Evidence for Action Blog

For too many children, the places where they should feel safe—at home, at school, in their communities—are the first and most frequent sites of violence. The latest data presented in UNICEF’s A Familiar Face shows, for example, that nearly 300 million children between the ages of 2 and 4 experience violent discipline by their caregivers on a regular basis. Reasons for this are nuanced, varied, and may be underpinned by social norms; for example, some caregivers may believe that such discipline is a demonstration of being a ‘good’ parent, while some may be influenced by how they believe other parents in their community discipline their children. Reading these statistics can be overwhelming; leading to a sense of futility. Yet we seek to understand the violence in children’s lives in order to better respond to it, and ultimately, to stop it from happening in the first place. Focusing our attention on interpersonal violence against children—revealing its scope, magnitude, causes and contributing factors—continues to be instrumental in identifying ways to address it. Solutions to ending violence against children must be as diverse and nuanced as its causes. A psychologist talks to a young woman victim of rape. The centre assists cases like this and children who have been trafficked or sexually or physically abused, children stay at the centre until they can be reunited with their families.In seeking to better understand causes and responses to violence, social scientists often design studies to identify ‘risk’ and ‘protective’ factors that may put children with certain characteristics, or experiences, more at risk of violence, or more likely to be protected from it. Recent research confirms the importance of understanding and identifying risk and protective factors for children to various harms including physical and sexual abuse and emotional maltreatment. Pinpointing these factors is crucial in developing prevention, early intervention strategies and support needs for individual children and families. At the same time, an over-emphasis on the factors that put children at risk, or what makes them and their families more vulnerable to violence –their  “vulnerabilities” – can lead to individualising causes and responses to violence against children. Vulnerability may be understood as the “circumstances, conditions or events that increase the probability that a family will have poor outcomes in the future.” Where these circumstances and conditions are narrowly defined, sight of the social and economic conditions that create or exacerbate children’s precarity may be lost. Children and their caregivers may even be deemed responsible for both the situations they find themselves in and for providing the remedies. For too many children, the places where they should feel safe—at home, at school, in their communities—are the first and most frequent sites of violence.For these reasons we pose the question: ‘How can concepts of vulnerability and marginalisation be considered in research, policy, advocacy and programs to enhance efforts to understand what drives violence against children and what can be done about it?’ Individuals, families, and communities cannot ‘lift themselves up by their bootstraps’ if the historical and political systems and structures within which they exist—operating at sub-national, national, regional and/or global levels—do not also change. As such, the concept of children’s marginalisation may help expose the “set of process[es] which ignores or relegates individuals or groups to the sidelines of political space, social negotiation, and economic bargaining. Homelessness, age, language, employment status, skill, caste, race, and religion are some criteria historically used to marginalize.” According to a UNESCO report, in this way marginalisation – or the toxic cocktail of inherited disadvantage, deeply ingrained social processes, unfair economic arrangements and bad policies - is consistent with the equity agenda, in that it illuminates factors over which children have no control… [which] matters because successful measures to tackle marginalization have to target specific underlying causes that may be missed by blanket interventions. One example of how of vulnerability and marginalisation have both been conceptualised and deployed to understand violence against children is in UNICEF’s recent Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children. The Drivers study comprised nationally-led data gathering in four country sites—Italy, Peru, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe—which focused on uncovering the institutional and structural drivers of physical, sexual and emotional violence against children, with the aim of creating an evidence base upon which policies and programs to prevent and respond to such violence could be built or improved. As its “Snapshot of Findings” notes: Unequal power dynamics operate across gender, age and other status markers creating the circumstances within which violent acts occur. Violent acts are not merely an interaction between a child and one or more other individuals, but rather a socio-ecological phenomenon. This study shows how factors on multiple levels – individual characteristics, inter-personal relationships, and the communities in which people live – interact with institutional and structural drivers to increase or reduce a child’s risk.The Drivers study adapts Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development to visually represent the interplay between micro- and meso-levels—individual, interpersonal, and community—with macro-level forces which it terms ‘drivers’. These are characterized either as structural drivers, defined as ‘rapid socio-economic transformations accompanied by economic growth but also instability, poverty, migration and gender inequality’; or institutional drivers, identified as ‘legal structures, ineffective child protection systems, weak school governance and harmful social and cultural norms, which often serve to reinforce children’s vulnerabilities.’ The Drivers study applies this socio-ecological framework to synthesizing and analysing existing data about VAC across these four diverse countries. In doing so, it posits that commonly, understandings of interpersonal violence towards children focus on risk and protective factors  at the individual, interpersonal and community levels, while their interaction with structural and institutional drivers may be less explicit—yet it is exactly this interaction that delineates how, where, when and why violence occurs in children’s lives. Source: Maternowska, M.C. and Potts, A. (2017). The Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children: A Child-Centred Integrated Framework for Violence Prevention, UNICEF Office of Research, Florence, Italy.A Child Centred Framework for Violence Prevention proposed by the authors highlights the applications of this approach: that policies and programs which ‘consider the interplay of both macro and micro forces on children’s well-being, and how these forces affect their enabling environment, are likely to be more effective than simply addressing risk and protective factors alone.’ This reoriented framework (above) also serves to make visible the process of marginalisation that so often is subsumed in discourse about an individual or group’s ‘vulnerability’.  It shows how, for example, applying such a framework to the design of parenting programmes—a now universally-recommended approach—to reduce violent discipline allows for contextualization (in this case, to the Vietnamese context) as well as recognition that the interactions within households are determined by many factors without: …a mapping of parents’ behavior may reveal factors including their financial security and/or level of education, the family’s connections to formal and non-formal support systems in their community, and prevailing beliefs influence affected by less proximal but still important factors such as living within an institutionalized caste system, or in a country where many adults or children migrate in search of work.Thus applying the concepts of both ‘vulnerability’ and ‘marginalisation’ allows for fuller recognition of the drivers that both hinder and promote girls’ and boys’ strengths and capabilities at individual, household- and community-levels. Applying these lenses is thus a critical practice for practitioners, activists, researchers and policymakers seeking to identify, put in place, and share solutions to address and prevent violence against children.    

It is estimated that a total of 264 million primary and secondary school-age children are out of school globally, and it is a commonly accepted notion that children with disabilities especially in developing countries and conflict zones tend not to attend school. However, it is not known if children with disabilities are a sizable share of out of school children and how big the school attendance gap between children with and without disabilities would be.Disability is addressed in two targets of SDG4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all:Target 4.5 “By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations.”Means of Implementation SDG 4.a “Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learing environments for all”Children enter a classroom at Blind Charitable Society School in the city of Hebron, in the State of Palestine. The school, established in 1996, provides education for 67 children in Hebron Governorate who are visually impaired.It will be imperative to address bottlenecks to school attendance for children with disabilities to achieve the SDG4 goals.One significant bottleneck for education policy makers to support children with disabilities is the lack of data. There is a lack of concrete data showing the true scale of disabilities worldwide, which constrains the abilities of education stakeholders to rigorously analyze and monitor the educational situation of children with disabilities.There have been several attempts made to establish global standards in disability measurement. The Washington City Group on Disability Statistics (WG), which is a UN city group established under the UN Statistics Commission, developed data collection tools that can produce cross-nationally comparable data on persons with disabilities.A recent article published in the journal World Development,  based on earlier UNICEF Innocenti research analyzes the gap in both primary and secondary school enrolment among children with disabilities across 15 developing countries. The article is based on nationally representative survey data sets which used the Washington Group Short Set of Questions (WG-SS) for disabilities.disability consistently reduced the chance of primary and secondary school attendance by a median of a 31 percentage pointsThe new paper indicates that disability consistently reduced the chance of primary and secondary school attendance by a median of a 31 percentage points. In 13 out of the 15 countries studied, disability reduced the probability of attending school more than 10 per cent. In an extreme case, disability reduced school attendance by 61 per cent for boys and 59 per cent for girls in Indonesia.The study also revealed that about 90 per cent of children with disabilities who are out of school have never attended school. Out of School Children Rates Among Secondary-School Age ChildrenOut of School Children Rates Among Secondary-School Age ChildrenWhile there are papers which provide evidence that household income level is correlated with a higher attendance rate of children with disabilities, our fixed-effect model shows that general income transfer (e.g., social assistance) is not likely to close the school attendance gaps between children with and without disabilities. While some countries, such as Kenya, attempt to enroll children by providing a “disability school grant,” the findings of the paper suggest that such transfers improve enrolment of children with disabilities but do not contribute to closing enrolment gaps. However, other interventions such as: inclusive education curriculum, teacher training to boost pedagogical skills to help reach children with disabilities, reforms on certification exams, inclusive education information systems and early detection and prevention programmes, are necessary to address supply-side bottlenecks.More and more countries are implementing household surveys with questions to identify persons with disabilities based on the Washington Group’s recommendations. However, the WG-SS was designed to capture functional difficulties in the adult population and does not include important functional domains for children such as learning, attention and emotions. Hence, many children with disabilities are likely to be missed in surveys that are based on the WG-SS. The results of this paper should therefore be interpreted as indicative of only a sub-set of children with disabilities.UNICEF and the Washington Group jointly released in 2016 a dedicated survey module on Child Functioning which measures functional difficulties in children between 2 and 17 years old in 2016. The module has been included in MICS6, which is going to cover more than 40 countries between 2017 and 2019. The datasets would be available in the first quarter of 2018 and onward, which will further reveal educational status of children with disabilities. Suguru Mizunoya is a statistics and monitoring specialist with the UNICEF data and analytics team in New York. His research on global school enrollment of children with disabilities was first published while he was a research fellow at the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website. 

