needs and social services when their rights are violated. One of the main challenges is how to access social services for these children within the national systems. UNHCR have found a number of child protection issues affecting children such as family separation, child marriages, low birth registration, and child trafficking amongst others. In UNHCR’s experience coordination especially with the various ministries given that children’s issues are cross cutting, poses many challenges. They feel that in order to enhance coordination there is a need to look at concrete needs that will have impact on the well-being of the child and identify which authority should be addressing this. A mapping of who the counter part is will be important to then together develop a joint understanding on what the cross-border child protection issues are. UNHCR feels strongly that there is a need to advocate to include refugee children into the national child protection system. One of the things they plan to do is a mapping on the different legal frameworks so they understand to what extent refugee children are explicitly included. UNHCR is working with the social welfare departments in countries to include refugees into the national system in terms of access to education, health and other social services. Following this initiative, they realized that there are different systems within partner states in working with refugee children. UNHCR has since documented the good practice on how they integrate refugee children into their national systems. A meeting was convened in the EAC where each member state signed and agreed to integrate good practices for integrating refugee children into national systems. It was recommended that the same can be done in other RECs to ensure that refugee children’s rights are protected. 5.5.4. Promoting Child Rights through collaboration with Regional Economic Communities: Save the Children Presentation – by Mr. Kennedy Kimani Save the Children International (SCI) focus has been working with ACERWC and the EAC Secretariat to develop strengthened policies and implementation on cross border issues. SC is a member of the Inter-Agency Working Group on the EAC Child Policy. The 10 priorities in the EAC Child Policy provides common priorities for SCI’s work. SCI has been working on cross border harmonization and implementation of laws (priority 1 and 2 of the EAC policy). Examples of harmonization practices is harmonizing the definition of a child so that protection is provided uniformly. Also addressing the minimum age of marriage, child protection minimum standards, adoption laws, child participation etc. When children move from one country to the other, having laws that are not harmonized poses problems with protection. SCI have also been working on strengthening child protection systems as this is a major issue for this region. As much as states have made progress in adopting laws and policies in relation to this, it is not sufficient. It is felt that the EAC states need to have a coordinated response to child protection issues. Another area of work has been in child participation. SCI feels it is important to develop a common framework for child participation, so all children’s voices are heard. They are working to develop a child friendly version of the EAC Child Policy, so this can be disseminated. SCI Further suggests that in order for us to address cross-border issues adequately we should have regular opportunities to share good practice and continually learn and revise