U.S. State Department Report Highlights "Essential" Role of Brooklyn College Children’s Studies Center

A recently released United States Treaty Report cited the Brooklyn College Children’s Studies Center as an example of the "essential role of academic and nonprofit institutions" working in the area of providing oversight of children’s services.

References to the Brooklyn College Children’s Studies Center may be found in paragraphs 102 and 103, page 24 of the First Periodic Report Concerning the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography and U.S. Response to Recommendations in Committee Concluding Observations of June 25, 2008 (pdf), where it states that "the work of the Center, along with other non-governmental advocates, has been crucial in the adoption of new laws in the state of New York. The Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Youth Act, enacted Sept. 25, 2008, made New York the first state in the nation to provide specialized services and safe housing for children who have been sexually exploited."

More than half the states in the nation have established an office of the child advocate or an ombudsman with the responsibility for looking after the welfare of children, the report says.

Brooklyn College became the first academic institution in the nation to develop an interdisciplinary liberal arts children’s studies program in 1991. Professor Gertrud Lenzer is the founding director of both the Children’s Studies Program and of the Children’s Studies Center, established in 1997 with mission mandates tied to pedagogy, research and public service to the community.

The full U.S. Treaty Reports may be viewed on the U.S. Department of State website.