Gender-Equitable Family Policies for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: An Agenda for the G20

Gender-Equitable Family Policies for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: An Agenda for the G20

AUTHOR(S)
Elena Camilletti; Ramya Subrahmanian; Dominic Richardson; A K Shiva Kumar; Rosario Esteinou; Lauren Whitehead

Published: 2023 Policy Brief

Task Force 6: Accelerating SDGs: Exploring New Pathways to the 2030 Agenda

The G20 aims to promote global cooperation, inclusive development, economic stability, and sustainable growth. This presents an opportunity to leverage its leadership to ensure foundational investments in gender-equitable family well-being globally. Family policies, such as childcare services and parental leave, can reduce poverty, promote decent jobs for women, support more equal intra-familial relationships, and secure child well-being and development outcomes, thereby benefitting societies and economies. To achieve this, family policies need to be designed in a gender-equitable way, and be integrated, coordinated, and financed through sustainable domestic resources. This policy brief proposes an agenda and recommendations to G20 countries to invest in gender-equitable family policies that can deliver optimally for child well-being, gender equality, and sustainable development.

Expériences, perceptions et opinions des enfants et des adolescents sur la pandémie de COVID-19 à Madagascar

Expériences, perceptions et opinions des enfants et des adolescents sur la pandémie de COVID-19 à Madagascar

Published: 2023 Miscellanea
Depuis l’apparition du virus SARS-CoV-2 , le coronavirus responsable de la pandémie de COVID-19 n’a cessé de se propager. Madagascar n’a pas échappé à cette situation. La pandemie entrainait des conséquences économiques et sociales importantes mais elles peuvent être plus désastreuses chez les enfants qui sont considérés comme plus vulnérables à des chocs aussi violents que le coronavirus et présenteraient un niveau de résilience beaucoup moindre que les adultes. Initiée et coordonnée au niveau mondial par UNICEF Innocenti - Centre Mondial de la Recherche et de la Prospective ayant son siège à Florence, dans le cadre d’une initiative multi- pays avec la participation de l’Italie, Canada, Lesotho, Indonésie, Chili, la présente étude a été menée par le Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Economique pour le Développement (CERED) de l’Université d’Antananarivo grâce au fruit de la collaboration avec l’UNICEF Madagascar.
War and Economic Downturn: The impact of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic downturn on children and families in Europe and Central Asia

War and Economic Downturn: The impact of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic downturn on children and families in Europe and Central Asia

AUTHOR(S)
Margherita Squarcina; Alessandro Carraro; Frank Otchere; Dominic Richardson

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Briefs

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.

How Gender-responsive Age-sensitive Social Protection is Related to the Climate Crisis: A summary of the evidence

How Gender-responsive Age-sensitive Social Protection is Related to the Climate Crisis: A summary of the evidence

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Report

This paper outlines how climate change can create specific gendered risks based on age and stage of the life course.

Critical gendered risks for women that increase their vulnerability to climate shocks include: discriminatory social and gender norms; inadequate access to and control of assets and crucial resources; concentration in low-wage casual employment; limited representation in policy discussions and key decision-making processes.

Gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection – an important instrument in a suite of tools in the broader response to the climate crisis – can play a crucial role in addressing or minimizing negative climate impacts, including those that affect girls, boys and women.

Lost time, Lost opportunities: Understanding teacher and school director attendance in Mozambique

Lost time, Lost opportunities: Understanding teacher and school director attendance in Mozambique

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Briefs

The Avaliação Longitudinal da Desistência Escolar (ALDE, Longitudinal Assessment of School Dropout) is the first nationally representative mixed-method longitudinal survey in Mozambique.

Since 2018, the ALDE survey has annually collected longitudinal, nationally representative data from around 5,400 primary school students (from grades 1 to 7) in 60 schools across all eleven provinces in the country.

This report examines teacher and director absenteeism in Mozambique’s schools, using data from the ALDE. It seeks to understand factors related to the attendance of teachers and school directors in order to inform policies and practices to strengthen the primary education system in Mozambique.

