Prior to International Children’s Rights Day, First Lady Doris Schmidauer met with children’s rights experts for an informal exchange at the President’s Office on 18 November 2024.

Helmux Sax, Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR), presented current study results of the Institute on the crisis resilience of child protection in Austria (CARES: Child-centered and Accessible crisis-Response for an Effective protection System) and on the topic of forced marriage (Forced marriages – Stock-taking for effective policies against forced marriages in Austria). The children’s rights expert particularly emphasised the importance of child and youth participation and spoke about key topics such as promoting child and youth welfare and strengthening children’s mental health. ‘Our projects show how essential it is to involve children and young people directly in decisions about their living environment, especially in times of crisis and in view of the current challenges surrounding digitalisation and social media’, Sax emphasised. During the meeting, he also addressed important children’s rights challenges such as the protection against violence, online dimensions in the school context and support for refugee children. He also touched on man-made climate change and the possibility of monitoring children’s rights

The round table provided space for constructive dialogue and underlined the urgency of consistently anchoring and strengthening children’s rights in politics and society.