Poverty estimates are not frequently made, nor easy to access in the Arab States. Continued political instability combined with frequent humanitarian crises make it difficult to have timely and reliable estimates of poverty for many countries in the region, while others, such as the Gulf countries, simply do not measure child poverty at all.Even so, there are now several national estimates. In fact, around 10 countries in the region have produced estimates of child poverty; however, a comprehensive picture of the region has been lacking.  The first ever regional estimates of child poverty for Arab States have now been produced by the UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office (MENA) and UNICEF Innocenti, together with researchers at The New School and Equity for Children. The findings of this work now are part of the Arab Poverty  Report, conducted and published in partnership with ESCWA, OPHI, and the League of Arab States.The report analyzes data for 11 countries in the region, representing 78 per cent of the total population under 18 years old in the Arab States. It uses MODA to define multidimensional child poverty in a standardized way across countries, applying the innovation of using two definitions of poverty, one acute, and one moderate. In such a diverse region, it is crucial that we apply different ‘poverty lines’ to adequately capture poverty in different circumstances. One size does not fit all. The report also analyzes trends for a subset of countries, tracking the progress (or lack thereof) from the start of the millennium to the year closest to 2015, at the end of the MDG agenda.Acute and moderate depruvation by dimension (in %). Click table to enlarge.What do we now know about child poverty in the Arab States? Here are seven key facts from the report of the 11 countries studied:One in four children (24.7 per cent) is acutely poor, while nearly one in two (44 per cent) suffer from moderate poverty. This amounts to 29.3 and 52.5 million of children, respectively. Child poverty is lowest in Jordan and Egypt, and highest in Mauritania and Sudan. Children under 5 are generally more deprived than older children.Countries have varying combinations of moderate and severe child poverty. These can be grouped into clusters: Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, and Palestine are in the first cluster, with low level of both severe and moderate poverty. Morocco and Iraq are in the second cluster, with low levels of severe poverty but high levels of moderate one. Finally, Comoros, Sudan, Yemen, and Mauritania, have high levels of both types of poverty, and constitute the third cluster of countries.Nutrition remains a problem across all countries. Almost 43 per cent of children are suffering from nutrition deprivation, in the form of undernutrition or obesity, which is increasingly a problem to be dealt with. Acute deprivation in nutrition is still high in cluster 1 and 2, where about 1 in 4 children are deprived, while in cluster 3 acute nutrition deprivation affects almost 1 in 3 children (download the brief on nutrition). Nutrition also does not present strong differentials across child or family characteristics, making the case for broader interventions.Investment in education is crucial to break the cycle of poverty: the incidence of deprivation in Education is high in cluster 2 and 3, especially moderate deprivation, which includes primary completion and delay in school. At the same time, children of less educated parents are consistently at higher risk of poverty: there is a compelling case to invest more to assure children go through the full cycle of education, and that quality education is available for all children. (download the brief on education)Strong urban/rural differentials, especially in countries in the middle of the distribution: in cluster 2 child poverty is 5.7 per cent in urban areas compared to 36.5 per cent in rural areas, presenting a stark divide that needs to be addressed by policy.Trends in most countries where it was possible to analyze data were positive between 2000 and circa 2015. Egypt showed impressive progress reducing the level of acute child poverty by 80 per cent and moderate poverty by 68 per cent. However, countries such as Sudan present a stagnant poverty level: the change has been less than 2 per cent for acute poverty, and 3.4 per cent for moderate poverty. Conflicts and crises certainly play a role in this, putting development goals in jeopardy.Violence against children remains a big issue in the region: While not explicitly included in the multidimensional poverty measure, all countries for which there is data report high levels of violent child discipline, from almost 50 per cent in Sudan to 84 per cent in Yemen, with an average incidence of 70 per cent. Prevalence is not tied to level of development, and does not present strong differentials by family characteristics: it is indeed an issue that involves all countries, across regions and social divides.While this report has some limitations, not least lacking several key countries, and not having recent data in critical countries such as Yemen, thus not fully reflecting the escalation of the recent conflict, it is the first effort to provide reliable, consistent and standardized estimates of child poverty across the Arab Region.  The objective is to stimulate debate to improve data collection, and to provide a joint framework for policy to assure that no child is left behind.Acknowledgements: Thanks to Arthur van Diesen, UNICEF MENA Regional Social Policy Adviser; to Alberto Minujin and Beatrice Mauger at The New School and Equity for Children; to Bilal Kiswani and the team at ESCWA, and to Diletta Parisi, who helped me ‘crunch the numbers’.Lucia Ferrone is a research consultant on child poverty at UNICEF Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

Contrary to what my parents remember about it, my own recollections of adolescence are quite positive. I remember it as a period of discovery and energy, spending endless hours with friends, hungrily soaking up new knowledge, experiences and skills. But I also took risks, acted on the spur of the moment without thinking the consequences through, and sometimes got in trouble. It was the period when I smoked my first cigarette, had a drink and stayed out all night dancing while my parents thought I was at a slumber party. The concept of positive and negative “spirals” unfolding during adolescence was coined by neuroscientists Ron Dahl and Ahna Suleiman and is explained in a recently launched UNICEF compendium of expert commentaries titled The Adolescent Brain: A Second Window of Opportunity. With the objective of bringing neuroscience, programming and policy closer together to better fulfill the potential of adolescents, the compendium uses everyday language to summarize what we know about the adolescent brain, the impact of different environments on its development, and the type of interventions that are particularly fruitful during different phases of adolescence. I was lucky to live in a supportive environment, surrounded by a caring family, friends, school teachers and other role models, and thanks to this the brain development and learning that took place during my adolescence spiraled into positive outcomes, both in the short- and long-term. Unfortunately, the “spirals” took a less positive direction for some of my classmates, turning into more difficult and unhealthy life trajectories, and in some instances ending tragically in drug overdose and car accidents. Defined by UNICEF and WHO as the period between 10-19 years, adolescence is a time of rapid social, emotional, physical and neurological change that has lasting impacts well into adulthood. The negative spirals that Dahl and Suleiman refer to (see pages 21 – 25 here) are behavioral and emotional patterns that lead to short- or long-term negative outcomes, such as road injuries, drowning, suicides, mental ill-health, substance use, eating disorders, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, violence, etc.  Adolescents are extremely sensitive to their social environment and experiences such as bullying, inter-personal violence and exclusion often leave a lasting mark on the individual. Those who grow up in environments of chronic stress, such as armed conflict and extreme poverty are particularly vulnerable to long-term negative consequences. In fact, epidemiological research suggests that population stressors such as war and famine have their most negative impacts on an individual’s life span when experienced during early adolescence (10-14 years). The discourse around adolescents is often negative, focusing on the onset of risky and negative behaviors, but as the compendium title suggests, adolescence is also a window of opportunity –  a time when positive behaviors, a supportive environment, and constructive social and emotional experiences can spiral into long-term positive outcomes. Many of the commentaries discuss the plasticity – or flexibility – of the adolescent brain and its ability to adapt to changes and challenges, learn new knowledge and skills, and even counteract some of the disadvantages and shortcomings that may have taken place during early childhood. As young people mature, they seek a sense of belonging and purpose, and as was the case in my own adolescence, this talent and energy needs to be supported by parents, schools and communities to facilitate healthy patterns of behavior, knowledge and skill acquisition, and responsibilities that serve adolescents well in adulthood. For organizations like UNICEF, a great value of the compendium is the advice it provides around programming interventions and policy. It is clear that the promotion of safe and secure environments, socio-emotional learning, caring and supportive relationships (especially with parents and peers), healthy nutrition and sexual maturation and approaches that counteract the effects of stress (e.g. meditation and mindfulness training) are crucial to seizing the window of opportunity for positive spirals. Although complex and still relatively new, adolescent neuroscience offers a deeper understanding of modifiable development processes and through scientist-practitioner efforts such as this compendium can be included in everyday responses to adolescent needs worldwide. At 1.2 billion, adolescents are the future and adults need to support them to prevent and overcome the vulnerabilities that are a natural part of this period, while also enhancing the unique opportunities that it brings. Acknowledgements: The author wishes to thank the nine specialists who collaborated with UNICEF to write a commentary for The Adolescent Brain: A Second Window of Opportunity compendium. She also wishes to thank Prerna Banati, her compendium co-editor. Nikola Balvin is a the knowledge management specialist at UNICEF Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

