Publications

Children’s lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies. Yet, when it comes to understanding the long-term effects of internet use and online experiences on their well-being, mental health or resilience, the best we can do is make an educated guess. Our need for this knowledge has become even more acute as internet use rises during COVID-19.

This report explores what has been learned from the latest research about children’s experiences and outcomes relating to the internet and digital technologies. It aims to inform policy-makers, educators, child-protection specialists, industry and parents on the best evidence, and it proposes a future research agenda.

Encryption encodes information so that it can only be read by certain people. ‘End-to-end’ is a robust form of encryption where only the users communicating can read the information. In other words, third parties – such as service providers – cannot decrypt the information.

It matters for children because while it protects their data and right to privacy and freedom of expression, it also impedes efforts to monitor and remove child sexual abuse materials and to identify offenders attempting to exploit children online.

2019 is a year of three important anniversaries for children. The world is marking the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the  child (1989 – 2019) - the global human rights treaty which guides all nations’ actions for children. The city of Florence is commemorating the 600th  anniversary of the founding of the Ospedale Degli Innocenti (1419 – 2019), the world’s oldest centre of care for vulnerable children. And UNICEF is marking the 30th year since it established its global research centre in Florence, known today as the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. In celebration of these three anniversaries, UNICEF Innocenti has decided to expand upon its traditional role generating evidence for advocacy and  action for children, to inaugurate an international film festival focusing on narratives of childhood from all regions of the world. We are delighted to have forged a partnership with Fondazione Sistema Toscana, Cinema La Compagnia, the Region of Tuscany, the Municipality of Florence and Istituto Degli Innocenti, bringing you the first UNICEF Innocenti Film Festival.

A first roundtable to explore the issues regarding care work and children was hosted in Florence by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti from 6 to 7 December 2016. Unpaid care and domestic work have often been neglected in both research and policymaking, being viewed as lying within the domestic sphere of decisions and responsibilities, rather than as a public issue. However, over recent decades, researchers across a range of disciplines have strived to fill the evidence, data and research gaps by exploring the unpaid care and domestic work provided particularly by women within the household, and uncovering the entrenched social and gender norms and inequalities.

The paper aims to reduce the global knowledge gap pertaining to the impact of disability on school attendance, using cross-nationally comparable and nationally representative data from 18 surveys in 15 countries that are selected among 2,500 surveys and censuses. These selected surveys administered the Washington Group Short Set (WGSS) of disability-screening questions, covering five functional domains of seeing, hearing, mobility, self-care, and remembering, and collected information on educational status. The paper finds that (i) the average disability gap in school attendance stands at 30% in primary and secondary schools in 15 countries; (ii) more than 85% of disabled primary-age children who are out of school have never attended school; (iii) the average marginal effect of disability on primary and secondary school attendance is negative and significant (-30%), and (iv) countries that have reached close to universal primary education report high ratios of disabled to non-disabled out-of-school children and (v) disabled children confront the same difficulties in participating in education, regardless of their individual and socio-economic characteristics.

With children making up an estimated one third of internet users worldwide, living in the ‘digital age’ can have important implications for children’s lives. Currently, close to 80 per cent of people in Europe, North America and Australia have internet access, compared with less than 25 per cent in some parts of Africa and South Asia. The international community has recognized the importance of internet access for development, economic growth and the realization of civil rights and is actively seeking ways to ensure universal internet access to all segments of society. Children should be an important part of this process, not only because they represent a substantial percentage of internet users but also because they play an important part in shaping the internet. The internet in turn plays an important part in shaping children’s lives, culture and identities.

2014 marked a successful year for the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and included the development of key research outputs, active advocacy for research, successful growth in the research portfolio, and expansion of outreach, tools and products. The Office actively engaged in: generating high-quality research to inform programmes and knowledge about children; strengthening the capacity to improve the quality and use of evidence; convening international events by acting as a catalyst for research globally. In 2014, research activities ranged from multi-disciplinary initiatives to large-scale international collaborative projects. High-calibre, policy-relevant research was conducted in the areas of: equity, poverty and well-being; child rights and governance; child protection and violence against children; social protection systems and cash transfers, among others.

There is universal agreement that the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in any decisions made about a child’s future. In the case of adoption, which represents one of the most far-reaching and definitive decisions that could be made about the future of any child – the selection of their parents – international law qualifies the best interests of the child as the paramount consideration. The implications of this obligation are all the greater in the context of the intercountry form of adoption, since this involves in addition the removal of a child to a new country and, usually, a new culture.

However, there is no universal agreement on who is ultimately responsible for determining what is in a child’s ‘best interests’, nor on what basis the decision should be made This study responds, in particular, to one key question: what is it that enables a policy, process, decision or practice to be qualified as either respectful or in violation of the best interests of the child in intercountry adoption?

Las instituciones independientes aportan un enfoque claro hacia la infancia en unos sistemas de gobernanza que tradicionalmente se centran en los adultos. Suelen ofrecer mecanismos directos para mejorar la rendición de cuentas del Estado y otros garantes de la protección del menor, palian deficiencias en los mecanismos de control y equilibrio y trabajan para que se comprenda y se reconozca la relevancia de las políticas y prácticas en favor de los derechos de los niños. Cuando las cosas salen mal, o cuando los resultados son insuficientes, apoyan medidas para poner remedio a la situación y reformar el sistema.

Using national data sources from Japan and matching them carefully with the data used in the original Report Card 11, this report manages to include Japan in the league table and subsequent ranking in each of five dimensions in order to assess Japan’s performance in child well-being among developed countries. Maintaining as much as possible the original framework of the RC11, the analysis is based on indicators that are strictly comparable between Japan and the other countries.

The paper discusses what a fair, or equitable, distribution is, drawing on some contributions of Western philosophers and economists. After reviewing different approaches, it argues that inequality among groups is particularly unjust. The paper argues for a plural perspective on the space in which inequality is assessed, following Sen’s capability approach. It is argued that the assessment should relate to functionings (or outcomes) rather than capabilities (or possibilities), especially for children whose choices are severely constrained.

Tackling inequities in children’s outcomes matters both from a moral perspective, and because of persuasive social and economic arguments. Reducing inequity in children’s outcomes requires tackling structural and social issues. The paper provides evidence about how social, economic and environmental conditions shape inequities in children’s outcomes. Building on insights generated through studies on the social determinants of health, the paper provides a framework to inform research and policy to reduce inequities in children’s outcomes, with a specific focus on low- and middle-income countries.