The theme of the Annual Meeting of ISSOP 2017 was “Children on the Move: Rights
Health and Wellbeing”. During this meeting the Budapest Declaration was adopted. It implies that pediatricians and child health professionals should promote the rights
health and well-being of refugee children and put it into action. Until now the declaration has been endorsed by 21 organisations across the world
out of which 3 in Japan. However
for Japanese paediatricians and child health care providers
the issue of refugee children is quite remote from their daily life. I will now share my experiences of implementing the declaration in Japan. I would like to explain the meaning of the Budapest Declaration for medical societies in JapanI emphasized two key points. One was that solving the issue of refugee children is urgent for the global community. The other was that this issue is tightly connected to the difficulties experienced by children who survived the Great Earthquake and related Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. So
optimizing the capability of refugee children is also connected to solving the issue of these victims living in Japan.