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Social contracts around the world are fraying, reflecting a profound disconnect between institutions and the people they are meant to serve, and a corresponding sense of distrust and disillusionment as growing swathes of society feel that they are being left behind. Social Contracts: Towards more child and future-centred framings explores the value of social contract policy framings that have emerged in recent years. It examines why children need to feature more prominently in social contracts and how these framings might take on a more child- and future-centric form.
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There is growing global recognition that violence against women (VAW) and violence against children (VAC) intersect in different ways. The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and the UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) partnered to coordinate a global, participatory process to identify research priorities for the intersections between VAC and VAW. Identifying research priorities helps to advance the field in a more structured way and serves to monitor progress against initial evidence gaps. Whilst priorities are important, the way in which these priorities are set is also important, especially for ownership, contextualisation and use. Inclusive, participatory research setting serves to promote a diversity of voices – especially from low-and middle-income country (LMIC) settings – which historically lack representation, and minimize the risk of biases when establishing research priorities.

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Alessandra Guedes; Floriza Gennari; Claudia García-Moreno; Elizabeth Dartnall; Aník Gevers
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Inclusion is most effective when schools create a culture that celebrates diversity and builds on the strengths of each student. Family engagement may look different from school to school, and it is important for schools to support families in a variety of ways, not just relying on one method. This guide aims to help schools to (1) identify specific needs faced by marginalized families of children with disabilities; (2) identify challenges they face to meeting these needs and (3) identify solutions in the form of resources that address these challenges. It is part of a set of resources to support the marginalized caregivers of children with disabilities with inclusive education.
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This policy brief is the second in a series that assesses key issues affecting social spending as part of UNICEF’s work on Public Finance for Children. The brief examines how recent trends are impacting on the financing available for, and directed to, social spending in low- and middle-income countries in different regions, using secondary analysis of public expenditure data collected by international organizations. It calculates median spending figures by region and income group, using World Bank regional aggregates for domestic spending.
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This series of briefs draw son the findings of multi-country research based on first-hand migration experiences of 1,634 children and young people moving between Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt.
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While the Government of Lao PDR, through the Ministry of Education and Sports and its development partners, has made steady progress in expanding access to quality education, many children still leave primary school with difficulties in reading and writing for their age. Despite this, there are ‘positive deviant’ schools that outperform other schools located in similar contexts and with an equivalent level of resources. Data Must Speak (DMS) Positive Deviance research is a multi-staged mixed-method approach, co-created and co-implemented with Ministries of Education. It aims to generate knowledge about the positive deviant practices and behaviours of high performing schools. It also seeks to unravel practical lessons about ‘what works’ and how to scale grassroots solutions for national policymakers and the broader international community of education stakeholders. This policy brief – focused on school principals in highly effective schools – is part of a series that presents key research findings of the DMS research quantitative stage in Lao PDR. More importantly, it aims to inform policy dialogue and decision-making in Lao PDR and other interested countries.

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Renaud Comba
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This paper examines how social benefits contributed to reducing the scarring effects of monetary poverty among children in European countries in the years following the Great Recession. Based on the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions database, our findings highlight that social benefit functions differ in their ability to reduce the risk of monetary poverty for children with previous experience in poverty. While family/children’s benefits are crucial in reducing child poverty in general, they are not significant in terms of reducing the scarring effects of child poverty. Old age/ survivors’ benefits meanwhile appear to be a significant support for children with prior experience in poverty. Empirical evidence thus suggests the effectiveness of social transfers to combat occasional child poverty does not always coincide with their effectiveness in preventing children from remaining in poverty year after year.

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Elena Bárcena-Martín; M. Carmen Blanco-Arana; Salvador Pérez-Moreno
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The prevalence of school-related violence and, in particular, bullying is not a new or isolated phenomenon, nor is it limited to certain schools or countries. Abundant evidence indicates that bullying is widespread and has a negative impact on educational outcomes. Children who are victims of bullying can also be affected emotionally and physically in both the short and long terms. Evidence from low- and middle-income countries on bullying is less extensive when compared to the evidence available on predictors and effects of bullying from high-income countries. However, some findings for the Latin American and Caribbean region seem to suggest a similar picture, with a high prevalence of bullying victimization and association to lower reading scores in different subjects tested. This working paper first uses data from UNESCO’s Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study for nationally representative samples of sixth grade students to determine the prevalence of bullying and its association to learning outcomes in 15 countries of the LAC region. It then looks at interventions in countries of the region to mitigate the impacts of violence.

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Cirenia Chávez; Victor Cebotari; Maria José Benítez; Dominic Richardson; Chii Fen Hiu; Juliana Zapata
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Globally, progress has been made in the fight against both poverty and gender inequality, including through the expansion of social protection programmes. Yet significant gaps remain. Many women and girls remain in poverty and often face different structural constraints and risks across their life course, related to their biological sex as well as entrenched gender norms that discriminate against them in many aspects of their lives. As poverty, risks and vulnerabilities – which social protection aims to minimize, reduce or tackle – are gendered, if the root causes of gender inequality are not investigated in evidence generation and addressed in policy and practice, poverty will not be sustainably eradicated, nor gender equality achieved. This paper provides an overview of the latest evidence on the effects of social protection on gender equality. It starts by considering how risks and vulnerabilities are gendered, and the implications of their gendered nature for boys’ and girls’, and men’s and women’s well-being throughout the life course. It then reviews and discusses the evidence on the design features of four types of social protection programmes – non-contributory programmes, contributory programmes, labour market programmes, and social care services – and their effects on gender equality, unpacking which design features matter the most to achieve gender equality. Finally, the paper concludes with implications for a future research agenda on gender and social protection.

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Elena Camilletti
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65 items found