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Jordan is a small, highly resource-constrained country situated in the heart of the Middle East. Long a haven for refugees fleeing regional conflict, over one-third of Jordan’s 10 million residents are not Jordanian. Jordan is home to approximately 1.5 million Syrians, half of whom are registered as refugees with UNHCR. Jordan is also hosting 2.5 million registered Palestine refugees. In Jordan, GAGE has collected mixed-methods baseline data (between mid-2018 and early 2019) with approximately 4,000 Syrian, Palestinian, Jordanian and Dom adolescents living in host communities, formal refugee camps and informal tented settlements; fielded three rounds of covid-19 phone surveys; and is running ongoing participatory research groups with older married girls, out-of-school boys and adolescent girls and boys with disabilities (15–19 years). GAGE is also evaluating a variety of UNICEF Jordan’s programming. This brief highlights headline emerging findings and provides links to fuller publications.
Since 2019, Lebanon’s economy has been caught in an accelerating downward spiral, which the World Bank predicts will rank in the top three most severe global economic crises in the last 150 years. Food prices have now climbed more than 500%, over half of the country is living below the poverty line and the electrical grid is on the verge of collapse as fuel has become unavailable. For the 1.5 million Syrian refugees and nearly 200,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, the situation is even more dire. In Lebanon, GAGE is running participatory research groups with 83 vulnerable Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese adolescents. These young people are between the ages of 15 and 19 and live in host communities, formal refugee camps served by UNRWA (Palestinians), and informal tented settlements (Syrians). The participatory research groups were established in 2019 and meet every four to six weeks to discuss themes related to GAGE’s conceptual framework. This brief highlights headline emerging findings and provides links to fuller publications.
AUTHOR(S) Kath Ford; Richard Freund
After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, our four study countries are each facing significant economic and social challenges, and rapidly changing circumstances. But COVID-19 is not the only global crisis; our evidence from Ethiopia reflects unprecedented times, as vulnerable families grapple with the compounding effects of civil conflict and climate change. This policy brief summarises key findings from the fifth call in the Young Lives phone survey, conducted between October and December 2021, and draws on previous COVID-19 calls, as well as longitudinal data collected since 2001 through regular in-person surveys. The brief builds on previous policy recommendations from our phone survey, highlights how the pandemic, alongside climate change and conflict, is continuing to have an adverse impact on the lives of young people in low- and middle-income countries, and presents emerging policy recommendations in response to this impact. Our analysis demonstrates that urgent action is required if we are to get progress towards the SDGs back on track.
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been widespread and disproportionately affected vulnerable segments of the population, including children and their families. The modest progress made in reducing child poverty has been reversed in all parts of the world by COVID-19. Impact of COVID-19 on the welfare of households with children – a joint World Bank and UNICEF publication - presents findings from data from high frequency phone surveys collected in 35 countries. The analysis identifies the impact of the crisis on households without and with (few or many) children, both focusing on the initial impact in 2020 but also the subsequent evolution of this impact. The analysis focus on key areas such as income and job loss, food insecurity, social protection programs and access to education, shedding light on the importance of placing children in poverty and their families highly on the agenda in the COVID-19 response and recovery.
AUTHOR(S) Ravindra K. Joshi; Ravi Pathak; Rishav Rawal (et al.)
AUTHOR(S) Stephen Kidd; Diloá Athias; Silvia Nastasi (et al.)
High income inequality can engender a wide range of negative impacts. It can harm child development, increase ill-health and mortality, limit the status of women, generate distrust in government, exacerbate levels of violence and social unrest, slow the pace of poverty reduction and hinder economic growth. The Asia-Pacific region is characterized by high levels of income inequality, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, it is imperative that countries in the region take action to tackle high inequality and create fairer and more decent societies. Investments in social security are one of the most effective means of tackling inequality. This includes schemes such as child, unemployment, sickness, maternity, disability and old age benefits, funded from general government revenues as well as by social insurance. Currently, across most countries in the Asia-Pacific region, investments in tax-financed social security are minimal. Nonetheless, the report demonstrates that, both globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, universal social security systems are much more effective than poverty-targeted systems in reducing inequality. If countries in the region make the move to modern, universal lifecycle systems, the impacts on inequality would be impressive. And, the more that countries invest, the higher will be the impacts on family well-being, employment, social cohesion and economic growth.
AUTHOR(S) Sangha Lee; Sungju Kim; Sooyeon Suh (et al.)
This study aimed to examine whether the extended use of a variety of digital screen devices was associated with lower economic status and other environmental factors among Korean elementary school children and their caregivers during school closures precipitated by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A total of 217 caregivers of children 7–12 years of age from Suwon, Korea, were recruited and asked to respond to a self-administered questionnaire in June 2020. The questionnaire addressed demographic information and children’s use of digital media, in addition to their caregivers. The t-test was used for continuous variables, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for variables measured on an interval scale. A multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the effects of significant correlative factors on screen time in children as predictors.
AUTHOR(S) Lauren Hoehn-Velasco; Adan Silverio-Murillo; José Roberto Balmori de la Miyar (et al.)
AUTHOR(S) Limin Zhang; Hongjian Cao; Chaopai Lin (et al.)
AUTHOR(S) Valentina Costa; Ivette Maria Contreras Gonzalez; Amparo Palacios-Lopez (et al.)
In collaboration with the media monitoring service Meltwater, CARE analysed the humanitarian crises that received the least media attention in 2021. More than 1.8 million online articles were analysed between 1st January and 30th September 2021. To do this, we identified the countries where at least one million people were affected by conflict or climate-related disasters. The total number of people affected by each crisis is derived from data from ACAPS, Reliefweb and CARE. The result – a list of 40 crises – was subjected to media analysis and ranked by the number of online articles published on the topic. This report summarises the ten crises that received the least attention.
AUTHOR(S) Young Eun Kim
Risk factors for child maltreatment have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially due to economic downfalls leading to parental job losses and poor mental health. This study aimed to examine the association between child maltreatment and unemployment rate in the Republic of Korea. Nationally representative data at the province level were used. The monthly excess number of hotline calls related to child maltreatment during the COVID-19 pandemic was estimated for each province. Fixed effects regressions was used to examine the relationship between the excess number of hotline calls and unemployment rate.
AUTHOR(S) Mobarak Hossain
AUTHOR(S) Aloísio Antônio Gomes de Matos; Kimberly Virginin Cruz Correia da Silva; Jucier Gonçalves Júnior (et al.)
This study aims to identify the hidden orphans and to reinforce existing monitoring systems. Orphanhood is a public health issue, and it primarily evidences existing geopolitical tensions. Thus, this study emphasises the strong naturalisation of social inequalities and the extreme vulnerability of children and adolescents impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 continues to tear families apart, leaving the children of deceased parents with even fewer options than before the pandemic. In Brazil, one child is orphaned by COVID-19 every 5 min. This is an alarming estimate, especially in the most vulnerable and underprivileged regions of the country, such as the North and Northeast. Current evidence emphasises that at every three million deaths due to the pandemic, more than 1.5 million children lose their mothers, fathers or primary caregivers (usually grandparents). This may be very traumatic for children. In this context, Brazil is the second country in the world with the highest number of COVID-19 deaths, reducing caregiving options among family members.
AUTHOR(S) Paula Yuma; Rebecca Orsi; Anita A. Pena
UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.
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