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.
Chronic undernutrition is characterized by long-term exposure to food of insufficient quality and inadequate quantity, including restricted intake of energy, protein, fat, micronutrients, essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Physiologically, in a state of chronic food insufficiency, the human body conserves energy by prioritizing essential metabolic processes resulting in impaired linear growth and delayed reproductive maturation. Consequently, height can theoretically be considered a measure of an individual’s cumulative health and nutrition. Therefore, a deviation from the ‘normal’ height relative to one’s age represents a deviation from one’s optimal growth and, potentially, the presence of other issues. Similarly, the delayed onset of puberty is another common physiological response to food insufficiency, often accompanying impaired linear growth. Chronic undernutrition can arise from chronic disease, congenital abnormalities and insufficient food intake. In this review, we will explore the hypothesis of CUG during adolescence, given the relationship between impaired linear growth and the delayed onset of puberty in children suffering from chronic undernutrition due to a lack of sufficient quality and quantity of food.
AUTHOR(S)
Susan Campisi; Bianca Carducci; Olle Söder; Zulfiqar Bhutta
Synthèse trimestrielle présentant les ressources et les nouvelles les plus importantes parues au cours des trois derniers mois dans le domaine de la recherche sur le bien-être des adolescents.
Resumen trimestral que destaca los hallazgos más significativos de la investigación sobre el bienestar de los
adolescentes durante los tres últimos meses.
The rate of bullying among children is a key indicator of children’s well-being and an important marker for comparing global social development: both victims and perpetrators of bullying in childhood suffer across various dimensions, including personal social development, education, and health, with negative effects persisting into adulthood. For policymakers and professionals working with children, high rates of bullying amongst children should raise warning flags regarding child rights’ failings. Moreover, bullying amongst school-aged children highlights existing inefficiencies in the social system, and the potential for incurring future social costs in the communities and schools in which children live their lives. Inevitably, these concerns have contributed to bullying becoming a globally recognized challenge – every region in the world collects information on children’s experiences of bullying. Yet, despite the identification and monitoring of bullying having global appeal, so far, a validated global measure has not been produced. To fill this gap in knowledge, this paper develops a global indicator on bullying amongst children using existing school-based surveys from around the world. The findings of this paper show that bullying is a complex phenomenon that takes multiple forms, and is experienced to widely varying degrees across the world.
Geospatial technologies have transformed the way we visualize and understand social phenomena and physical environments. There are significant advantages in using these technologies and data however, their use also presents ethical dilemmas such as privacy and security concerns as well as the potential for stigma and discrimination resulting from being associated with particular locations. Therefore, the use of geospatial technologies and resulting data needs to be critically assessed through an ethical lens prior to implementation of programmes, analyses or partnerships. This paper examines the benefits, risks and ethical considerations when undertaking evidence generation using geospatial technologies. It is supplemented by a checklist that may be used as a practical tool to support reflection on the ethical use of geospatial technologies.
Geospatial technologies have transformed the way we visualize and understand situations. They are used to acquire, manipulate, store and visualize geographical information, including information on where individuals, groups and infrastructure are located in time and space. For development and humanitarian based organizations like UNICEF, the value of these technologies includes the ability to collect and process real-time information from places that are hard to reach or navigate such as dense forest, conflict zones, or where environmental disasters are occurring or have occurred. This brief provides an overview of the critical considerations when undertaking evidence generation using geospatial technologies. It is supplemented by a checklist that may be used to support reflection on the ethical use of geospatial technologies. This brief is based on a more in-depth Innocenti Discussion Paper which provides further guidance and tools.
There are significant ethical implications in the adoption of technologies and the production and use of the resulting data for evidence generation. The potential benefits and opportunities need to be understood in conjunction with the potential risks and challenges. When using social media to directly engage children and their communities, or when establishing partnerships with these organizations for data collection and analysis, adoption of these technologies and their resultant data should not be exclusively driven by short-term necessity but also by the long-term needs of our younger partners. When engaging with social media and indeed most technology, thoughtfulness, reflection and ongoing interrogation is required. This paper examines the benefits, risks and ethical considerations when undertaking evidence generation: (a) using social media platforms and (b) using third-party data collected and analysed by social media services. It is supplemented by practical tools to support reflection on the ethical use of social media platforms and social media data.
As of January 2017, 2.78 billion people worldwide were classified as active social media users. Of these users, 1.87 billion use Facebook. Thirty-nine per cent of Facebook users are between the ages of 13 and 24 (approximately 729 million young people). Available data also show that in 2014, approximately 31 per cent of users of the top five social media platforms were aged between 16 and 24 years. With the enormity of this coverage as well as over 40 per cent growth in usage from the previous year in countries like India, UNICEF has and continues to look at ways to use these platforms and the data generated to connect with and understand the reality of children today and to ensure more child-centred/user-centred policies and services. This brief provides an overview of the critical ethical considerations when undertaking evidence generation using social media platforms and using third-party data collected and analysed by social media services. It is supplemented by checklists that may be used to support reflection on the ethical use of social media platforms and social media data. This brief is based on a more in-depth Innocenti Discussion Paper which provides further guidance and tools.
Cash transfers have been successful in reducing food insecurity, increasing consumption, building resiliency against economic shocks, improving productivity and increasing school enrolment. Despite the many successes of cash transfer programmes, they can also fall short of achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning and health outcomes. A recent study highlights how so-called ‘Cash Plus’ programmes, which offer additional components or linkages to existing services on top of regular cash payments, may help address such shortcomings.
