Reply received:
23 April 2026, 13:19
Explanation:
My correspondence with the representatives is in Swedish. Naturally, their replies are also in Swedish. In this case, the reply was not sent personally by Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, but by the Centre Party’s parliamentary office. The text of the reply on this page has been translated from Swedish into English by ChatGPT. However, images of the original Swedish email appear at the end of this page.
Hello Bahman!
Thank you for your email.
Interest in the Centre Party’s politics is high, and our party leader, Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, receives a large number of messages every day. As party leader, she has a very busy schedule, travelling around the country to meet voters, members and business owners, while at the same time leading our party’s political work in the Riksdag. This means that, unfortunately, she is not able to reply personally to every single email, even though she would very much like to. However, those of us around her and at the Centre Party’s parliamentary office do read everything that comes in.
We have taken note of your strong and important views concerning children who are suffering and not receiving enough food. This is a completely unacceptable situation, and we share your frustration and sorrow that children in Sweden are being subjected to this.
Here are our answers to your questions, based on the political work carried out by the Centre Party:
- What legal, political or parliamentary means did you use to stop this practice?
The Centre Party works on several fronts to prevent children from ending up in vulnerable situations and to counteract such situations when they arise. Our work takes place both in the Riksdag and locally in the municipalities.
– The decisive role of schools: According to the Education Act, all pupils must be offered free and nutritious school meals. For many children, school meals are the most nutritious meal of the day and help to reduce health inequalities. We work to ensure that this legislation is complied with and that schools receive the resources they need. We want to see systematic work on food and meal follow-up, as well as stronger pupil health services.
– A strong social safety net: When a family cannot meet its children’s basic needs, it is the responsibility of the social services to act. Financial assistance is society’s last safety net. The Centre Party wants to see social services that can work more preventively and provide early support to families in vulnerable situations. Among other things, we have pushed for reforms such as monthly adjustment of housing benefit in order to reduce the risk of families with children being required to repay money.
– The Convention on the Rights of the Child as law: Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child became law in Sweden on 1 January 2020, children’s rights have been strengthened. Article 24 establishes children’s right to nutritious food. The Centre Party works to ensure that the law is given full effect in all decisions concerning children, at every level of society. This requires a continuous improvement in knowledge among everyone who works with children.
– Local initiatives: The Centre Party actively pursues the issue of children’s welfare in municipalities across the country. This includes concrete budget proposals to strengthen schools, pupil health services and preventive social work. In several municipalities, we have, among other things, proposed measures to reduce the size of preschool groups, strengthen pupil health services with more counsellors, and ensure resources for children with special needs.
- What was the specific, concrete and measurable result of your measures to ensure that it would never again become a news issue in Sweden that children are kept hungry?
Our political work is focused on long-term and structural changes to create a society in which no child needs to go hungry. Our measures are aimed at achieving the following concrete results:
– Preventing child poverty: The underlying reason why children go hungry is almost always the family’s financial vulnerability. The Centre Party’s main focus is therefore on job creation and a strong work-based policy that gives parents the opportunity to support themselves. Statistics show that far too many children in Sweden live in households with weak finances, and that financial vulnerability can vary across different parts of the country. For example, financial vulnerability in a region such as Dalarna is higher than the national average. This underlines the need for policies that strengthen families’ finances across the whole country.
– Ensuring nutritious school meals: We work to ensure that all schools follow the Swedish Food Agency’s national guidelines for nutritious meals and that school meals become an integrated part of the school’s quality work. The goal is that all pupils, regardless of background, should be offered good and nutritious food that they actually eat.
– Strengthening children’s rights in practice: We work to ensure that the fundamental principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, such as the best interests of the child always coming first and children having the right to express their views, permeate all work within schools and the social services. It is about genuinely ensuring that children’s own voices and needs are taken seriously. One concrete example of this is giving pupils influence over school meals.
We hope that this gives a clear picture of the Centre Party’s commitment and political work to ensure every child’s right to a secure upbringing with access to nutritious food.
We wish you a pleasant day.
These are three images of the email reply:
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