Last Fall I visited three of the most poverty-stricken rural districts of Zambia: Kaputa, Kalabo and Shangombo. Each location took two days’ travel by car from Lusaka. We drove up to Kaputa, near the border with DRC, with a stock of jerry cans filled with fuel, passed through the Kafue National Park and crossed the mile-wide Zambesi river and then crossed the soft sands (and mud) of Western Province, approaching the Angola border, to reach Kalabo and Shangombo. The objective of the mission, with dozens of national researchers, was to collect data from over 2,000 women as part of the evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Programme. The Child Grant Programme is an unconditional cash transfer scheme, targeted to mothers in households with a child under the age of five which provides beneficiaries a flat transfer of approximately 24 USD on a bi-monthly basis—a substantial amount, representing an increase of 27 per cent of the household’s pre-programme monthly consumption. Beneficiary of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Zambia - Makalanguza Village. Likezo Maingolua opened a little shop in the local market thanks to the support received by the Government.This was not the first time we had visited these women. The evaluation project which had been initiated in 2010 via a randomized control trial, has up to the present collected four follow-up rounds of data to show impacts over four years. The findings have been impressive. Results have shown both productive and protective impacts, as well as a sizeable multiplier effect, demonstrating that household spending has increased at levels higher than the value of the transfer received. The positive results witnessed in Zambia are not an anomaly. Cash transfers have gained a prominent role in the international debate around poverty and inequality, based on extensive evidence of their many positive outcomes: increasing consumption and food security, improving schooling and even fostering productive investments for the poor. They have even been suggested as a benchmark against which to compare other programs and interventions (see here and here). Do the positive impacts persist once payments end, or do they dissipate?Most of the literature however, reports on short- or medium-term impacts, thus we know little about long-term impacts. For example, do impacts accumulate exponentially with additional transfers, or do they plateau over time (or even decrease as households become accustomed to support)? Even more interesting: Do the positive impacts persist once payments end, or do they dissipate? Do households strengthen their livelihoods, to sustain consumption and “graduate” out of poverty or do they bounce back to their pre-programme living standards? How much support is needed for the ultra-poor to boost them out poverty and place them on a higher wellbeing trajectory? These are some of the questions we went back to find out in Zambia. The study, led by the University of North Carolina, in collaboration with us at the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti and Palm Associates, takes advantage of the fact that in 2015, the Government of Zambia decided to modify their cash transfer targeting. The new target group, consisting of labour-constrained households, is currently being implemented via nation-wide scale up aiming to cover over 700,000 households in 2018. An interview in the Shangombo District in Zambia with a Child Grant Program beneficiary.This means that households in the evaluation pilot districts kept receiving transfers up until 2016, when the re-targeting process was carried out. The fact that beneficiary households stopped receiving the grant in 2016, provides a unique opportunity to rigorously examine whether cash transfers can break the cycle of intergenerational poverty after the intervention has ended, seven years after collection of baseline data. The findings have been impressive. Results have shown both productive and protective impacts, as well as a sizeable multiplier effect,... household spending has increased at levels higher than the value of the transfer received.Why are we so excited about these findings? Too often, we miss the opportunity to evaluate whether impacts are sustained post-intervention, and thus the literature is scant and inconclusive on whether cash transfers can lead to longer-term welfare improvements. Despite the paucity of evidence, there are a number of studies which have tackled these questions. Encouraging findings come from Stoeffleret al. (2016) who shows that an 18 month unconditional transfer pilot in rural Niger showed sustained impacts on assets and productive activities 18-months after transfers end. Positive long-lasting effects were also found for two conditional cash transfers in Nicaragua which show that impacts on child development outcomes persist even after the transfers end (two and seven years after respectively, see here and here). Sustained effects, albeit mixed, are also found by Roy et al. (2017) who studied the 6 to 10-month post-intervention impacts of cash or food transfers delivered for two years (both with and without nutrition behaviour change communication), on intimate partner violence in Bangladesh. Whereas there is no impact for women receiving transfers only, physical violence was reduced in the behaviour change communication arms. Similarly, Baird et al. (2016) investigate the durability of impacts from two-year conditional and unconditional transfers targeted to adolescent girls and young women in Malawi, returning more than two years after the termination of the program. Most impacts dissipated over time in the unconditional cash transfer treatment arm, however the conditional arm had some long-lasting effects, including on educational attainment and total number of births—interestingly, only for girls who were out-of-school at baseline. Evidence on the post-intervention effects of a one-year scholarship combined with a conditional cash transfer on schooling and child labour outcomes in Nepal is less positive, indicating no permanent impacts 17 months after the final disbursements. Therefore, although we have some evidence from post-intervention studies, it is mixed and with few examples across geographic regions, program types and outcome domains. There are several key factors in understanding if effects persist beyond the intervention. Cash transfers should either: 1) permanently improve beneficiary households’ financial position (by allowing the household to access credit, save money or accumulate wealth), 2) lead to productive and human investments or 3) catalyse significant behavioural change in other relevant domains. These factors facilitate returns to be maintained or even increase over the long-term. So, what happens when the money runs out? This is an extremely important question for the development community, relevant not only given the rise of cash transfers worldwide, but also because of related policy implications. Answering this question allows us to understand whether the effects of cash transfers are only short-lived or sustained after the transfers end. It also contributes to the contentious debates around graduation, by helping to shed light on whether benefits from cash transfers are only good for coping with chronic vulnerability or consumption smoothing, or whether they can bring transformative effects and help beneficiaries lift out of poverty. Once the latest round of evaluation in Zambia is completed it will be the longest ever panel of post-intervention impacts in the African region, and the only one to our knowledge examining the longevity of a Government operated cash transfer. At UNICEF Innocenti we are thrilled to have the opportunity to examine this important issue and are looking forward to analyzing the incoming data. Stay tuned for results!   Luisa Natali is a Social and Economic Policy Consultant at the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, where she works on social protection, mainly on the evaluation of cash transfer programmes in Sub-Sahara Africa. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website. For more information on cash transfers visit the Transfer Project. Check out this infographic on ‘Cash transfers myths vs reality’ for quick facts. Follow Luisa on Twitter at @luisanatali and The Transfer Project at @TransferProjct. The Principal Investigators of the long-term follow-up are Sudhanshu Handa of UNC and Gelson Tembo of Palm Associates with funding from UNICEF Zambia, 3IE and Sida via research grant to the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti. Thanks to Amber Peterman for her contribution to this blog.  

Today, global leaders gather in Stockholm, Sweden for the first ever Agenda 2030 Solutions Summit to end violence against children. The summit brings together governments, UN, civil society, academics and children themselves to share solutions to “prevent and respond to violence against boys and girls.” Underlying this meeting is a growing awareness and recognition that violence is pervasive and that levels represent gross human rights violations.The occasion raises the question – How much do we actually know about the global levels of violence against children?Up until now, our best estimates come from a 2016 systematic review which summarizes data from 36 reports including 112 studies over 96 countries. The review concludes that globally over half of children aged 2-17 have experienced violence and that minimum estimates suggest past-year physical, sexual or emotional violence against children of 50% or more of children in Asia, Africa, and Northern America. While these statistics are alarming, and a crucial step in measuring the magnitude of the problem, they leave many critical questions unanswered. For example, at what age are children most at risk? Should we be targeting girls or boys or both – and who is perpetrating this violence?...for the first time, we understand how children may be at more or less risk across their life course, according to their sex and in different settings. The implications for prevention are huge.A new study published in BMJ Pediatrics gets us one step closer to understanding what we are up against. Led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with UNICEF collaborators (among others), we conducted a meta-analysis and systematic review - disaggregating measures by perpetrator, age and sex of children. This means, for the first time, we understand how children may be at more or less risk across their life course, according to their sex and in different settings. The implications for prevention are huge.How did researchers develop these estimates? In total, 643 studies from 171 countries, containing 13,830 separate age-specific and sex-specific past-year prevalence estimates were included in the analysis. Only studies of sufficient scale to be representative were included, focusing on international datasets collected across many countries. In addition, estimates were separated by type of violence for all children 0-19 years. To make prevalence estimates across studies comparable, researchers ran random effects meta-regressions. This means estimates were adjusted for the quality of the data, variation in definitions of violence and made to represent country population structures through use of weights (by region-specific, age-specific and sex-specific population data).Although impossible to summarize all results here, a few key findings stand out:The most common perpetrators of physical and emotional violence across a range of ages are household members. An important finding indicates that violence inside the home, perpetrated by a caregiver or other household member, is the most common form of violence experienced by both boys and girls. While prevalence of both emotional and physical violence is above 50% for most ages, emotional violence is more widespread than physical violence. Further, while levels of past-month emotional violence remain relatively constant over age group (at about 60%-70%), levels of past-month physical violence appear to decline slowly as age increases. While at age 2 about 60%-70% of boys and girls experience physical violence from a caregiver or household member, this has decreased to about 40%–50% at age 14.Boys tend to report experiencing school-based violence at higher rates than girls, driven by physical violence. The second most common form of violence is that perpetrated at school by other students. Boys appear to report higher levels of past-year physical violence as compared to girls, whereas both sexes report similar levels of emotional violence. This could be in part due to the higher proportion of boys who attend school globally across the full age range examined. Younger age groups (8-11 years) appear to report higher levels of both emotional and physical bullying (between 70%-80%) as compared to older age groups (12-18 years, estimated at around 50% prevalence).Even at ages as low as 15–19, girls suffer significant rates of intimate partner violence. Based on available data, intimate partners are the third most common source of violence against girls. Physical and emotional violence from dating/intimate partners for girls are about 7% of all girls at age 15 and 13% at age 19. Sexual violence is also non-trivial at 5-7% of 18 and 19 year olds. These figures increase if we consider only girls in partnerships. Unfortunately, a lack of data mean we cannot compute comparable figures for boys. These findings underscore the tendency for partner violence to start young and the need for prevention programs to tackle drivers of violence before marital partnerships are formed.Children are at high-risk of violence from teachers and authority figures. There are too little data to compute global estimates for violence perpetrated by teachers and authority figures. However, available data summarized from four studies among children aged 9-18 years shows rates of violence perpetrated by teachers and authority figures are very high. For example, more than 75% of 