Annual Report 1999-2000 all elements of society, including political parties. The workshop stressed the full and speedy implementation of free and compulsory education for all children of India up to the age of 14 years. 12.18 Shri Virendra Dayal, Member, represented the Commission in the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions and in a Seminar on the role of National Institutions in implementing the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, held in Manila from 6-8 September 1999 and on 9-10 September 1999 respectively. The meetings discussed, in particular, issues relating to the role of National Human Rights Institutions in promoting economic and social rights and the rights of women and children. Other matters considered included cooperation between National Institutions and NGOs, the death penalty and human rights, national action plans, the issue of child pornography on the Internet. 12.19 The National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Indian Medical Association and the Indian Latv Institute, organized the Eighth International Symposium on 'Torture as a Challenge to the Health, Legal and other Professions', from 22-25 September 1999, in New Delhi. The symposium made farreaching recommendations to end the evil practice of torture. 12.20 The Commission was represented at aJudicial Symposium on Refugee Protection, held in New Delhi on 13-14 November 1999 by Member Shri Virendra Dayal. The symposium was co-hosted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Supreme Court Bar Association. Shri Ram Jethmalani, the then Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Government of India, gave the introductory address. Amongst the other dignitaries who graced the symposium were former Chief Justices of India Justice Shri P.N. Bhagawati and Justice Shri Ranganath Misra, Judges and former Judges and Senior Advocates of the Supreme Court, officers of UNHCR, Senior Judges of the Supreme Court of Nepal and Bangladesh. 12.21 The symposium dealt with the status of refugees the world over and the available means to protect them. Special emphasis was placed on the problems of refugees in India and the constitutional provisions and role of the Courts in helping them. 12.22 The National Human Rights Commission, along with the Department ofWomen and Child Development (DWCD) and UNICEF, organised a symposium on 20 November 1999 to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. It was on this date, in 1989, that the Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Sixty-one countries, in an unprecedented first-day response for any United Nations treaty, signed the Convention on that date itself. Today, the Convention is the most universally accepted human rights treaty in history, having been ratified by all but two countries. India acceded to the Convention on II December 1992. 78