On the occasion of International Children’s Day, marked on 1 June, the Lithuanian version of UEFA’s child safeguarding courses, prepared by the Lithuanian Football Federation (LFF), have been launched.
On 31 March 2023, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) presented its first Protocol for the protection of children and adolescents.
"Everybody in the gym saw it, but no one did anything! I was so confused." (a survivor)
Sports professionals from Europe are invited at an international webinar about responding to harassment and abuse in sport. This is a Safe Sport Allies international webinar.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) is developing, together with UEFA, a program for the protection of children in football, to work towards the creation of safe spaces for underage athletes. As part of the development process of this program, a working meeting was held this Thursday, 2 February 2023, at the Ciudad del Fútbol in Las Rozas, with the attendance of different coaches from youth national teams.
On 9 February 2023, the Albanian Football Association (AFA) and Terre des hommes Albania (Tdh) signed a cooperation agreement in the field of child protection in football, in line with UEFA's initiative to develop national child protection policies for each of its 55 members. The agreement comes as a continuation of the previous collaboration to improve the quality of child protection in football, including Tdh's contribution to the drafting of two important documents of the AFA: the child protection policy in football and the code of ethics.
In December 2022, the Albanian Football Association (AFA) in partnership with Terre des hommes Albania organised a training session on “Child Safeguarding in Football”. Since a long time, the AFA has been committed to developing and implementing its policies for the protection and preservation of the safety of children in football, also based on the guidelines of UEFA and FIFA.
The first UEFA Child and Youth Protection Summit took place on 17-18 November in Tubize (Belgium), at the Royal Belgian Football Association's (RBFA) new headquarters. Forty-nine UEFA member association’s child and youth protection officers were joined by keynote speakers of the European Commission and the Council of Europe, as well as leading researchers and experts in child and youth protection.
The Gibraltar Football Association, in collaboration with the English Football Association, has produced a series of documents to assist all its stakeholders in developing safeguarding policies, sending the clear message that safeguarding is everyone's responsibility! The Child safeguarding toolkit for UEFA member associations served as guidance in this process.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) not only includes the right for children to be protected from violence, it means that children have the right to have their opinions taken into account in matters that affect them, including on the development of child safeguarding measures.
Common Goal and the UEFA Foundation for Children have launched an online course to build capacity in safeguarding among sport for development actors.