9-16 year olds reporting past-year physical violence from a teacher in Uganda. While we have limited understanding of the magnitude of this problem across settings, it is clear that school environments must be targeted for prevention programming.There are too few estimates of sexual violence for boys to understand the true magnitude of the problem. Despite the impressive range of data sources available, huge data gaps still remain. For example, due to the low number of data collection efforts that include questions on sexual violence against boys, we know little about who perpetrates such violence against them and across age ranges. There are also few estimates from violence perpetrated by strangers, and of outcomes of neglect or witnessing violence in the home. It is critical for the global community to close these data gaps and invest in reliable and ethical data collection efforts in the coming decade.A woman who’s family has been affected by violence holds her head as she talks to Social Worker in her home in Kandal province of Cambodia. Overall, the South-East Asia Region had very few estimates of violence that met inclusion criteria for the global review, compared with other regions.Taken together, the findings demonstrate that violence against children is pervasive. It also demonstrates that children of all ages and both boys and girls are at risk for experience of violence in multiple settings (including in the home). This reality means that multi-sectoral, evidence-based programs which address underlying vulnerabilities or which address multiple spheres of children’s lives are urgently needed.The findings also shine a light on the many data gaps. These are not only apparent across typologies of violence, but also in regional distribution. Overall, Europe had substantially more data which met inclusion criteria, and the South-East Asia Region had very few estimates, compared with other regions. Investment is needed to close these data gaps, and to provide sufficient baselines to comparably monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Further, methodological questions remain regarding variation in prevalence obtained from different reporting sources. There is a pressing need to understand optimal methods for soliciting violence experience in the most ethical and safe way possible to protect children from further harm. Without these investments, it will be impossible to monitor if and how violence is reduced across regions and groups equitably towards a world free from childhood violence.Karen Devries is with the Child Protection Research Group and the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Claudia Cappa (Data and Analytics) and Amber Peterman (Office of Research - Innocenti) are in the Division of Data, Research and Policy (DRP) at UNICEF. The full list of authors and acknowledgement associated with the article are available online via the open access version of “Who perpetrates violence against children? A systematic analysis of age-specific and sex-specific data” in BMJ Pediatrics.Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

“You gave me back my dignity. I will never forget that you even gave me underwear. Without which I would have to wait for 15 days! You have always been there whenever I needed you. Even after 4 years, you are taking care of me.”These are the words of Amadou, regarding the network of guardians called Accoglierete, in southern Italy. I had the opportunity to work with him as guardian in 2013. Amadou is now 21, lives in Rome and works in a supermarket. We are still in touch. Based on my professional and personal experience as a guardian, I offer some recent insights on Sicily’s voluntary guardianship programmes for unaccompanied minors.With the 2016 New York declaration for Refugees and Migrants 193 States committed to save the lives of migrants and refugees; to protect their rights and share the responsibility for meeting these universal duties. United Nations agencies are leading the development of two global compacts on refugees and migration. However, there is some criticism that their non-binding nature may undermine their good intentions, as shown by United States dropping out and the underfunding of emergency responses. Nevertheless, States and civil society good practices are already taking place as revealed in the UNICEF report Beyond Borders.Building on UNICEF’s Agenda for Action for Refugees and Migrant Children, this report shows that the goals of providing children with a safe home, safe passage and safe destination is possible. Italy offers a good example of a community-based initiative, recently endorsed by law, for providing care and support for these children. The arrival of unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) has seriously affected the country’s geo-political, economic and socio-cultural landscape with the number standing at 15,779 in 2017, according to UNHCR. In April 2017 Italy approved a comprehensive law (Zampa law 47/2017) establishing protection procedures for unaccompanied minors.When voluntary guardianship works properly, and the child feels a connection with the guardian—that another human being genuinely cares—it has a powerful effect on reducing abuse, exploitation and harm.Italian authorities further acknowledged that ‘institutional’ guardianship was not effective and recognized the added value that active citizenship could bring in protecting unaccompanied children. Accordingly, one of the main objectives in the Zampa law is the promotion of foster care and the enhancement of the guardianship system by involving and training locals as volunteer guardians.The guardian is defined as an independent person who safeguards a child’s best interests and general well-being, and to this effect complements the limited legal capacity of the child (CRC/GC/2005/6). In Italy, guardianship is voluntary and not remunerated. To become a guardian (or 'tutore') the interested person needs to participate in a training promoted by the regional authorities for children and adolescents, her/his designation is lately formalized by the Juvenile Court. While families interested in fostering care should approach the local social services in charge. Community-based associations and NGOs often facilitate contact between citizens and those institutions providing support.The guardian ensures that the child is well informed and legally assisted, that their best interests are properly assessed, crucially, with the child’s active participation. No one better than the child himself knows his migration project (progetto migratorio). In Italy, progetto migratorio literally translates to “migration project,” emphasizing each migrant’s individual experience.A pizza making class in Centro Astante which supports the registration and asylum application process for young migrants who arrive in Italy.For example, in the context of children, it includes the causes for each child to leave his homeland, his ambitions and plans, both short-term and long-term. When necessary the guardian facilitates the child’s voice being heard and ensures that material, social, health, psychological, and educational needs are met. As such, guardians become part of each child’s story as the main facilitator in allowing the child to pursue his progetto migratorio.I have also become part of Amadou’s story and personally experienced the positive differences that proper guardianship can make in the life of an unaccompanied child. I have taken part, as a practitioner and previously as a guardian, in an incredible bottom-up effort taking place in Sicily, called AccoglieRete. In response to the massive protection needs of thousands of unaccompanied children arriving since 2013, locals in Siracusa, Sicily came together as both volunteer guardians and foster families, and united under AccoglieRete. This practice, to an extent, helped pioneer the new Zampa Law.Amadou, and many others like him, became part of our everyday life: myself, my family and friends, including the scout group that I led. I am still in touch with them all. Around the same time, we met Ibrahim. When we were first introduced, Ibrahim was a traumatized fourteen-year-old boy who had arrived to Italy through the deadly central Mediterranean crossing. Before uttering a single word, he showed me a piece of paper containing his reception centre’s identification number. He looked surprised when I told him that the only thing I wanted to know was his name, if I was pronouncing and spelling it correctly, and then, how he was getting along? Since then I accompanied Ibrahim throughout his asylum application and through his longer-term integration path. In 2017 Ibrahim turned 18, even though legally I am no longer his guardian, he knows he can rely on me and he does in every critical moment or choice he has to take. This is a very special and rewarding relationship for both of us.The volunteer guardianship practice started by AccoglieRete in Siracusa, Sicily—now more broadly in Italy—goes beyond the representation role of the guardian towards true human care for the person. It is not a contract, but a relationship based on affection, trust and mutual enrichment. Relationships between guardians and unaccompanied minors inevitably becomes long-lasting, far beyond the realm of laws and regulations.Diane, a Nigerian girl who is pregnant with twins after being forced into prostitution following her arrival in Italy, stands in a home run by an Italian NGO in Asti, Piedmont region, Italy.When voluntary guardianship works properly, and the child feels a connection with the guardian—that another human being genuinely cares—it has a powerful effect on reducing abuse, exploitation and harm. There is anecdotal evidence from reception facilities I have visited that children are less willing to take the risky decision of escaping these facilities, exposing them to dangerous risks, when they are assigned a guardian.One important issue to keep in mind is that Italy is perceived as a transit country and children particularly from certain regions (Eritreans, Somalis) have preferred to escape Italian facilities to join their families elsewhere. Even for these minors, guardianship mattered, as they developed trust in their guardians, they waited for family reunion to happen through lawful means.This form of guardianship is not simple. Guardians and foster families don’t have a magic wand to sort out all the challenges that each minor faces: asylum processes, access to health, education, employment. They can and do try to minimize the challenges these children face in extremely difficult circumstances. Volunteer guardians need to be properly trained and continuously supported by professionals in accomplishing their delicate role. Under the Zampa law, capacity building and assistance must be better supported to ensure full implementation of the new law.Let me share a few examples of how guardians supported good outcomes:Blessing found the strength to denounce her “maman” (trafficker) and now lives in a protected house.Eyob from Eritrea could hug his uncle in Sweden through relocation.Ismaila joined a football team and his coach’s family became his foster family.Fares, following vocational training, became the chef of a well-known restaurant.Remon wrote a book.Ahmed was admitted into the United World College and got a scholarship to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor.This has been possible due to the commitment of volunteer guardians and their ability to open their network and collaborate across various sectors. Cooperation is not only between authorities, humanitarian agencies and NGOs. It also requires strengthening and convening one-response with local civil society associations, raising widespread awareness, involving private sector organizations (companies, restaurants, sport clubs) and all the different actors willing to foster unaccompanied minors’ protection and inclusion.The voluntary guardianship model aims to demonstrate that a more humane reception and creation of a warm, ‘familiar’ environment, will not only enhance protection but, by engaging locals actively, will foster integration in the host community. This approach is the basis for a more welcoming, multicultural society that sees the child before the migrant.Iolanda Genovese is a migration research officer with the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

