UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty presents first findings from his EU visit

Eurochild has worked actively together with its members to inform the visit and give insight from the ground on the issue of child poverty.

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, visited Europe between December 2020 and January 2021 to assess the EU’s progress in combatting poverty and social exclusion.

Eurochild played a key role in informing the Rapporteur, by sharing our latest resources, such as the Report ‘Growing up in lockdown’, and a policy briefing drafted in collaboration with our members Odete Severino (Portugal), National Network for Children (Bulgaria), Dutch NGO Coalition for Children’s Rights (Netherlands), and Plataforma de Infancia (Spain). This document included members’ recommendations to tackle child poverty and their key asks for the Child Guarantee.

We were satisfied to see many of our key asks in the Rapporteur’s mission preliminary findings, presented on the 29^th of January. Among others, the Rapporteur:

• called on the European Union and national governments to strengthen their commitment to tackle poverty and exclusion;
• highlighted the crucial importance of the Child Guarantee, and stressed the need to ensure the most vulnerable children and families benefit from this initiative;
• stressed that a child’s early years are crucial in their development, and living in poverty can impact them for their whole life.

More detailed findings and recommendations will be available in the final report, presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2021.