Global Child Forum
2024

On 23rd October, 2024, Global Child Forum, on behalf of Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Sweden, hosted an invitation-only global forum on children’s rights and business at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden.

This event was an opportunity for business leaders to meet in person to discuss one of the most important topics for society: the wellbeing of children.

The event had a key focus on how to bring a child rights perspective to influential organisations – delivering value to stakeholders, and building a better future for the youth of tomorrow.

To support this goal, throughout discussions and working sessions, participants were urged to join our call-to-action:

Listen Up! Engage Children as Stakeholders.

How can the corporate and financial sectors develop sustainable solutions that will benefit all people – and especially children, who have to live with the consequences of our choices as they grow up?

We’re living in uncertain times, and although many businesses are progressing with integrating a broad sustainability agenda, there is still an urgent need for the corporate sector to align strategies and operations even more closely with children’s rights.

The world is reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as worldwide geopolitical instability and growing social division. With 2023 recorded as the warmest year in history – climate change is also a reality that demands our attention.

Now more than ever, children’s voices must be heard and their rights respected and protected.

This year’s Forum focused on two priority sectors that Global Child Forum selected due to their significant influence on children. These sectors have also been the subjects of recent in-depth benchmark studies:

Technology & Telecommunications

Food, Beverage & Personal Care

• Take a look at the Forum 2024 agenda.
• Read H.M The King’s opening speech.
• Accessibility note: A text-based version of our video, Global Child Forum 2024 (suitable for screen-reading software), is available here.
• A note on photography, video and media capture during the event.

Why this matters: your business is their business

Children and adolescents are not just future consumers—they are key influencers and stakeholders today.

By engaging them meaningfully, businesses can drive innovation, build trust, and create products and services that truly meet the needs of all demographics.

Moreover, with the implementation of the CSDDD and CSRD in the EU, meaningful stakeholder engagement is now a legal requirement, integral to human rights due diligence and essential for assessing material impacts.

Our commitment: a community of support

We are committed to providing the resources, and support necessary to integrate a child rights perspective into their policies and practices.

To sustain your commitment and momentum, we plan to provide follow-ups and community support at least every six months until the next Forum, scheduled for 2026.

This includes:

Interactive workshops: Hands-on sessions to help you develop actionable strategies.

Expert insights: Guidance from leading child rights advocates and business innovators.

Case studies: Real-world examples of successful child engagement in business.

An opportunity to shine:

We’re excited to spotlight the actions taken by professionals and companies committed to our call-to-action. We’ll be sharing these success stories through case studies, giving you the chance to showcase your achievements at Global Child Forum events, and amplifying your impact across our social media channels. Plus, we’re planning to honour these contributions at our next Forum in 2026.

Take action:

Join us in this crucial initiative to ensure that children are recognised and involved as stakeholders in your business. By doing so, you can make a lasting positive impact on their lives and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive future. Examples of action that you could take to engage children as stakeholders include, but are not limited to:

• Ensure that children and young people’s perspectives are properly represented in your materiality assessment.
• Engage expert organisations and assess child rights risk across your company’s value chain.
• Involve children, or relevant representatives, in the design of action plans to address significant child rights risks.
• Create internal checks and systems to assess products and services from a child rights perspective (safety-by-design).
• Open up for customers (children, teenagers and their parents) to give meaningful input on your products and marketing practices to ensure that you are respecting them as rightsholders and understand their needs and perspectives.
• Create advisory boards or include young people in existing ones.

Get involved:

Attendees were able to sign up to this call to action during the Forum 2024.

If you would like to know more about our call to action, or what your company or investment can do to better engage children as stakeholders, please contact our team.

Together, let’s make a difference—one child at a time.

By attending Forum 2024, guests and speakers acknowledged and consented that images – which may include their likeness – could be captured during the event using photography, video, or other media, and used by Global Child Forum in its efforts to promote children’s rights and business.