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Faculty, staff, and students welcomed children's rights specialists including lawyers, judges, and government officials from Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda at a lunch on Tuesday, Dec. 5.

The group is visiting Northwestern and Loyola as part of a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, by the African Law Initiative of the American Bar Association, by the Northwestern University School of Law, and by the Loyola University of Chicago School of Law. The purpose of this project is to plan an initiative that will make greater human and financial resources available to support the important work of the visitors.

The specialists spoke with students, faculty, and staff about the work they are doing for children's rights in their countries and about the juvenile justice system in the United States.

During the lunch Steve Drizin, who works with second and third year law students in the legal clinic representing children and families in child welfare, juvenile justice, and immigration/political asylum proceedings, spoke about strategies the Children and Family Justice Center and the Center on Wrongful Convictions are working on to abolish the juvenile death penalty.

"The spirit with which the juvenile justice system was created in this country is trampled by the juvenile death penalty," he said.

Other nations that do not execute juveniles, or adults for that matter, may be key to abolishing the death penalty here, he said. Any pressure they put on the United States to stop the death penalty will help.

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