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Do Greek companies truly understand their role in protecting and promoting children’s rights—and, more importantly, are they acting on that understanding?
This central question drives the Greek Business & Children’s Rights Benchmark Assessment, a landmark study conducted by the American College of Greece Research Center (ACG-RC) in collaboration with UNICEF Greece. The assessment marks a first for Greece, offering the country’s most comprehensive examination to date of how businesses perceive and integrate children’s rights across corporate governance, supply chains, workplace policies, environmental responsibility, and broader societal impact.
Designed as a national benchmark, the study provides a structured snapshot of current business practices while aligning corporate responsibility with international standards, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UNICEF Child Rights and Business Principles. In doing so, it establishes a reference point against which progress can be measured—and gaps clearly identified.
The study was led by Professor Pavlos A. Vlachos, holder of the Theodore Papalexopoulos Chair in Sustainability, and carried out by a multidisciplinary research team comprising Athanasios Krystallis, CoEFTL Executive Director and ACG-RC Director; Toula Perrea, Assistant Professor and CoEFTL member; Konstantinos Tzioumis, Associate Professor of Finance; Aristotelis Alexopoulos, Director of Applied Research & Innovation; and Rania Assariotaki, Sustainability Director at ACG’s Office of Sustainability and Public Affairs. Together, the team brought expertise spanning marketing, finance, sustainability, applied research, governance, and youth engagement—ensuring both analytical depth and real-world relevance.
Methodologically, the assessment combines executive surveys with focus groups involving young people, placing corporate self-perception alongside youth experience. This dual lens is one of the study’s defining features. It reveals a pronounced “commitment–implementation gap”: while many companies declare support for children’s rights, relatively few translate this commitment into concrete policies, structured training programs, transparent reporting mechanisms, or robust supply-chain safeguards.
The contrast between executive responses and youth perspectives is particularly revealing. Young participants consistently highlight that corporate decisions—ranging from environmental practices and marketing strategies to labor standards and community engagement—have a direct and immediate impact on their lives. Yet children and young people remain largely excluded from business decision-making processes.
As the findings show, businesses continue to frame children primarily as future consumers or employees, rather than as present-day stakeholders and rights-holders. This disconnect underscores a broader challenge: responsibility toward children is still treated as peripheral to core business strategy, rather than as an integral component of sustainable and ethical operations.
According to Professor Vlachos, addressing this gap requires a fundamental shift in mindset. Listening to youth voices, he argues, is not symbolic—it is essential. Meaningful corporate responsibility begins when businesses recognize that children’s rights are shaped by today’s decisions, not tomorrow’s promises.
More than a diagnostic exercise, the Greek Business & Children’s Rights Benchmark Assessment serves as a call to action. It challenges Greek businesses to move beyond stated intentions and adopt measurable, accountable practices that embed children’s rights into governance, strategy, and everyday operations—ensuring lasting impact for children and young people today.
