Children across Europe continue to experience poverty and social exclusion, while growing anti-rights movements and political shifts risk undermining progress in the field of children’s rights. In this challenging context, collective action is more necessary than ever to safeguard and advance the rights of all children. The ‘Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice’ report highlights the essential role of civil society in shaping evidence-based policy-making and monitoring implementation at the national level. With a particular focus on children in situations of vulnerability, the report examines current efforts to tackle poverty and exclusion, including progress on the implementation of the European Child Guarantee (ECG). The report addresses a wide range of rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, including child participation, protection systems, mental health, and child poverty. It also focuses on children’s rights in the digital environment, affordable housing, public investment in social protection, and recent findings from the 2025 European Semester and EU enlargement process.
