|© UNICEF video| |Children and adults exchange ideas at the
Second Children’s Summit in Rwanda.| By Sarah Crowe KIGALI,
Rwanda, 20 January 2006 – At an expensive hotel in the capital
city, delegates filed in importantly, carrying their official
documents, took their seats in front of the microphones, put on
their headphones and the Summit began. Few of the delegates at
Rwanda’s Second Children’s Summit were under the age of 18, but
their aim was noble – to give children actual power in
parliament. The young people who were present called on those
currently in power to account for their actions and shortcomings
since the First Children’s Summit in 2004. At the initial
Summit, the government made a public apology to children for the
Rwandan genocide of 1994, during which nearly one million people
were massacred, including close to 400,000 children. The
genocide left the country with the highest number of orphans in
the world. “Adults have let us down. They’re the ones who were
responsible for these terrible thi