19th Annual Meeting of the RAO Steering Committee
Welcome to the Annual Meeting of the West Africa Network for Child Protection (WANCP), a regional cooperation mechanism dedicated to the transnational protection and reintegration of vulnerable migrant children and youth.
Regional Cooperation for Child Protection
WANCP represents a unique alliance, with each ECOWAS member state being represented by its national coordinations, consisting of civil society organizations and state services. The ultimate goal of WANCP is to make the West African space safe for mobile children and youth.
Connecting Protection Systems
At the core of its mission, WANCP strives to effectively and permanently connect the national protection systems of ECOWAS member states and Mauritania. This aims to better identify, protect, reintegrate, and monitor vulnerable children moving between countries in the sub-region.
15 Years of Impact and Collaboration
Over the past 15 years, more than 18,000 mobile children and youth have benefited from protection services provided by over 1000 state and non-state actors who are members of WANCP. These results have been possible through national and transnational collaborations involving state and consular authorities, as well as civil society organizations from the 15 ECOWAS countries and Mauritania.
Towards the Future: Reflections and Strategies
The Annual Meeting, supported by ECOWAS and technically supported by the International Social Service - West Africa (ISS-WA), is currently taking place in Accra, Ghana. It brings together participants from the ECOWAS Commission, directors in charge of child protection, child protection organizations that are WANCP members, and partner institutions.
Objectives of the 2023 Meeting
This year, the meeting aims to define strategic directions for the future, monitor the performance of member states in protecting mobile children and youth, share the results of member countries' achievements during the year, and track defined indicators for the period 2022-2025.
Sharing Progress and Challenges
Expected outcomes of this meeting include understanding progress made, sharing advances from member countries, precisely defining annual strategies and orientations, as well as highlighting issues and challenges to address.