Cite this publication | No. of pages: 17
Learning on Hold: The Toll of COVID-19 School Closures on Mozambique’s Foundational Literacy

Learning on Hold: The Toll of COVID-19 School Closures on Mozambique’s Foundational Literacy

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Briefs

In Mozambique, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread school closures, significantly impacting students and schools across the country.

An analysis of pre- and post-pandemic reading skills, using data from the nationally-representative Avaliação Longitudinal da Desistência Escolar (ALDE, Longitudinal Assessment of School Dropout) survey reveals significant learning losses in basic literacy skills. Specifically, students in Grades 3-4 exhibited reduced proficiency in letter identification in 2021 compared to their counterparts in 2019.

These findings underscore the negative consequences of COVID-19-related school closures on foundational literacy in Mozambique.

Cite this publication | No. of pages: 14
Data and Research on Children and Youth in Forced Displacement: Identifying Gaps and Opportunities

Data and Research on Children and Youth in Forced Displacement: Identifying Gaps and Opportunities

AUTHOR(S)
Josiah Kaplan; World Bank Group; UNHCR .; Emanuela Bianchera

Published: 2021 Innocenti Research Report
Despite the growing scale of forced displacement involving children and youth, our understanding of this phenomenon is severely limited by significant gaps in the availability of both relevant data and data-driven research. According to UNICEF, there is recorded data by age for just 56 percent of the refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate, while IDMC notes that just 14 percent of countries and territories with reported internally displaced populations provide data on age. The following edition of the Joint Data Center Quarterly Digest, jointly produced by UNICEF and the JDC, spotlights several recent data-driven contributions addressing these critical gaps in knowledge. We focus, in particular, on mental health risks faced by forcibly displaced children; evidence from existing evaluations and assessments on ‘what works’; and emerging research into the use of technological innovations for the management of child migration and displacement data. Taken together, this literature selection offers examples of the kinds of credible, actionable evidence which practitioners and policymakers urgently need to better support those who are forcibly displaced around the world, regardless of age.
Cite this publication | No. of pages: 40 | Thematic area: Conflict and Displacement, Migration | Tags: migration, refugees
Disrupting Harm: Online Risk and Harm for Children in Eastern and Southern Africa

Disrupting Harm: Online Risk and Harm for Children in Eastern and Southern Africa

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Briefs

Despite gaps in some parts of the continent, the number of young people across Africa who use the internet increases every year. This increase in internet availability is already having some positive impacts in terms of creating jobs and reducing poverty, which is necessary to meet the needs of a fast-growing population. At the same time, countries need to proactively mitigate the potential increase in exposure to online risk and harm that can result when countries transition from low to high connectivity. 

The purpose of this report is to draw on the voices and experiences of children to provide a regional snapshot of the online harm landscape as a baseline, and urge regional and national bodies to continue mobilizing to address these harms in light of Africa’s digital transformation. 

The intent is not to compare countries in terms of who is doing better or worse, but to look for similarities and differences that can help us understand more about the causes and solutions for these issues and find opportunities for regional learning. 

Cite this publication | No. of pages: 16 | Thematic area: Child Protection, ESARO
La pandemia a través de los ojos de niños, niñas y adolescentes en Chile: Experiencias y opiniones sobre el COVID-19

La pandemia a través de los ojos de niños, niñas y adolescentes en Chile: Experiencias y opiniones sobre el COVID-19

Published: 2023 Miscellanea
La pandemia producto del COVID-19 derivó en una crisis en múltiples niveles y ámbitos donde el ejercicio de los derechos de niñas, niños y adolescentes fue puesto en riesgo. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo generar evidencia sobre las experiencias, percepciones y opiniones de los niños, niñas y adolescentes sobre la pandemia, y la respuesta que tuvo Chile frente a esta.
Children and the Cost-of-living Crisis: How food and energy inflation has increased poverty in households with children in the European Union

Children and the Cost-of-living Crisis: How food and energy inflation has increased poverty in households with children in the European Union

AUTHOR(S)
Dominic Richardson; Alessandro Carraro; Margherita Squarcina; Fernando Flores Tavares; Gwyther Rees

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Briefs
Children and families throughout the European Union are facing a cost-of-living crisis that has eroded living standards to such an extent that up to an additional 3 million children in 26 EU countries are now living in conditions equivalent to relative income poverty.

