Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Rapid urbanization in metropolitan areas resulted in a mounting number of slum dwellers such as street children, insufficient basic infrastructures, and services. Hence, the world pledges 'sustainable cities and communities' under the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable for everyone. The objective becomes explicitly vital due to the spread of COVID-19, as over 90 per cent cases are befallen in urban areas. Slum neighborhoods areas are constituted as the most at-risk urban locations which recorded the highest numbers of infectious cases. Hence, this article summarizes SDG 11, focusing on Target 11.1 and Target 11.5 to guarantee access to adequate, safe, affordable housing and essential services for all humans and upgrading slums. Both targets aim to significantly reduce the number of deaths and people affected by direct economic loss due to disasters. The primary purposes of this paper are to explain the challenges faced by the children living in slums in exercising their human rights, particularly during the pandemic epoch and legal analysis on the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC).

This study examines the plight of Almajiri children during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria within the context of religion, child rights, and human rights. Under the cover of being placed under an Islamic scholar for purposes of learning the Koran, the future of the Almajirai children has been mortgaged by the absence of proper care and denial of their rights. As a check to community spreading of the deadly coronavirus, the Almajiri children, notorious for street begging and largely found in Northern Nigeria were billed to be evacuated to their respective home states. Rather than moving these children to their home states in northern Nigeria, the majority of them were taken to the southern part of the country thus leading to intergroup disharmony and suspicion. Worried by the above, the study thus interrogates the nexus between the forceful removal and infringement of the rights of children, the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, questionable parenting, and failed governance. The rancor generated from evacuating these children to other parts of Nigeria raises the question of what has gone wrong with parenting and leadership. Sources for writing this paper have been derived from newspapers, journals, and online sources using the descriptive method of analysis.

Children with complex care conditions (CCCs) and their families have always been a fragile population, at high risk of marginalisation and social exclusion, even prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Few studies have explored in detail the impact of the pandemic on CCCs, and there are no shared guidelines on how to tackle the specific ethical dilemmas posed by the COVID-19 predicament. Both healthcare professionals and families improvised novel strategies to overcome the current crisis, but these tentative answers cannot be the solution in the long run. In this article, we set out to highlight some new ethics challenges regarding CCCs arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic, referring on the one hand to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)1 and on the other hand to the experience of a Paediatric Palliative Care Service of the Veneto Region (Italy), presenting and discussing three real-life cases.

The constitution of the WHO as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child both emphasise the unique position of children, the significance of healthy development and the obligation of public and private actors to always consider the best interest of the child. There is – at least in the case of Germany – no evidence that this obligation has been fulfilled in due manner during the COVID-19 reactions. On the other hand, there is clear evidence from different parts of the world that the closure of schools and all places of social encounter has deeply harmed the social, emotional and even intellectual development of many children. The children’s rights therefore have not been safeguarded during the corona-reaction-crisis. The article argues that this disregard of the position of children has its roots in public health’s utilitarian perspective on the health of peoples instead of individuals. In order to safeguard the rights of children in public health operations, the procedures already foreseen by the UN Convention and its implementing regulations to take into account the best interest of the child must be truly implemented in the future.

‘Zero hunger is the world’s pledge under the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, which aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition. Nevertheless, the mission had been seized as the world faced economic turndown due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. The circumstances have brutally affected society’s ideal living standards and raised social problems such as extreme poverty, famishment, malnutrition, and medical conditions, specifically among vulnerable children. The essential purpose of this writing is to elucidate the ‘zero hunger goal as one of the central legal rights and identify challenges in executing it during the COVID-19 crisis. Data were collected through library studies and analyzed critically using the content analysis method.

In recent times, humanity has experienced the devastating effects of the COVID-19 crisis, which has caused sharp ruptures in different spheres of social life. Detrimental effects of the almost unprecedented crisis have triggered an avalanche of research to explore the phenomenon in focus while conducting scientific investigation that matters. Despite the rapid influx of scholarly articles, recent literature has shown that there is still a remarkable lack of scholarly attention on disasters and their impact on children. While trying to contribute to and address the noted research gap, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that explores pathways to violence against children in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia with a focus on the national lockdown. The sample consisted of 63 randomly selected police files involving 65 suspects of criminal offences with elements of violence against 108 closely related children at the five police departments centred in Pula, Rijeka, Zagreb, Split and Osijek. In order to “capture” the violence that emerged during the lockdown and was reported after restrictive measures were lifted, a seven-month time frame (March–September, 2020) was implemented as an additional sampling parameter.

Children, like everyone, have been affected in multiple ways by the changes the pandemic has caused. This study aims to explore how 4–6-year-olds (N =  50) express through drawings and narrations their meanings and feelings around coronavirus. From a rights-based approach and in particular, children’s rights to access information, to express their ideas and be listened to, the study captures how young children think of and feel about the coronavirus, during the first lockdown in early 2020.

