NCSR Demokritos and UNICEF Greece have announced the establishment of a Child Rights Centre, hosted within Demokritos. With this initiative, Demokritos becomes the first research centre to join UNICEF’s network of eleven Child Rights Centres (CRCs) across Greece.
The collaboration was formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding, signed by Dr. Vangelis Karkaletsis, Chairman of the Board and Director of NCSR Demokritos, and Dr. Ghassan Khalil, UNICEF Representative in Greece. In partnership with the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications at NCSR Demokritos, the new Centre is guided by the principles of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
Following the vision of the Child Rights Centres, it will serve as a hub for promoting and advocating for child rights, generating knowledge and evidence on children, and integrating child rights into education and training. The Demokritos Centre will focus on the digital environment, helping children navigate it safely and consciously through responsible AI use, online protection and digital literacy, cultivating digital citizenship and ensuring that innovation evolves with ethics and awareness.
At the launch event, Ghassan Khalil emphasized that the establishment of the Child Rights Centre at Demokritos marks an important milestone in UNICEF’s collaboration with the research community in Greece. He underlined the crucial role of science and innovation in protecting children’s rights and in strengthening knowledge, education, and critical thinking based on the principles of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
Vangelis Karkaletsis highlighted that the collaboration with UNICEF reflects a shared commitment to ensuring technology serves the rights of the child and not the other way around. Through the new Centre, he noted, Demokritos will promote responsible AI use and digital rights awareness, an investment in how children will shape tomorrow’s technology with safety and values.
The dialogue on children’s rights in the digital age is urgent, and Demokritos is working to ensure that the digital world becomes a space where every child can learn, create, and thrive safely.