This statement: “Children use digital technology for specific reasons and it is important to take their opinions and explanations seriously” comes straight out of UNICEF’s recently published State of the World’s Children report for 2017, Children in a Digital World. The report recommends that children are placed at the center of efforts to understand how digital technology impacts on their lives. Clearly, if we hope to understand children’s lived experiences and support their positive development, we need to include their voices in research and policy responses. However, research and policy in this area is often grounded in adult’s assumptions about how children engage with digital technology. Is this good enough? Zhang Haibo, Deputy Director of the Guangzhou Children's Palace discussing the design of a questionnaire with child researchers.In my recent visit to Guangzhou together with colleagues from UNICEF China I met a man who certainly doesn’t think so. Zhang Haibo is the Deputy Director of the Children’s Palace in Guangzhou, China, a public facility where children can engage in extra-curricular activities after school, such as learning arts, languages, sports, computing skills and digital literacy. The Guangzhou Children’s Palace has conducted annual research on children’s online behaviors and digital literacy for many years, to underpin their educational efforts. One day Mr. Zhang had his research put under some scrutiny, as his 9-year old daughter flicked through a report and concluded that it was too adult-centric. She thought that children would be in a better position than adults to ask questions about children’s online behavior. The Children’s Palace changed their approach from conducting research ON children, to conducting research WITH children, strengthening children’s agency and enriching their research. At the Children’s Palace, Mr. Zhang engages children aged 9-14 who are interested in digital technology, and divides them into groups according to their favorite topic of research. Some children have studied how students play Kings of Glory – the hugely successful mobile game developed by Tencent – or how young people use digital technology to facilitate studying and shopping. Teachers train children in basic methods of research, guides them as they develop their own small-scale questionnaires and conduct interviews in their school or community. Teachers also help them with interpreting findings and writing reports, collecting feedback from fellow researchers and refining reports, eventually leading to a conference where they present their findings and conclusions to parents and teachers. Child research officers present their findings at the Children's Internet Conference in Guangzhou, China.But can children really conduct research? Some parents initially expressed skepticism, but witnessing the unexpected growth and development of their own children forced them re-examine their beliefs about children’s capabilities. Mr. Zhang emphasizes that child-led research brings new and different perspectives compared to adults’, partly because children do not carry as many prejudices and assumptions about other children as adults do. Adult-led research found that they believe children spend too much time playing games on their mobile phones. Child led research revealed that many children feel that whenever they pick up the phone – even if it is to do homework – parents wrongly assume that they’re playing games and they start complaining. Based on the results research carried out by young people at the Children’s Palace, creative recommendations are reaching industry. One research group suggested that since the private sector already creates many products for children they ought to be able to develop a children’s version of QQ and WeChat (popular Chinese social media platforms). Child-centered design is also being suggested by UNICEF as a way towards a more beneficial online environment for children. Mr. Zhang emphasizes the concrete outcomes of research is less important than the process. The purpose is not to cultivate young scholars writing papers, but to allow children the chance to take initiative, to let them identify a problem they care about and give them the space to explore it and express their own ideas. The philosophy underpinning their participatory research is a belief that education must do more than just provide children with answers; rather, it should teach them to ask more and better questions. This method of Child Researchers at the Children's Internet Conference in Guangzhou, China write their reports in groups.engaging children in research about online behaviors has successfully created a space for inter-generational dialogue around digital technology, which can strengthen the knowledge of young people about the online world, while simultaneously addressing parental concerns. As some initial research suggests, positioning young people as experts and equals might be more effective for online safety education, as it provides adults with a window into what young people do online and how they feel about their experiences. The process can also lead to concrete learning outcomes for children, as showcased in participatory research conducted by our colleagues in UNICEF Montenegro. What is truly exciting about the approach of the Children’s Palace’s digital literacy education programme is that their goal is not only to teach children about digital technology. Rather, the goal is to foster children’s agency and harness their curiosity about things digital to impart valuable life skills. Like asking questions adults haven’t even thought of.   Daniel Kardefelt-Winther is Research Coordinator for the Global Kids Online project at UNICEF Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

Gender-based violence is notoriously under-reported—for understandable reasons. Experience of violence is highly stigmatized and victims are often shamed. Respondents may be fearful of retaliation if perpetrators and others find out they have disclosed their experiences. There may also be cultural taboos about disclosing violence, which may be seen as a family issue. This is why most official statistics on gender-based violence are said to be the lower bound of the true prevalence within a population. In an earlier study we published using nationally representative data from 24 countries, we found that most women who experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) had never told anyone. Only a third of women disclosed to friends or family, and only 7 per cent formally reported to police, health facilities, social or legal services. Imagine attempting to improve IPV programming and policy while using data which represents only the tip of the iceberg. Researchers have long invested in designing and implementing surveys to measure the incidence of violence while seeking to both maximize disclosure and minimize harm. However, these careful fieldwork considerations often come at a price. For example, survey instruments which ask behaviorally specific questions for IPV (commonly collected in the DHS and currently the gold standard), can be lengthy to complete. In addition, survey teams must undergo specialized ethics training, provide anonymous referrals to services, employ same sex enumerators, and implement sampling methods to ensure that both women and perpetrators are not interviewed in the same household (or, at times, in the same communities). All this comes at a cost, which may overburden or be logistically infeasible for multi-topic surveys which are not primarily focused on violence. What if there was a way to collect information about violence, while reducing under-reporting without directly asking about violence? A 50 year old woman who has been affected by gender-based violence receives counseling at One Stop Centre that provides support at the Gihundwe hospital in Rusizi district in Rwanda.In a recent publication in Health Economics, we implemented a list randomization to assess the impact of an unconditional cash transfer program on IPV in rural Zambia. List randomization or list experiments, are not a new technique. They have been utilized by Political Scientists for decades to examine public opinion on sensitive topics which respondents were likely to misreport (think racial prejudice, abortion opinions, support for insurgents in war). Economists have increasingly become interested in this method, and others have blogged about methodological considerations. In basic terms, list randomization aggregates a response to a sensitive question alongside responses to non-sensitive questions, thereby masking the respondent’s specific answer to the sensitive question. By randomizing lists with and without the sensitive question, researchers can identify prevalence or incidence of the sensitive item within the population or differences between groups (for example treatment and control), but not attribute the sensitive response on an individual basis. If respondents believe that their sensitive answer is not disclosed to the interviewer, they may be more likely to report private behaviors, such as experience of violence. In our study, we asked one sensitive question to female primary caretakers of children under the age of five at the start of the study: “In the past 12 months, have you ever been slapped, punched, kicked or physically harmed by your partner” in combination with four non-sensitive questions of the same recall period. An example of the non-sensitive questions is: “In the past 12 months have you ever taken care of a sick relative who is unable to care for themselves?” Respondents were asked to report how many of the items they experienced in total (but not which specific items). The data collection was part of the four-year follow-up of a longitudinal randomized control trial where the beneficiary group received an unconditional child grant program (CGP) provided by the Government of Zambia. In our study, we were interested in two things. First, was it feasible to implement the list randomization in a large-multi topic survey—would enumerators collect the data correctly and would prevalence of violence be credible? Second, since the CGP had been highly successful in meeting its main poverty-related objectives, and increased the financial standing of women, we wanted to know if the cash transfer also affected IPV (a potential which has been demonstrated elsewhere). What if there was a way to collect information about violence, while reducing under-reporting and without directly asking about violence?What do we find? First, the list randomization appeared to function as planned, with no evidence of ‘too low’ or ‘too high’ reporting across groups of questions (referred to as ceiling and floor effects). We estimated 15 per cent of women had been exposed to physical IPV in the last year. This is lower than the DHS estimates for Zambia of the same year (2014), which estimate a 21 per cent prevalence for past year physical IPV. This is not surprising as the DHS asks seven questions about specific violent acts which are aggregated to produce this figure. Moreover, when we analyze the impacts of the program, we find that after four years, the CGP resulted in no measurable increases or decreases in IPV. Despite these interesting findings, we are not able to assess the level of underreporting for IPV specifically for the same reasons we could not implement a full IPV module: As the evaluation was not focused on violence or gender topics, there was no logistical room to add complex ethical and logistical arrangements to the evaluation needed to collect IPV measures. However, two other recent working papers have experimented with this approach and shed light on measurement bias. The first paper, by Joseph and colleagues [Underreporting of Gender-based Violence in Kerala, India], examines two types of violence: domestic violence and physical harassment on buses. The authors measure both questions at the household level (e.g. at least one woman in my household has faced physical aggression from her husband; at least one woman/girl in my household has faced physical harassment while traveling on public/private buses). They find that underreporting is over nine percentage points for IPV, however negligible for harassment. They also find a number of sub-groups are more likely to underreport, for example urban households and poorer households are more likely to underreport IPV, as are female respondents. Although a useful demonstration of reporting bias, the analysis is complicated by the fact that the questions are asked at the