Doek received the Distinguished Service Award (1996) from the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and from that same Society the C. Henry Kempe Lectureship in 2006.
In 2005 he received the International Social Justice Award from the Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace in India and in 2007 the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award of the Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia USA)

He published numerous books and articles on various topics in the area of children’s rights and family law in national (Dutch) and international (English) journals.
See for more information: www.jaapedoek.nl

Nigel Cantwell is an international consultant on child protection, based in Geneva. He holds an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a Diploma in Applied Social Studies from Nottingham University, UK. He has been working on children's issues at the international level since the mid-1970s, first with the now-defunct International Union for Child Welfare, then setting up Defence for Children International during the International Year of the Child, 1979. Throughout the 1980s, he was Coordinator of the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, taking part in the drafting of that treaty. He also participated in the development of the UN Rules for Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty and the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. In 1994, he began working as a full-time consultant on children's rights with UNICEF, going on to head up the 'Implementation of International Standards' unit at UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, 1998-2003. His main areas of expertise are children without parental care, children’s rights in intercountry adoption, and juvenile justice. In addition to undertaking advisory and assessment tasks in these spheres, he has recently been closely involved in the development of planned UN Guidelines for the protection of children in alternative care, currently scheduled for submission to the UN General Assembly in late 2008. cantabene@gmail.com

Judith Ennew Judith Ennew graduated in 1973 at the University of Cambridge with a Batchelor of Education degree. After achieving a Certificate in Social Anthropology in the following year she worked towards a PhD in the same subject, which was awarded in 1978. After lecturing at the Universities of Cambridge and Essex in the 1980s, she was a Fellow and Graduate Tutor in Newnham College Cambridge from 1989-1990. From 1994 to 2000 she was an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmith's College, University of London and Senior Research Associate, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge from 1993 to 2007. Judith is currently Associate Professor II in the Norwegian Centre for Child Research, University of Trondheim (Norway) and a Research Associate of Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland. She was elected to the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2001. Judith has been an activist and researcher in children's rights since 1979, specialising in issues concerning child workers, 'street children' and child sexual exploitation, with respect to both research and programme planning and working with international agencies in the field, such as UNICEF, World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organization, as well as international non governmental organizations. She has worked in Latin America, Africa, South and South-East Asia and Eastern Europe on children's rights issues including, recently, the UN Secretary General's Global Study on Violence Against Children, and is currently largely-based in Bangkok working mostly in Asian countries as Advisor in Programme Development for the non governmental organization Knowing Children.
mailto:J.Ennew@swansea.ac.uk  www.knowingchildren.org

Funky Dragon Funky Dragon is the Children and Young People's Assembly for Wales. It is a peer-led organisation. Darren Bird is its chief executive. Funky Dragon gives 0 - 25 year olds the opportunity to get their voices heard on issues affecting them and work with decision-makers to achieve change. www.funkydragon.org

Geraldine Van Bueren is a Professor of International Human Rights Law at Queen Mary, University of London; and Visiting Fellow, Kellogg College, Oxford. She is a barrister and Associate Tenant, Doughty Street Chambers. From 2002 to 2006 Professor Van Bueren held a second concurrent chair W P Schreiner Professor, Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Cape Town. She is currently working on a project for UNESCO on how law can be used constructively to help combat poverty. In 2003, Professor Van Bueren was awarded the Child Rights Lawyer Award. The Award, jointly organised by the Law Society, UNICEF and The Lawyer, recognises lawyers who have done outstanding work in the field of children's rights. Goodenough College has appointed her as a Fellow. Professor Van Bueren is one of the original drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and also helped draft the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, the UNHCR Guidelines on Refugee Children and the United Nations Programme of Action on Children in the Criminal Justice System. She works extensively with intergovernmental organisations, governments and non-governmental organisations raising national laws to the international legal standard, including, the United Nations and the Commonwealth. She represented Amnesty International for ten years at the UN on children's rights and is a member of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Children's Rights Project), Child Rights International and is a Trustee of Save the Children. Professor Van Bueren's writings have been cited in courts around the world, most recently by the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the European Court of Human Rights. She has written for The Times, The Guardian, and other leading newspapers around the world, and co-founded and co-edited the International Journal of Children's Rights. She is also on the advisory board of a number of academic journals including De Jure, the African Human Rights Journal and the Human Rights Law Review. To increase the number of lawyers working in children's rights she established PIRCH (the Programme on International Rights of the Child) in l991 as the first university based centre on the international rights of the child and she works as its director. g.v.bueren@qmul.ac.uk