Universal Children's Day is celebrated every year, albeit on different days in certain countries. It marks the day on which the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. The aim is to put public initiatives and campaigns in place to raise awareness of children's rights worldwide, awareness of their situation in life, problems, wishes, needs and longings as well as to enable exchanges and meetings between them.
Those in positions of political responsibility should, in particular, be reminded that it is very much up to them to act in the interests of children. It is up to them to act in family and social politics with laws that explicitly protect children from violence, exploitation and abuse of all kinds, in educational politics, in measures for ensuring the safety of children in war and conflict situations, etc.
For SOS Children's Villages the highest principle is to act in the best interests of the child. At the forefront are the individual needs of the children, who in most cases come into the care of SOS Children's Villages weighed down by events of the past. The goal of thousands of SOS Mothers, educators, and psychologists all over the world is to provide these children in the long term with surroundings that enable healing, offer an opportunity for them to reconcile themselves with their past, and offer trust and comprehensive support for a balanced adult life. In this sense, SOS Children's Villages champions a society that is fair for children, where no distinction is made between background, religion, nationality or sex, rather where the right of all children to have a family, basic security and a future becomes a reality.