International Children’s City Congress}

International Children’s City Congress

MMU carries out its Children’s City studies through a congress program complemented by workshops and seminars, bringing together expert assessments and a participatory framework that enables children to engage in discussions on their own needs and the issues affecting them.

The cities we have established both meet our needs and create new needs for us. While cities should be structured to address the needs of everyone, the expectations, demands and needs of children may sometimes be overlooked due to the prioritization of other projects, initiatives and activities. This leads to shortcomings in urban initiatives designed for children, who constitute one third of the population, limits their ability to fully experience and engage with their cities, and makes urban life challenging and filled with barriers for children.

 

 

Local governments, which are the units closest to the environment where the child lives, have been given duties in this subject matter in both national and international regulations. With the Convention on the Rights of the Children of the United Nations that became a part of the domestic law in Turkey on 27 January 1995, the importance attached to children is increasing day by day.  In addressing this issue, both national and international policy frameworks recognize the responsibilities of local governments, as the institutions closest to children’s living environments.

 

In this context, MMU, which already supports policies and practices generated with a focus on human and nature, the most essential elements of a sustainable city life, conducts a congress program leveraged by various workshops involving Children’s City efforts which lays the ground for discussing the children’s needs and problems through an inclusive approach aside from evaluations from field experts in order to design and manage livable cities for everybody.

The efforts of the Children’s City Congress has two main objectives:

  • Increasing the awareness in children who make up nearly one third of the population in Turkey (population under 18) by those who manage the city (local and central) and by those who work for the city (academics, designers and non-governmental experts etc.)
  • Discovering the obstacles children encounter in city life and presenting solutions, projects and international examples to overcome these obstacles.

The 1st International Children’s City Congress focused on the relation between children and the city in 2015 with the theme “For the Child with the Child”. Organized in 2016, the 2nd the International Children’s City Congress analyzed the interaction of immigrant children with the new city under the theme of “A City for an Immigrant Child”.

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