Publications

The war in Ukraine triggered an economic shock in countries in Eastern and Central Asia, a region that has been visited by multiple economic shocks in the past decades. For the children and families The shock featured a spike in the prices of commodities including food and fuel. As a result, poor families who spend a greater proportion of their incomes on necessities – such as food and fuel – were the hardest hit. The result was greater risk of poverty, weakened school attachment and increased infant mortality, among others.

This UNICEF Innocenti Research Brief shares projections about the fallout of this crisis on poverty, schooling, infant mortality and the purchasing power of families. It also reviews the social protections put in place in response to the crisis and makes recommendation for future social protection responses.

The research theme was identified within the framework of the European Network for the Research Agenda on Children in Armed Conflict and has been developed by UNICEF IRC with the co-operation of a number of Network partners and UNICEF offices in the field. It reviews the problem of non-registration in conflict-affected countries while drawing on case studies to analyze successful or promising initiatives to ensure registration. The ultimate goal is to assist practitioners in the field in conflict and post-conflict environments to promote emerging encouraging practices in ensuring the right of the child to birth registration and thereby to the enjoyment of many rights.

The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict challenges a widely-held assumption - that education is inevitably a force for good. While stressing the many stabilizing aspects of good quality education, editors Kenneth Bush and Diana Saltarelli show how education can be manipulated to drive a wedge between people, rather than drawing them closer together. After analyzing the increasing importance of ethnicity in contemporary conflicts, this Innocenti Insight outlines the negative and positive faces of education in situations of tension or violence, including the denial of education as a weapon of war (negative) and the cultivation of inclusive citizenship (positive). It emphasizes the need for peacebuilding education that goes further than the 'add good education and stir' approach, aiming to transform the very foundations of intolerance.

In 1997, UNICEF’s first international Child Protection Officer, Ben Majekodunmi, took up his post in Burundi. This publication summarizes his experience and draws lessons for future child protection activities in emergency situations. Primarily aimed at UNICEF and UN policy makers, the publication calls for the creation of a systematic child protection capacity in the field as an integral part of an overall UN strategy. The development of an agreed methodology for child rights protection in the field is still in its embryonic stages. As UNICEF’s main research arm, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre explores new areas on behalf of the organization as a whole. This document, based upon first-hand experience, is one part of the Centre’s contribution to the development of such methodology within UNICEF and within the UN as a whole.