household level, and thus are not cleanly comparable to the gold standard of women’s self reports. However, it does suggest that respondents in general are more likely to disclose an incident of ‘public’ harassment as compared to ‘private’ abuse—as hypothesized by the literature on underreporting. An 18 year old mother, holds her 2 year old son near the coast shortly after arriving in Cox's Bazar District, Bangladesh. They spent seven days on a bank of the Naf River in Myanmar before making the crossing aboard a fishing boat. There have been numerous reports of gender-based violence affecting Rohyinga refugees fleeing from Myanmar.The second paper, by Agüero and Frisancho [Misreporting in Sensitive Health Behaviors], conducts a list randomization for physical and sexual IPV among female micro-credit clients in peri-urban and rural areas of Lima, Peru. The nice thing about this paper is that the authors conduct nine separate list experiments for each IPV item, thus they are able to compare each IPV item separately (being pushed, being slapped, being threatened with a knife, gun or weapon etc.). In comparing women who were asked the list experiment and those who were asked the direct question—they find no significant differences. However, digging deeper, they find there are differences by level of education of the woman. In particular, women with completed tertiary education report higher levels of IPV under the list experiment as compared to the direct questioning. The implications are that reporting bias may differ by characteristics of the woman, thus changing our conclusions about who suffers from violence, or how interventions affect different sub-groups of women. In this case, authors conjecture that higher educated women may face larger (real or perceived, including higher stigma) costs of being exposed and require higher levels of confidentiality to make them feel safe. However, there are no differential effects by other characteristics of the women, including age, marital status, employment status, memory scores or others, suggesting overall differences between the two methods are limited. Taken together, these three papers build on efforts across disciplines to consider the usefulness and applicability of list randomizations for collection of data on violence. In the best case scenario, we may be able to assess underreporting, similar to other methodologies researchers have investigated, including use of self-administered surveys and qualitative methodologies. In other cases, we may be able to leverage this method for a ‘light touch’ way to monitor potential backlash, increases or decreases in violence in multi-topic and non-sectoral evaluations, which would otherwise not endeavor to collect violence information. We encourage further experimentation and creativity to further understanding of how to best measure, respond to and program for reduction of violence. Amber Peterman and Tia Palermo are Social Policy Specialists at the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti working on health, gender and social protection evaluations under the Transfer Project, a multi-organization research and learning initiative evaluating Government cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

Children everywhere are gaining access to the internet – most often via a mobile phone. In many places, too, parents are feeling challenged in their competence, role and authority. Distinctively, internet access is bringing children access also to valued sources of knowledge and connection that their parents may lack. How are parents responding?A digital parenting divideResearch in high income countries points to a shift away from restrictive forms of parental mediation such as banning the technology or telling their children off when a problem occurs. Instead, it seems parents are increasingly using enabling forms of mediation such as sharing some online experiences with their children and guiding them in the use of privacy settings, advice services and critical evaluation of online content and behaviour. This shift is influenced by parents’ own growing experience with and expertise in using digital media. It’s also the outcome of several years’ worth of multi-stakeholder efforts to raise parental awareness and encourage their engagement, often led by governments and child welfare organisations.1024"]Peer advocates communicate with their friends on phone in Nyalenda neighbourhood in the city of Kisumu, Kenya. Their organization, Sauti Skika, is an initiative for and by young people living with HIV, to ensure the voices of young people and adolescents living with HIV are heard.But in middle and low income countries, it seems that parents favour restrictive mediation. This is partly because some cultures are more authoritarian in their parenting style (especially in relation to daughters). It’s partly because, in the absence of supportive resources, anxious parents feel their only recourse is to protect their children by limiting their access. It’s also because the wider public debate has yet to embrace a conception of children as active citizens and, therefore now, also as digital citizens.Even talking of parents – a common target of awareness-raising actions in the global North – is not straightforward as many children in developing countries are being brought up by relatives, often grandparents. For example, in Africa and, to a lesser extent in Latin America and the Caribbean, children are much more likely to live with either one or neither of their parents than children in other regions. Factors such as migration, illness, parental death often mean that parents and caregivers are left with few resources and insufficient time to help children with their digital skills. Schools are also challenged: in the least developed countries school attendance is low, pupil/teacher ratios are high, and overcrowded classrooms and untrained teachers are commonplace. It seems fair to conclude that in many countries, children lack a supportive and/or informed adult in their lives who can teach them to navigate the internet safely, or offer support when needed....the wider public debate has yet to embrace a conception of children as active citizens and, therefore now, also as digital citizens.New research findingsUnderstanding the real constraints families and children face in the digital world is the first step towards finding effective strategies that both parents and children can use to maximise opportunities and minimise risks. We are currently tracking the activities and experiences of children and parents in the digital age as part of our research project Global Kids Online - a multinational research collaboration of the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and the EU Kids Online network in partnership with researchers and UNICEF country offices from all over the world. Working within a child rights framework, the aim is to generate robust evidence that can stimulate debate and inform policy and practice regarding children’s internet use in diverse countries.Gabriela Vlad, 17, (Left) uses her phone to speak with her mother at the dinner table at the home of her foster mother Tatiana Gribincea (right) in the village of Porumbeni on the outskirts of Chisinau in Moldova, Monday 16 October 2017. Her biological mother has gone abroad to find employment.In addition to asking children what they do online, how often and for how long, what skills they have and risks they face, we ask them who they turn to for support if they experience something negative online. Strikingly, the majority of children from the seven countries presented below would turn to friends first, to parents second, and rarely to teachers or other professionals. For parents this is broadly positive news. Although on average, parents’ level of digital skill is equivalent to that of a 14 year old child, as our research from Bulgaria, Montenegro and South Africa shows. What seems to count more is that children trust their parents’ ability to provide guidance and support.It’s notable that children in European countries are more likely to tell a parent if they experience a problem online, than in other parts of the world. Perhaps this reflects a more encouraging emphasis on enabling rather than restriction among European parents. Certainly it suggest the need for  greater investment in support and guidance of parents in the global South. More worrying is children’s apparent lack of trust in teachers and professionals. This makes us wonder if they are even available to children to the degree we would want them to be, and further, how confident children may be that these professionals are able to provide the right advice.Note: 9-17 year olds in all countries except 13-17 year olds in Argentina. Also, samples in Serbia and the Philippines were small pilot surveys; in South Africa a convenience sample was used; in all other countries, the sample is nationally representative. For more methodological details, see www.globalkidsonline.net/resultsHow to support parents to support children?If parents’ primary method of protecting children is through restricting access, this can be effective in keeping children safe, but it carries costs as regards children’s opportunities online. The restrictive approach can potentially undermine children's opportunity to build digital skills and resilience in ways that will help them face and manage risky experiences in the future. So what advice can we give parents? What are the roles and skills they need to have in the digital world? Do parenting principles and practices we used before the technological boom still apply?In 2007 the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a framework that examines key dimensions of parenting and parental roles that positively affect adolescent well-being:Connection (building a positive, stable, emotional bond between parent and child)Behaviour control (including supervision and guidance of children’s actions within a trusting relationship)Respect for individuality of the child, especially as an adolescentModelling appropriate behaviour (since children identify with and emulate their parents)Provision and protection (by parents and also the wider community) Ten years on, this framework translates well in the digital era. Take modelling of appropriate behaviour, for example. If the parent does not put down a phone or a tablet, will the child mimic this behaviour? If a parent uses restrictive mediation and censorship, how does this lead to respect for individuality? Ideally, parents would be confident in drawing on their available personal and cultural resources and, to some extent, the principles of positive parenting, when facing the new challenges linked to children’s internet use. Ideally, too, even if tempted to prevent or restrict children’s digital activities for fear of the harms that may result, they would be mindful that some activities may be important to their children’s present and future opportunities – to learn, gain information, work and engage in their community. So a balance must be sought, and this is indeed difficult to manage, for much will depend on the child and his or her particular circumstances.However, as internet use becomes more familiar, and more embedded in everyday life, parents are increasingly also digital natives. They often want to learn about the internet and what it can offer, for the benefit of themselves and their children. It is therefore important that stakeholders – from government and industry to schools and communities – make greater investments to aid parents in this effort, so that they can enable their children to learn and grow in the digital age.For more on parenting in relation to digital media.For more on Global Kids Online’s findings around the world.For more on children’s rights and wellbeing in the digital age, see State of the World's Children 2017 Sonia Livingstone OBE is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics and Political Science and Jasmina Byrne is child protection specialist with UNICEF Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website. NOTE: An earlier version of this was published as Livingstone, S., and Byrne, J. (2015) Challenges of parental responsibility in a global perspective. In Gasser, U. (Ed.), Digitally Connected: Global Perspectives on Youth and Digital Media (pp.26-29). Cambridge: Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. We are also grateful to our colleagues in the Global Kids Online project.

