The Global Child Forum, in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, published the 2025 version of its report The State of Children’s Rights and Business (October 2025). The report assesses how 1,806 companies across eight sectors and six regions integrate children’s rights into their business practices across four areas: Governance and Collaboration, Workplace, Marketplace, and Community and Environment.
Human Level’s Take:
- Children’s rights face growing challenges from climate change, conflict, inequality and rapid tech development. Amidst these challenges, companies are under scrutiny for their impacts on children, especially as we approach the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda with children’s rights targets unmet.
- Companies overall are showing some improvement: in 2025, they averaged a score of 5.0/10, a 9% rise from 2024. The Technology & Telecommunications sector led with an average of 6.5, excelling in governance and workplace policies, and especially showing major gains in Asia-Pacific. Healthcare ranked second (6.2). Finance saw the biggest improvement (+29% from 2024). Energy & Utilities remained lowest due to weak disclosure and limited children’s rights integration into their practices.
- Europe remains the top performer on children’s rights, partly due to strong regulation. Yet progress is slowing as more and more companies meet baseline expectations but not as many go beyond. Meanwhile, North America’s gains since 2024 are modest, hindered by regulatory uncertainty in the U.S.
- Emerging regions—especially Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa—show the fastest improvement as they start to align with global children’s rights standards. However, in Latin America, commitments to responsible marketing to children remain limited; without stronger regulation on children’s rights, progress in the region risks being superficial.
- What can companies do to improve their performance? They can formalise board-level accountability for children’s rights, as companies with such governance perform better overall and demonstrate stronger strategic focus and resource commitment to the issue. In addition, they can strengthen due diligence beyond Tier 1 suppliers and address purchasing practices that may heighten risks to children, while also working with others for landscape-level change. Finally, they can improve their stakeholder engagement with children to better identify risks and impacts, especially when it comes to product use, data privacy and responsible marketing.
Some key takeaways:
- Leaders and laggards: Children’s rights are under increasing pressure from global trends like climate change, conflict, inequality and rapid tech development. As the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline approaches and global regulations evolve, companies are under the spotlight for their performance on children’s rights. According to the report, companies in 2025 scored 5.0 out of 10 on average, making for a 9% increase in scoring since 2024. Technology and Telecommunications was the top-performing sector, with an average score of 6.5. It performs especially well in the action areas of Governance & Collaboration and Workplace, reflecting that many companies have strong children’s rights policy frameworks and integration of policies into the business. The report also notes that Tech and Telecom companies in Asia-Pacific experienced the largest regional increase (+23% from 2024, +1.2 points), though Europe has the highest absolute score (7.2) — in part because of regulations like the EU Digital Services Act and UK Online Safety Act, which are raising the baseline for children’s rights online. Healthcare came second with an average score of 6.2, performing high across all impact areas. The Financial sector improved most from 2024, rising 29%, while Energy & Utilities continued to be the lowest performing sector due to weak disclosure and limited integration of children’s rights considerations into the business.
- Findings by region: Europe remains the leader, scoring highly across most impact areas in part due to the increased regulatory expectations for companies. However, the report finds that progress among European companies is slowing, signaling a possible “glass ceiling” as more and more European companies meet baseline expectations but fail to go beyond them. Overall, the report’s authors find that strong regulation underpins strong performance, increasing the quality and comparability of reporting. Meanwhile, North America’s scores improved somewhat since 2024, but not as quickly as other regions. North America’s slowing performance could reflect the regulatory rollback, fragmentation and and uncertainty in the U.S., which may mean that fewer companies are willing to take a leading role in integrating respect for child rights. Emerging economies are beginning to catch up to more developed regions: Latin America and the Middle East & North Africa saw the biggest gains in scores since 2024. Latin America in particular is rising in performance as it starts to align with global standards and frameworks for child rights, although it has room for improvement: while more Latin American companies are reporting on responsible marketing overall, only seven companies have a commitment towards responsible marketing to children and no companies report on the impacts of their marketing on children. The report notes that, without stronger regulation across Latin America, progress on children's rights may be superficial.
- Recommendations for action: The report outlines key impact areas where companies can take steps to improve respect for children’s rights in their value chains. One priority is strengthening governance: the report finds an association between companies that have board-level accountability for children’s rights and overall performance in other impact areas. Companies are recommended to formalise board oversight of the topic by clearly including children’s rights within board governance policies and as part of corporate reporting mechanisms, as well as reporting on how the board monitor and manages the topic. Building board ownership of the issue can increase strategic focus and resources for children’s rights throughout the business. Another priority is strengthening integration of children’s rights considerations in the value chain. The report calls on companies to move beyond compliance towards stronger due diligence across the supply chain, going beyond Tier 1 suppliers and looking at their own purchasing practices (like short lead times and low prices) that can increase the risk of impacts to children. In addition, companies will need to work with others, like peers, experts and governments, to get to the root causes of child labour. One way to do this is by supporting local education, health and child protection initiatives that can reduce instances of child labour. Finally, the report emphasises the urgent need for companies to address the impacts of their products on children. This is the lowest-scoring impact area in the benchmark, suggesting that responsible marketing, product safety and data privacy are not keeping pace with other practices. The report recommends that companies focus on improving their engagement with children to bridge these gaps and identify blind spots. For example, this could include integrating stakeholder engagement into governance processes and during product design and marketing processes.
