Children's ombudswoman Helenca Pirnat-Dragicevic on Friday called on all Croatian candidates running in the forthcoming European Parliament elections to advocate children's rights in their future work and to formally become child rights champions.

The ombudswoman’s office has joined the international campaign “Vote for Children” together with many international organisations for the protection of children’s rights and interests, such as Eurochild, Save the Children, Terre des Hommes and UNICEF.

The campaign seeks to ensure that issues of interest to children are given priority in election programmes of future members of the European Parliament, calling on election candidates to become child rights champions. It says that children in Europe and the world are facing numerous threats, such as poverty, social exclusion, discrimination and violence.

About 100 million children live in the European Union today, of whom over 25 million are at risk of poverty and social exclusion. The ombudswoman says that particularly vulnerable are children of migrants and refugees, hundreds of thousands of children are still institutionalised rather than living in a domestic environment, and that children in Europe are also threatened by climate change.

The ombudswoman called on Croatian candidates for members of the European Parliament to help break the cycle of poverty, inequality and conflict for future generations, invest in children inside and outside Europe, listen to children’s voices, involve them in decisions affecting them and act on children’s views.