If you work in international development or set aside a portion of your paycheck to donate to promising global causes, then you’ve probably heard of a new trend in giving: direct cash transfers. For example, it is likely you’ve heard about the NGO GiveDirectly. which gives money via mobile transfer with ‘no strings attached’ to poor households, primarily in Kenya and in other East African countries. Publicly founded in 2011, GiveDirectly has taken the global poverty discourse by storm. Called revolutionary, radical, and a breakthrough model, GiveDirectly has been featured on nearly every major news source covering global issues. GiveDirectly and other NGOs just giving cash have been pivotal in raising the discourse on the ability of households to make strategic decisions about their own needs and wellbeing. This shift is hugely welcome and will undoubtedly play a role in future global advocacy for cash transfers in the fight against poverty and inequality. Now, what about the Cash Transfer for Orphan’s and Vulnerable Children or the Hunger Safety Net Programme— have you heard of them? Both are unconditional cash transfers, running for over a decade and implemented by the Government of Kenya. Chances are, unless you work on social protection, or live in Kenya, they are not on your radar. Yet, on face value, they operate in a similar way to GiveDirectly, transferring equivalents of approximately 20 to 25 USD on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to poor households to use as they see fit to improve their lives. However, while GiveDirectly has enrolled 50,000 households and 200,000 people in the five years of operation, these two programs regularly reach over 450,000 households nationwide. All told, Kenya’s four main cash transfer programs provide consistent support to over 800,000 households. In other words, the government of Kenya’s national social protection programs are over 15 times larger than GiveDirectly. This level of government support for social protection is impressive, but not unique. Dozens of others (South Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana to name a few) have established cash transfer programs which have been running for up to two decades and with tens of millions of beneficiaries. If Government programs dwarf NGOs like GiveDirectly in nearly every African country, why do all the accolades and publicity go to the NGOs? And, what can Governments and institutional actors do to make their voices heard in driving the international discourse on unconditional cash? Here are seven strategies where NGOs have excelled and where Governments can learn a tip or two: Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program targets very poor households, particularly those with elderly heads and those keeping orphans. In addition to transfers, beneficiaries also receive free national health insurance.Tell a storyEveryone loves a good story—especially those based on personal accounts and motivation to make change. Stories with an element of ‘aid’ are particularly heartstring grabbing, and make us all to join the bandwagon to support and share the effort (e.g. Western charity). In contrast the ‘story’ of a Government supporting their country’s vulnerable populations—which is arguably their mandate—is, at face value, much less likely to grab headlines. However, this need not be the case: There are plenty of champions and leaders in the fight against poverty within Government programs which have the potential to tell a good story—seeped in national history and culture. We just need to amplify their voices and show why a story of fighting poverty from within is just as compelling as from the ‘West.’ State your aspirationsImportance is measured not only by the current state of affairs, but also by what potential and opportunities lie in the future. Stakeholders want to know what they can expect 5 or 10 years down the road—not just in practical terms (e.g. we want to expand to X beneficiaries)—but in aspirational terms. GiveDirectly states we aim to drive conversations about the future of philanthropy and foreign aid and to reshape international giving. Their 12-year basic income pilot is claimed to be the largest experiment in history. Whether or not this is true, one cannot help but pay attention—and want to be part of this exciting new future. When was the last time we heard a Government be bold enough to share their vision of the global movement they aspire to through cash transfer programming? Be transparentLet’s face it—no matter how much evidence we have suggesting that beneficiaries don’t drink away the money or become lazy and dependent on transfers—there will always be critics who claim cash will be used unwisely or siphoned off through bribes or corrupt implementers. GiveDirectly has responded with GDLive, which provides real, unedited updates and stories from recipients, even providing raw data from basic questions poised to beneficiaries via mobile phones. If anyone questions that cash is not being received in full or being utilized in a positive way—they can simply head over to see for themselves. This confidence and transparency in operations could go a long way to build stakeholder trust and program buy in—yet Governments have largely not taken the leap to experiment with similar models. Leverage evidenceEvaluate your program (rigorously) and seek to answer questions that go beyond your program’s impacts—those which are also of interest to the larger global community. When GiveDirectly implemented a 12-month evaluation of their program in western Kenya, they used the gold standard for evaluation (longitudinal randomized control trial) and experimented with the size, timing and sex of the transfer recipient to understand if program operations affected a large range of outcomes. Governments often do not build in the flexibility, pre-planning or funding for a rigorous evaluation—however bringing evidence to the table is feasible, and can be well worth the investment. Evidence can both ensure the legacy and legitimacy of a program, as well as identify areas to optimize program design and delivery. A savvy operational plan includes evidence to back it up. Tech upMobile payments: They are often more efficient, private, secure, cost-effective and allow a built in real-time monitoring and feedback system. Unless a program is operating in a low coverage area, everyone should be asking themselves why they are not already utilizing mobile payments and what they can do to move to this system. Although many Government programs have piloted mobile transfers (see for example, Malawi and Kenya), moving an at scale-system delivering benefits to millions of individuals to mobile payments comes with unique logistical hurdles, including the need for partnerships with the private sector, and flexible arrangements for when challenges arise. Even newer technology like blockchain offers avenues to further experiment with direct giving. We encourage this continued experimentation to move towards a more efficient and transparent system—an accomplishment already achieved by many smaller scale NGOs. Beneficiaries of the Government of Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program cue to receive cash transfers. LEAP has been running since 2008 and has recently piloted a model targeted to pregnant women and infants called ‘LEAP 1000’Share your challenges and failuresEveryone loves a success story, but in the real world, not everything goes right all the time. The marker of a progressive organization is the ability to be realistic about challenges and learn from failures. GiveDirectly has embraced this in their blog, often discussing “candid thoughts”—for example, when the Kenya Country Director blogged about refusal rates approaching 50% of households in areas where the program was viewed with suspicion and there was community resistance. Or when reports of fraud were disclosed in Uganda, primarily via enrolling of ineligible households. However, this seemingly unflattering press does not seem to rub off on the NGO, instead it indicates commitment to continually improving operations and impact through recognition of what could be done better. Governments often lack an active social media platform through which to share accomplishments and challenges, which could be a first step to encourage regular information sharing. Don’t be afraid to ask for helpAlthough GiveDirectly has corporate and institutional donors, they do not shy away from asking anyone and everyone for donations. For example, this year they started fundraising for a basic income pilot, which was costed at 30 million USD. To date they have raised 24.6 million USD from donations alone—also a great strategy to make supporters feel like they are part of the solution and movement. Perhaps the same appeal would not be as favorably viewed if initiated by a Government, but the sentiment remains—if there is no recognition and request for expertise or resources to fill a gap—it is likely to remain. These seven strategies require identifying and understanding ones strengths, and exploiting them. Governments have incredible power and resources to implement sustainable programs at scale in a way an NGO will never achieve. Systems can be leveraged to overlay complementary activities and services to create synergies to tackle gaps that cash alone can never address. While there have been some success stories where Governments have leveraged these strategies, there is much untapped potential. Of course, while institutional programming is incredibly diverse, it will never be as flexible as an NGO program—politics may (and do) often constrain actions and activities. However, institutionalized programs can also play a role in shaping the global discourse, being recognized and attracting resources, to further the ultimate goal of national poverty reduction. We hope these strategies will help Government’s think more nimbly and creatively about how to ‘market’ their programs on the international stage. We urge NGOs to work closer with Governments, to form partnerships and provide evidence and experimentation relevant to inform national policy. It is time to recognize that African governments have been (and will continue to be) at the forefront of providing cash transfers to poor and vulnerable populations; now is the time for their presence to be felt on the international stage. Amber Peterman, PhD. is a social policy specialist at the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti, and has over 10 years working on evaluations of cash transfer programs, primarily under the Transfer Project. Pamela Dale is a social policy specialist at the UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office based in Nairobi, and has worked and published on social protection in Southeast Asia, eastern Africa, and Europe. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.