For families and children in the EU, the cost-of-living crisis is being experienced primarily through higher prices for food and energy. In addition, increasing interest rates make borrowing less affordable, placing a growing strain on the sustainability of businesses, mortgages, loans and government debt.

This research brief presents the first results of an analysis of how the cost-of-living crisis has affected the poverty experienced by households with children in the European Union (EU). It takes account of sharply increasing food and energy prices to calculate the additional number of children living in poverty, in real terms, due to the crisis. The brief also recommends that policymakers and governments protect children and families with steps that include expanding and index-linking child cash benefits to cover the needs of families, implementing guarantees to provide free meals for children in schools and providing services that prevent ‘holiday hunger’ when schools are closed in the summer months.
Annual Report 2022

Annual Report 2022

Published: 2023 Miscellanea
The world is facing unprecedented compounding crises. The war in Ukraine, the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, a looming economic crisis, energy shortages, the increasing cost of living, and the ongoing effects of climate change and the associated food insecurity have created challenges across the world, and continue to disrupt the lives of children, their families and communities. More than ever, UNICEF needs to understand the implications of the emerging situation to be able to adapt programmes and approaches effectively to achieve the objectives of the 2022–2025 Strategic Plan, especially that of aiding recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating efforts towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNICEF Innocenti directed much of its research and foresight work in 2022 towards generating and supporting the use of quality research and analysis to inform programming for children, prioritizing focus on the most marginalized populations. The office collaborated closely with UNICEF offices and partners in countries, regions and globally, and published research and evidence regularly. The office also facilitated knowledge management on research, including ethics, capacity development and standard-setting for the organization.

Our foresight team undertook horizon-scanning, trend analysis, risk assessments and scenario analysis, making policy recommendations on major global and emerging issues. 

Besides this, the office leveraged major reports and convened top thinkers to lead global discourse and to position UNICEF as a thought leader. 
Evidence-based intervention design for behaviour change during a health emergency

Evidence-based intervention design for behaviour change during a health emergency

Published: 2023 Innocenti Research Report
As vaccine availability has increased in much of the world, challenges remain related to acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, further compounded by global inequities in vaccine access and the emergence of new variants. As such, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) continue to be an important tool in slowing and preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2. 
 
This series of rapid evidence assessments (REA), using the COM-B model as a theoretical framework, sought to understand the existing evidence about who delays or refuses COVID-19 vaccination and who does not adhere to NPI measures, why and in what contexts. The objective is to inform tailored policies and interventions that support vaccination acceptance and adoption of recommended NPI measures, drawing in the COM-B Behaviour Change Wheel. 

Demographics did not consistently predict non-adherence to protective behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of psychological capability, people with less COVID-19 knowledge are more likely to delay or refuse vaccination and not adhere to social distancing. In terms of social opportunities, people who perceive less social normative pressure to engage in protective behaviours are more likely to not adhere to social distancing and mask wearing recommendations. In terms of reflective motivations, people who perceive the protective behaviour to be less effective are more likely to delay or refuse vaccination and avoid mask wearing; people who perceive themselves to have less control over protective behaviours are less likely to adopt social distancing and mask wearing behaviours; and people who perceive themselves to be less susceptible to catching COVID-19 are more likely to avoid or refuse vaccination and to not adhere to mask wearing recommendations.
 
The series of REAs was used to develop an evidence-informed practical toolkit for policy makers and practitioners to inform decision making around future efforts to promote uptake and maintenance of some or all recommended NPIs to mitigate the spread of outbreaks of transmissible respiratory diseases, including potential new and emerging pandemic threats.   
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