Who We Are

Sarah Blakemore is director of Keeping Children Safe, a global organisation that works with thousands of organisations in across the world to safeguard all children from exploitation, abuse and violations of their human rights. As a result of that work, some 134 million children each year are now better protected from exploitation and abuse. Sarah has worked for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines-Cluster Munition Coalition, End Water Poverty, Oxfam, and Save the Children, amongst others. She is an advocacy and communications specialist with extensive experience of civil society capacity-building and strategic leadership to integrate a range of tactics: research, policy analysis, lobbying, coalition-building, communications, and mobilising capabilities to deliver policy change. Sarah has worked with all types of relevant stakeholders, from policymakers in international institutions and state governments, through to grassroots organisations in nearly every country across the world.

 

Rosa Freedman is Professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading. She received her LLB, LLM and PhD from the University of London and is a non-practising barrister and member of Gray’s Inn. Rosa’s research focuses on the UN and human rights, in particular the impact of politics upon the creation and protection of international human rights law. She has published extensively on the UN human rights bodies and on UN peacekeeping and accountability for human rights abuses committed during such operations, including two monographs, two co-edited collections, and articles in American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Leiden Journal of International Law and Human Rights Quarterly, amongst others. She frequently appears in international and national media, works closely with the UN and with state governments and sits on the advisory boards of international NGOs. Rosa is a member of Research Council peer-review colleges, the Academic Council of the United Nations, the European Society of International Law, and the Society of Legal Scholars.

 

Keeping Children Safe is a global network of organisations committed to child safeguarding and actively influencing others to adopt International Child Safeguarding Standards. Its establishment in 2001 coincided with the exposure of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse carried out by over 40 humanitarian aid agencies of children in refugee camps in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Specifically, a report published in February 2002 by UNHCR and Save the Children detailed numerous complaints indicating that UN peacekeeping personnel and humanitarian aid workers had demanded sex for food, shelter, education and medicine. In response, Keeping Children Safe in collaboration with experts developed a set of International Child Safeguarding Standards supported by a comprehensive toolkit for implementing the standards.