“Listening to children, recognizing their needs and protecting their rights: this is the commitment that today’s World Children’s Day urges us to keep every day.
It reminds us to acknowledge the value of their words, their experiences and their needs as an integral part of our community life.
Children – both girls and boys – are the bearers of fundamental rights and millions are now being deprived of them. They are the victims of violence, trade and exploitation, and they are often reduced into slavery, persecuted and kidnapped in order to turn them intochild soldiers.
Today, as conflicts multiply and humanitarian crises and inequalities worsen, it is always the youngest who pay the highest price.
Also in our Country, there are persisting situations of abandonment and marginality, and we cannot allow this to occur amidst deafening silence and indifference.
Too many children conceal their frailty behind their rage, a stubborn silence and a computer screen, in a context that observes them without however really understanding them.
We need to make a concrete joint and daily commitment to restore the youths’ trust, protect them and offer them concrete growth opportunities, thus making effective the constitutional principles that protect children and promote their human and social development.
The suffering of a child is a defeat for the entire community while every time that youths grow beingheeded, welcomed, and respected, the community renews itself and finds, in their voice, hope for the future.”
Roma, 20/11/2025
Link to the Quirinale website: https://www.quirinale.it/elementi/145083