Women’s organizations in Lebanon are a force to be reckoned with—even in the frontier town of Arsaal, which occupies a high plateau in the northeast of the country and is often the site of spillover battles from the Syrian War. It was there that a group of dedicated and organized women from the community greeted me when I arrived in the fall of 2012. I had come to learn about available services for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), and help put in place the additional programming and advocacy needed. The group of women ran a daycare center and offered to dedicate part of that space, during set times, to women’s programming—when survivors of violence could confidentially access support without drawing the suspicion or attention of others. In the international jargon, interpersonal violence may be referred to by the acronyms “VAC” for violence against children, and “VAW” for violence against women. The fact that “VAC” and “VAW” overlap should not be surprising. Violence is too often a part of women’s lives, often witnessed by their children, and the experience of violence often directly affecting children. Adolescent girls, in many ways treated as women while still developing and forging relationships with the world around them, can face heightened vulnerabilities. Globally, slightly more than 1 in 10 adolescent girls aged 15-19 years (around 120 million) have experienced forced sexual acts, including rape. A 7 year old girl in a refugee camp in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley saw her father killed and her family fled to the town or Arsaal in Lebanon. Amira, 7 years: “We left my hometown, Homs in Syria under difficult circumstances. My father was shot. I was terribly shocked. My body shivered, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t eat."Another intersection occurs by place: the home, which should be a safe haven, but is often the site of abuse. A new report by UNICEF, A Familiar Face: Violence in the lives of children and adolescents notes that 1 in 4 children under the age of 5 – representing some 176 million children globally—live with a mother who is a victim of intimate partner violence, also known as ‘domestic’ violence.  In emergencies, this violence in the home may be exacerbated at the same time as existing systems for support may fall apart or be displaced. As one woman who had fled violence in Aleppo, and was living in a tented settlement, told me: “There is pressure all the time, we’re tired all the time. There are no separate rooms, people become angry from the smallest thing. I hear families screaming – husbands and wives." Emergencies exacerbate daily stressors and introduce new challenges. At the same time, they may present surprising opportunities for positive change. The Syrian War, and its effects on Lebanon, offer key lessons for those working to address violence against women and violence against children across humanitarian and development settings. Emergencies exacerbate daily stressors and introduce new challenges. At the same time, they may present surprising opportunities for positive change.Each of the four lessons drawn out below also showcase how applied research—whether nationally-driven or drawn from multi-country or global studies—is critical to informing limited prevention and response resources. Lesson 1:  Partner with women’s organizations at the frontlines Lebanese women’s organizations have long been providing services to survivors of violence. Some organizations were established or strengthened to meet the needs arising out of the country’s fourteen-year civil war. Two leading organizations, KAFA (Enough) Violence & Exploitation and ABAAD Resource Center for Gender Equality, quickly adapted to respond to the needs of Syrian refugees following their displacement in 2012. They partnered with government actors and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies who arrived in Lebanon to respond, or expanded their existing programs. In order to better understand public awareness of family violence, and factors that influence help-seeking behavior, KAFA requested research that was carried out by Ipsos Marketing in 2016. The study estimates that almost half the population personally know someone affected by domestic violence, and assesses their knowledge of and trust in organizations and laws meant to support them. Such demand-driven research is easily applied to improving existing services and advocacy efforts, as well as informing their adaptation for emergency-affected populations. Undertaking research in collaboration with civil society, academic, and/or government stakeholders—with linkages to relevant networks—not only improves accountability to the current and future populations it is meant to benefit, but also minimizes ‘over-research’. This phenomenon is already documented within the Lebanese context in respect to Palestinian refugees (see this recent editorial in Nature, originally published five years ago). Lesson 2: Strengthen formal and informal support In Lebanon, the arrival of a large number of Syrian refugees, who had faced conflict-related violence served to shine a spotlight on the ways in which formal prevention and response mechanisms to address the specialized needs of survivors were lacking. Humanitarian actors trained in GBV and ‘child protection’ were quick to partner with government and civil society organizations, training cadres of social workers, health professionals, law enforcement and justice actors in key competencies necessary for responding to cases of abuse and exploitation. Yet how would this be institutionalized, once the inevitable reduction in funding and attention occurs? How can capacity built within the social service workforce and partners be sustained? This is where lesson #1 enters in again: ABAAD now offers a free, online learning course on GBV Case Management in Emergency Settings, based on a curriculum developed by Dr. Lina Abirafeh and other members of a national technical taskforce that came together in the early days of the response to promote a coordinated, nationally-led approach. Lebanese American University has since developed a certificate program in Gender in Development and Humanitarian Assistance, further strengthening Lebanon’s cadre of policymakers and practitioners, researchers and academics, activists and advocates with continued education and credentialing. But what about informal support networks, made up of the people closest to victims of violence whom they often turn to first –friends, family members, religious leaders, and trusted community members?  And why is this important? Syrian refugee women meeting at an informal settlement in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon say their daughters have been married early mostly to address grinding poverty after hundreds of families have fled here from the Syrian war. The work of the Lebanese KAFA NGO has helped raised awareness among the women, men and the youth of the damaging impact of early marriage.The KAFA/Ipsos study cited above found that around 1/3 of those surveyed in Lebanon would advise those affected by violence to turn to family rather than file a formal complaint. This is not unique: a review of seven countries in which national surveys on violence against children (“VACS”) had been undertaken found that the proportion of victims accessing formal services was generally 10% or less. A World Health Organization study on domestic violence against women in 10 countries found that, “Where women do seek help, they primarily turn to informal sources of support, particularly family and friends, rather than to formal sources." Stigma, mistrust, and a dearth of appropriate and accessible services are some of the reasons why victims of violence may never contact the formal mechanisms meant to serve them. Efforts to better link informal and formal support systems are important. Lesson 3: Connect the dots—in policy and in practiceIn 2012, a survivor of domestic violence in Lebanon had few legal remedies available: affairs of the household are governed by personal status laws according to an individual’s religious affiliation. This not only meant that women could not seek protection from law enforcement. It also meant that they could not safely leave a violent marriage without risk of losing their children. Children may also be directly assaulted and/or witness domestic abuse. Research has shown that children who experience or witness violence at a higher risk of experience and perpetration in adulthood, and the effects are gendered. Girls are more likely to accept violence in adult relationships as normal, and boys are likely to repeat their father’s violent behavior. Syrian refugee women meeting at an informal settlement in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon where they discuss the damaging impact of early marriage and violence. Many feel their daughters are more protected from violence and sexual abuse if they are married. The work of the Lebanese KAFA NGO has helped raised awareness among the women, men and the youth of the damaging impact of early marriage, including girls dropping out of school and having children before their body is able to safely go through motherhood.Women’s organizations in Lebanon knew this intimately. Over the last five years, some of their advocacy efforts have started to bear fruit. In 2014, the Lebanese parliament passed Law 293, with the purpose of protecting women and other family members from domestic violence and physical abuse. Important gaps remain, yet the law represents a foundation upon which Lebanese civil society can build. Importantly, it raises questions about how child witnesses of domestic violence and child survivors of domestic violence—i.e. child brides—are protected in the eyes of the Lebanese judicial system. Connecting the dots includes ensuring that those most directly affected by violence, and the people in their lives to whom they may turn to for support, have access to accurate, up-to-date, easily understandable information. Lesson 4:  Communicate clearly, constantly, and creatively Lebanese communication campaigns go far beyond brochures and websites: activists often take to the streets with billboards, theater, and debate. Their campaigns are designed to address the underlying social and gender norms that silence and shame those affected—and that promote harmful behaviors which are codified with Lebanese law. Major campaigns have centered around abolishing parts of the Lebanese penal code that allow men who perpetrate rape to marry their (underage) victims and escape penalties by doing so, and raising the minimum age for marriage. While rates of child marriage are relatively low in Lebanon (with approximately 6% of girls married by age 18), the phenomenon is well-documented and reportedly rising among Syrian refugees living there: a recent UNFPA study found that 24% of the 15 to 17-year-old girls they spoke with were married, and acknowledges that some estimates “show child marriage rates to be four times higher among Syrian refugees today than among Syrians before the crisis." Increased attention to child marriage as a negative coping mechanism among displaced populations arguably supports organizations like KAFA, ABAAD, and the Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering (RDFL), who have been working for years to address the issue within Lebanese laws. Progress is slow, but recent developments are promising. Engaging in programming, advocacy, and research driven by women’s and children’s rights organizations has served to advance change in Lebanon at a critical time in the country’s history, hosting the highest per capita refugee population in the world -  with over 1.5 million Syrian refugees alone. Serving this large influx of people in need is possible, in part, because of the layering of locally- and nationally-driven responses to problems of violence that are present in times of ‘peace’ and now exacerbated by war and displacement. Recognition of the intersections between violence affecting women and children is growing, around the world, in development and humanitarian settings UNICEF is partnering with Columbia University to investigate drivers of household violence in emergencies and identify promising interventions. Returning to Arsaal, perhaps the final lesson is one in commitment and resourcefulness: a kindergarten converted—during the hours not in use—into a center for survivors of domestic violence is not ideal. Yet it met a very real need, in a setting with few resources, for women and children who face heightened levels of violence and abuse due to the power differentials inherent in their age and gender. Alina Potts is a research and evaluation specialist with UNICEF Innocenti. Explore the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue for new publications. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter and sign up for e-newsletters on any page of the UNICEF Innocenti website.