Case study – Sweden. Child Rights Governance Initiative

Save the Children Sweden (SCS) has worked against child poverty in Sweden since 2002, and has been involved in producing annual reports on child poverty in the country as well as qualitative reports on e.g. the relationship between poverty and health, single parenting, extra school charges, and the relationship between welfare benefits and child poverty. SCS has highlighted the issue of child poverty from a child rights perspective, based on article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which ensures every child the right to an adequate standard of living. This article, together with article 2, the right to non-discrimination due to parents social status, and article 4, the obligation for the state to implement the Convention to the maximum of its available resources, has formed the basis for SCS’s work on child poverty. This report also provides some ideas on how SCS could further develop its work on child poverty through the use of the CRC General Measures of Implementation (GMIs), most especially those related to awareness-raising activities and advocacy work.