A/65/262 1. XX Pan American Child Congress 89. In September 2009, the Special Representative participated in the XX Pan American Child Congress, organized by the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Children’s Institute, and hosted in Lima by the Government of Peru. With high-level participation from member States, as well as from national independent institutions for children’s rights, non-governmental organizations and academics from the Americas, the Congress was held in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and of the eighth anniversary of the Inter-American Children’s Institute. Strong attention was devoted to public policies for the realization of children’s rights, including the protection of children from violence. Violence against children was also centre stage in the official sessions and in the formal dialogue between ministers and high authorities, and the Special Representative and the Rapporteur on the Rights of the Child of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro. 90. The Congress was a strategic forum to advance progress in the Americas on follow-up to the recommendations of the study, and to launch the “Report on Corporal Punishment and Human Rights of Children and Adolescents”, issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 4 This important report builds upon the United Nations study and calls on States members of the Organization of American States to place explicit and absolute legal bans on the use of corporal punishment in all settings; adopt preventive, educational and other measures to ensure the eradication of this form of violence; and promote positive and non-violent alternatives; and make the Americas a region free of child corporal punishment by 2011. 91. The Pan American Child Congress was preceded by a civil society forum and included, for the first time, a Pan American Forum on Children. The Forum placed high on the agenda of the Congress the questions of child participation and children’s protection from violence — indeed, violence against children was identified as their most pressing concern. 92. The deliberations of the Congress informed a significant process of follow-up, which has led to the promotion in several countries of initiatives to introduce a comprehensive legal prohibition of all forms of violence against children; and to the establishment of national consultative councils to institutionalize children’s participation in decision-making. 93. The Congress also laid the ground for a solid institutional collaboration with regional forums and institutions in the Americas, including the Inter-American Children’s Institute and, in particular, the Rapporteur on the Rights of the Child of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, with whom a strategic framework of cooperation was developed for the protection of children from all forms of violence. __________________ 4 18 Document OEA/Ser.L/V/II.135. 10-47898