Listen Up! Engage children as stakeholders

Eurochild shares expertise on children’s participation at the Global Child Forum 2024 which brought together child rights experts and business leaders to discuss how to engage children meaningfully.

On 23 October 2024, Eurochild participated in the 2024 edition of the Global Child Forum, hosted by the Swedish Royal Family at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

As an organisation, Global Child Forum works to bring together global leaders from business, civil society, academia and government in order to spur action for social change around children’s rights. This year’s edition convened discussions with corporate and financial sectors, together with children’s rights organisations like Eurochild, to challenge companies to involve children more meaningfully in their decision-making.

This year’s event was hosted by the Swedish Royal Family, His Majesty Carl XVI Gustav and Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria. The Swedish Royal Family have long supported civil society activities to fulfil children’s rights, including the Prince Couple’s Foundation – who strive to ensure children’s safety online and support children with dyslexia.

Eurochild co-convened one of the Forum’s Action Labs in this year’s event, which focused on developing solutions to the most pressing issues related to business’ impact on children’s rights. In our session, we shared how Eurochild engages children meaningfully as stakeholders, and shared examples from our work, including our new documentary on child participation, Changing the City.

All participating companies were called to endorse this year’s Global Child Forum Call-to-action for businesses worldwide: Listen Up! Engage Children as Stakeholders.

Finally, the Global Child Forum shared latest data from its innovative benchmarking tool that assesses the state of children’s rights across 1,800 companies worldwide. Child participation is one of the new indicators to measure companies track records on children’s rights. The2024 edition of this Global Benchmarking Report will be published on 12 November.

Click here to access the presentation materials from the Action Labs

For more information, contact Ciaran O’Donnell, Partnerships and Programmes Coordinator at the Eurochild Secretariat.