The Innocenti Digests provide clear summaries of current knowledge and debate on specific child rights issues. They are written in an accessible style for use by a wide range of audiences, including policy makers, researchers, UNICEF staff, journalists and members of the public. Each Digest includes a Links Section, guiding the reader to relevant organizations and information sources.
Insights take an intensive look at a specific child rights issue, expanding on a particular perspective or argument. Insights examine emerging, complex and sometime controversial issues that have a direct bearing on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The series Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic and Social Policy (IOPs) has become Innocenti Working Papers as of no. 72. The numbering is consecutive. Papers 63 onwards are also available for download.
Innocenti Publications refer to other types of studies, often jointly produced with others, including case studies and policy reviews that are oriented to a wide audience.
The Centre's MONEE Project has been monitoring the impact of the social and economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States since 1992, making a major contribution to the debate on public policies on children's issues in the region. The Social Monitor reports on trends in the welfare of children, young people and women in the CEE/CIS/Baltics region, and to serve as a basis for advocacy and policy debate in the region. It partially replaces the Regional Monitoring Report series (eight of which were produced between 1993 and 2001). It is published for a non-specialist audience, and widely distributed in both English and Russian versions to policymakers, international organisations, interest groups and the international media. As of 2009 the same MONEE project functions are shifting to the UNICEF CEE/CIS Regional Office.
Methodological Briefs cover the range of options and elements available in conducting sound research and delivering reliable results. They cover impact evaluation, strategies and causal attributions and different data collection and analysis methods.
The Centre's MONEE Project has been monitoring the impact of the social and economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States since 1992, making a major contribution to the debate on public policies on children's issues in the region. The Project includes the Regional Monitoring Report, published annually in English and Russian. The Report covers every country in the region, providing authoritative statistics on the situation of children, backed by detailed analysis.
This report provides midline findings from the impact evaluation of a cash plus model targeting youth in households receiving the United Republic of Tanzania’s Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN). Implemented by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), with technical assistance of the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS) and UNICEF Tanzania, the programme aims to improve livelihood opportunities and facilitate a safe transition to adulthood.
Children’s digital access – or lack thereof – during the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly determined whether children can continue their education, seek information, stay in touch with friends and family, and enjoy digital entertainment. With over 1.5 billion children across 190 countries confined to their homes, active video games or dance videos may also be their best chance to exercise. The rationale for closing digital divides has never been starker or more urgent.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to accurate health information is particularly important, especially for children living in resource-poor communities where access to health care and services may be limited. For these and other reasons, global efforts are under way to expand and support children’s digital access and engagement, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The response to the pandemic has seen an unprecedented rapid scaling up of technologies to support digital contact tracing and surveillance.This working paper explores the implications for privacy as the linking of datasets: increases the likelihood that children will be identifiable; increases the opportunity for (sensitive) data profiling; and frequently involves making data available to a broader set of users or data managers.
The response to COVID-19 has seen an unprecedented rapid scaling up of technologies to support digital contact tracing and surveillance. This means that we need to establish clear governance processes for these tools and the data collection process and engage with a broader set of government and industry partners to ensure that children’s rights are not overlooked.
This rapid review seeks to inform initial and long-term public policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by assessing evidence on past economic policy and social protection responses to health
and economic crises and their effects on children and families. The review focuses on virus outbreaks/emergencies, economic crises and natural disasters which, similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, were rapid in onset, had wide-ranging geographical reach, and resulted in disruption of social services and economic sectors without affecting governance systems. Lessons are also drawn from the HIV/AIDS
pandemic due to its impact on adult mortality rates and surviving children.
This report explores how the role of families, and family policies from around the world, can contribute to meeting the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given the key role that both families and family policies have in determining social progress, and the national and international focus on meeting the SDGs by 2030, the timing of the publication is opportune. The report summarizes reviews of evidence across six SDGs that cover poverty, health, education, gender equality, youth unemployment, and ending violence to highlight some important issues that policymakers might consider when making future policies work for families, and family policies work for the future. A key contribution of the work, given the broad scope of the SDG ambitions, has been to map how the successes of family-focused policies and programmes in one SDG have also been successful in contributing to positive outcomes in other goal areas.
This research brief is one of a series that explores the impact of COVID-19 on education. It focuses on the potential parental role in learning and its association with foundational reading and numeracy skills. Fifty-three per cent of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text by the end of primary school age. In low-income countries, the learning crisis is even more acute, with the ‘learning poverty’ rate reaching 90 per cent. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, 191 countries have implemented countrywide school closures, affecting 1.6 billion learners worldwide. In India alone, 320 million students from pre-primary to tertiary level are affected by school closures. In sub-Saharan Africa, 240 million are affected. With children currently not able to study in classrooms, the importance of learning at home is amplified and the task of supporting children’s learning has fallen on parents at a much larger rate. This is a significant burden, particularly for those who are also teleworking and those with limited schooling themselves.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on societies, globally. To help contain the spread of the disease, schools around the world have closed, affecting 1.6 billion learners – approximately 91 per cent of the world’s enrolled students. Governments and education stakeholders have responded swiftly to continue children’s learning, using various delivery channels including digital tools, TV/radio-based teaching and take-home packages for parent or carer-guided education.
However, the massive scale of school closures has laid bare the uneven distribution of the technology
needed to facilitate remote learning. It has also highlighted the lack of preparedness and low resilience of systems to support teachers, facilitators and parents/caregivers in the successful and safe use of
technology for learning.
Using data on access to technology from household surveys (MICS and DHS) and information on national education responses to school closures gathered from UNICEF education staff in over 120 countries, this brief explores potential promising practices for equitable remote learning.
This paper aims to document the likely direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in developed and developing countries. It also aims to identify potential urgent measures to alleviate such impacts on children. Thirty-three years after the UNICEF report, 'Adjustment with a Human Face', the authors warn of the effects of the pandemic which are likely to be considerable and comparable to the recession and debt crisis of the 1980s. The heavy costs for children can only be avoided with systematic and concerted efforts on the part of governments and the international community, to provide extensive financial and social support for the poor, and to invest in the health and education systems, in order to offset the negative impact of the virus-induced recession.
AUTHOR(S)
Giovanni Andrea Cornia; Richard Jolly; Frances Stewart
