CONCLUSIONS ADOPTED BY THE EXECUTIVE ... - UNHCR

Exploitation of Children;
1997 (Executive Committee—48 th Session)
(iv) providing appropriate training to military personnel and peacekeepers on human rights and
humanitarian protections to which children and adolescents are entitled, and holding all parties
accountable for violations of such rights and protections in refugee situations;
(v) ensuring access to education, and the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion;
(vi) providing medical or other special care, including rehabilitation assistance, to assist the social
reintegration of refugee children and adolescents, especially those who are unaccompanied or
orphaned;
(c) Calls upon UNHCR to continue to integrate fully the rights of the child into its policies and
programmes; improve its operational methods for assessing the needs of child and adolescent refugees; train its
staff and implementing partners accordingly; formulate preventive strategies; and strengthen collaboration with
States, UNICEF, WFP, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ICRC, non-governmental
organizations, and other concerned actors;
(d) Calls upon UNHCR to include on the work programme of the Standing Committee in 1998 a report on
the implementation of its strategy for follow-up to the Machel Study, with special reference to the establishment
of operational performance objectives in respect of refugee children and adolescents and the identification of
improvements in staffing, training and budgeting to meet these objectives; and also to report on follow-up of its
evaluation of UNHCR programming and protection efforts on behalf of refugee children and adolescents.
(e) Calls upon all States to participate constructively in the negotiations on an optional protocol to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts with the aim of an early
agreement on the text.
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