The EACH Charter, adopted in 1988 in Leiden/NL, is a list of the rights for all children before, during or after a stay in hospital.

The Annotations have been prepared to assist in the implementation of the EACH Charter. The Annotations were prepared by the authors of the EACH-Charter of 1988 for the 7th EACH Conference held in December 2001 in Brussels. They have been adopted by the present 18 member associations and are offered as a useful supplement to the Charter.

The EACH Charter and the Annotations are to be understood in the following context:

• All rights mentioned in the Charter and all measures taken or derived from the Charter must in the first place be in the best interests of children and enhance their well-being.
• The rights mentioned in the Charter apply to all sick children, regardless of their illness or age or disability, their origin or their social or cultural background, or of any possible reason for treatment or forms or places of treatment, whether as in-patients or out-patients.
• The EACH Charter is in line with corresponding and binding rights stipulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and refers to children as being aged from 0-18.

In this section of the website you find the text of the Charter and the Annotations that now go with it. Also there is information on the implementation of the EACH Charter in Europe. Finally we made a small glossary of terms used.