EU Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027

For the future Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), we call on the EU to invest efficiently and adequately in children, especially the hardest to reach and most excluded, and to ensure people- driven accountability and tracking of its investment in children. Specifically, the EU should:

1. Ensure that development aid primarily serves to alleviate poverty, achieve sustainable development, tackle discrimination and inequality, and empower the most marginalised. Additionally, the EU should continue to take a principled approach to humanitarian aid.

2. Ensure the rights of the child are effectively integrated and applied across all policies, sectors and programmes relating to bilateral and multilateral development assistance and humanitarian aid.

3. Invest in a dedicated child rights programme in its future external aid instrument(s).

4. Explicitly maintain ring-fenced levels of spending for basic social services at an equivalent level to the current 20% benchmark, with specific focus on health, education, and social protection.

5. Take a systems-strengthening approach to programmes and initiatives focusing on child rights in development and, where relevant, in humanitarian contexts, and promote resilience-based, rather than issue-based and fragmented approaches.

6. Invest in child and youth-centered approaches that are participatory, empowering, and innovative, and put in place accessible, child-friendly accountability systems at headquarters and field levels.

7. Establish systems to effectively track EU investment in children through its Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Humanitarian Aid.