Profiles

Just as the coronavirus outbreak reached its peak in the Italian province of Lombardy a group of health care professionals talked to UNICEF sharing their views on helping families and children cope

As a UNICEF communicator I’d bet that the widespread acceptance of corporal punishment – spanking, slapping, hitting, etc., a practice that seems to cross all boundaries – is one of the toughest challenges we face. Indeed, despite near universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, only 8% of the world’s children are fully protected from being physically abused by adults.Why is corporal punishment unquestioned by so many?Answers may be in short supply, but a new discussion paper from the UNICEF Office of Research, Corporal Punishment in Schools: Longitudinal evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam sheds important new light on the terrible damage this practice inflicts on children in the course of their education. Produced by the Young Lives Longitudinal Study on Child Poverty as part of the Office of Research multi-country study on violence affecting children, the paper gives a rare look at how teacher punishment in school affects children over time. The evidence is quite clear, with negative impacts observed at age 12, especially in decreased math scores, among many of the children who had experienced corporal punishment at age 8, compared with those who had not experienced it. These findings have been extensively controlled for community factors and previous school performance.The study also presents data which underlines how widespread corporal punishment can be. Among the 12,000 children studied from half to ninety percent, depending on the country, reported seeing a teacher beating a student in the last week.

The Office of Research – Innocenti has just released the third edition of its annual publication Best of UNICEF Research 2015. With each edition we learn more about a key element in a global development organization’s effort to gather evidence. Over the course of its existence Best of UNICEF Research has grown in terms of the quality of research represented, the range and complexity of research questions addressed and in the programmatic and geographic scope of the submissions.Research is an essential part of UNICEF’s effort to improve the situation of the world’s children. Quality data gathering, appraisal and analysis can fuel informed decision making and planning, assess intervention impact, question practices and improve policy discourse. High quality research is carried out across the full breadth of UNICEF offices and locations. But often, especially in country offices, it is undertaken with a sharp focus on how it can support programmes for children in particular contexts. Best of UNICEF Research is now a vital tool for increasing organization-wide learning and sharing about quality research.

UNICEF is well known for its role in responding to complex humanitarian crises affecting children around the world. The work of the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, based at the 600-year-old Ospedale degli Innocenti, in Florence, Italy rarely hits world headlines. Yet over the quarter century of its existence UNICEF at Innocenti has produced ground-breaking analytical work which has informed action and shifted global development discourse on critical child rights issues.In order to mark its 25th Anniversary, the Office recently convened a special anniversary seminar to reflect on achievements and look toward future directions for research at Innocenti. In its historic Renaissance surroundings former directors and senior researchers, together with a constellation of local and national Italian partners, shared their experiences and insights. On behalf of the Italian Government, the Office’s most generous financial donor, Luca Zelioli, First Counsellor, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delivered opening remarks.

Almost half of all women in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are married before eighteen. Globally, adolescents are two times more likely to be out of school than primary school aged children. Nearly eight million 15-24-year-olds in Europe are not in education, employment or training.Is it time to ask the question: “Are we failing adolescents?”

A new working paper called ‘Analysing child poverty and deprivation in sub-Saharan Africa’ has been published by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. The paper uses a framework called ‘MODA’ designed to measure multidimensional poverty specifically for children within and across countries. We caught up with Sudhanshu Handa, Chief of Social and Economic Policy at the UNICEF Office of Research to learn about the paper’s new findings and the strategy behind its unique analysis.

UNICEF staff are so preoccupied with the increasingly complex task of assisting the most vulnerable children that they don’t often realize the extent and quality of research their offices and programmes throughout the world carry out.UNICEF is actually a major global research organization with hundreds of research projects carried out each year to underpin its programmes, policy and advocacy work. Its work addresses new and emerging development challenges, and advances knowledge on children with relevance often well beyond the local country context.

Just over six years since the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global economic crisis still makes news throughout the world. The impact on households goes beyond headlines. Hardly any family has not felt the pain of the Great Recession. Children of course experience it most acutely. They are also at greatest risk of suffering lasting damage from it.

The abduction of more than 200 high school girls in northern Nigeria has touched a global nerve. The twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has generated millions of posts. UNICEF and other agencies have issued special statements. Superpowers are offering to send in military aid.It’s not the first time a horrendous act of violence against children has moved the world. I am pretty sure it won’t be the last. These moments of global concern about violence affecting children are usually brief, yet sadly, they don’t often result in level-headed responses.

C4D, S4D and now ICT4D. The latest “4D” could represent one of the most important social and economic development trends in years. Communication technologies have long been seen as development “silver bullets.” First radio was going to boost productivity for rural farmers, then TV sets were supposed to replace teachers in remote classrooms, then computers were to become the great equalizers. Outsized expectations have almost always exceeded Information and Communications Technology (ICT) realities for development.