From the onset, it was clear that the impact of the global economic and social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was unlikely to affect all children equally. Thus, it was necessary to ascertain the impact of COVID-19 on child poverty as the events unfolded. Many of the indirect effects of the pandemic – disruptions to health services, delayed vaccination programmes, widespread school closures, and increases in food insecurity – have significant impacts on the realisation of children’s rights and, consequently, were expected to increase material deprivations across different dimensions. The question was by how much? In this article we explain the modelling and methodological approach to project or nowcast the answer to that question. The method is dynamic as it was revised as additional information emerged during 2020 and 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of children and adolescents around the world. Hence, this study aimed to examine how the pandemic has impacted children and adolescents in Brazil through an ethical analysis. An interpretive analysis of Brazilian research on child and adolescent health during the pandemic was conducted. Recognizing this ethical dimension is pivotal to shedding more light on how responses to crisis situations, such as the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, can be shaped and where the priorities for action are according to all interested parties, situating the child between these parts of interest. Our analysis highlighted both direct and indirect effects surrounding the decision-making processes for children in the COVID-19 pandemic reality. These decisional processes must sustain the child’s right to participation to ascertain that the action taken is in the child’s best interests. Nevertheless, the Brazilian reality has shown a structural exclusion of children’s voices in decisions affecting them, particularly concerning the effects of the pandemic on their lives. Further studies must be conducted to deepen the knowledge about children’s best interests and their participation in the actions planned during the pandemic.

This research brief is one of a series of six briefs, which provide an overview of available evidence shown in the Campbell-UNICEF Mega-Map of the effectiveness of interventions to improve child well-being in low- and middle-income countries. Five of these briefs summarize evidence as mapped against the five goal areas of UNICEF’s 2018–2021 Strategic Plan. A sixth special brief was added to focus specifically on COVID-19 and other epidemics and major crises. It is anticipated that the briefs will also be useful for others working in the child well-being space.

The advent and perpetuation of the COVID-19 pandemic has served to highlight issues in American law that have long gone unaddressed. Prominent among them are the issues involving parents, the government, and the medical decisions of children. This article examines the current state of American law involving parental rights, children's rights, and the government's role in medical decisions of children and proposes a uniform act as a solution to the discrepancy and unpredictability in this area of American law.

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the social, cultural, economic, education, tourism, trade and other sectors in Indonesia. Of all of these, health and humanitarian issues are those most highlighted. This research involved a literature search of books, journal articles and manuscripts of government regulations. Discussing the death rate from COVID-19 is not only a question of how many people have lost their lives in Indonesia due to contracting the disease, but also of the conditions and survival of the families left behind, especially children who have lost their parents due to COVID-19. The psychological aspects of the families of COVID-19 victims have often been neglected. As yet, the Government still largely focuses on the sick or dead and has not paid much attention to the bereaved families, especially children, who are in dire need of assistance. In Indonesia, there are 11,045 children who have become orphans, fatherless, or motherless because their parents or caregivers died due to COVID-19.1 This raises concerns regarding how their clothing, food and shelter needs can be met, along with their needs related to the rights to education, physical and psychological health, and security and safety. Therefore, procedures, coordination, schemes for protecting children’s rights, and mitigation actions involving public policies must notice and meet the needs of children who have lost their parents due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A qualitative study explored the perspectives and lived experiences of school-age children during COVID-19 using a child rights lens. Twenty children between the ages of 7 and 12 participated in open-ended, virtual interviews. Our hermeneutic analysis found children's right to play and education were severely compromised leaving children to navigate between two worlds: the adult world of public health restrictions and that of their childhood. Despite challenges and lost childhood opportunities, children emerged as competent social agents and responsible citizens. Planning for future pandemics should include policies and practices that balance public health needs with the protection of children's rights.

From the point of apprehension by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.–Mexican border to their reunification with sponsors in U.S. communities, unaccompanied children (UC) face political, social, and economic conditions, heightening their risk for mental and physical health burdens that may be exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such risk underscores the importance of social work practice and advocacy for the improved treatment and experiences of UC. This article uses a structural vulnerability conceptual lens to summarize the existing literature regarding UC and argues that UC’s liminal immigration status, economic precarity, and lack of healthcare access place this group at high structural vulnerability during the pandemic. Further, this article identifies and describes three contexts of structural vulnerability of UC that are important points of social work intervention: (1) at the border, where migrant children are denied their legal right to seek protection; (2) in detention and shelter facilities; and (3) during reunification with sponsors. This article concludes with important practice and policy opportunities for social workers to pursue to obtain social justice for an important and highly vulnerable migrant child population.

This study examines types and determinants of child abuse    in    Sri    Lanka.    Further,    the    study    provides    the    demographic and social characteristics of victims who are aged below  18  years  as  well  as  their  family  background  in  Sri  Lanka. There is an increasing trend of different types of child abuses  globally  as  well  as  nationally.  In  Sri  Lankan  context,  child sexual abuse reveals study mainly based on the secondary data  and  the  main  source  of  data  was  the  National  Child  Protection Authority of Sri Lanka. Sample size includes all the complaints  on  child  abuse  from  2015-2020  to  the  NCPA  Sri  Lanka.  The  analysis  of  determinants  of  child  abuse  in  Sri  Lanka  reveals  as  to  who  are  the  most  vulnerable  group  for  child abuse in Sri Lanka and what are the associated factors to be   a   child   victim.   Reporting   child   abuses   have   highly   determined   with   the   school   vacation   period   and   seasonal   variation   has   affected   by   Covid-19 pandemic   in   2020.   Migration  of  parents  has  a  negative  impact  on  a  child  victim  for  abuse.  Especially,  the  family  background  is  a  primarily  determined factor to be a child victim. The nearest relatives to the  family  have  been  the  major  abuser  of  the  children.