Campaigns & microsites

Accessible, affordable, and quality childcare helps parents return to work after parental leave, improves children’s social and cognitive development, and promotes a more gender equitable society. Yet, despite its many benefits, UNICEF Innocenti's report reveals that childcare is inaccessible to many parents in the world's richest countries. Where Do Rich Countries Stand on Childcare? ranks high-income countries based on their national childcare and parental leave policies. The best-performing countries combine affordability with quality of organized childcare while offering long and well-paid leave to both mothers and fathers.

In the Horn of Africa, migration has long been a key coping strategy. Recently however, migration has been framed in terms of risk rather than opportunity. UNICEF’s new research captures the experiences of 1,290 migrant children and young people in Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia to help paint a more accurate picture of migration in the region. This will in turn help ensure that they are better protected and supported.

Realizing all children’s rights does not come for free. To achieve this indispensable goal, careful planning and budgeting are needed. Experience from past crises shows that social spending works to protect children. UNICEF Innocenti’s new series monitors, advocates for, and supports better social spending.

(15 December 2020) Evidence and objective assessment are needed more than ever to help enhance the rights and well-being of the world’s children. Researching the changing world around us and evaluating progress are critical to reimagining a better future for children everywhere. In recognition of this, the Best of UNICEF Research and Evaluation 2020 celebrates and showcases innovative and influential research and evaluations from UNICEF offices around the world.

(24 November 2020) There is a learning crisis. Fifty-three per cent of children in low- and middle-income countries are in ‘learning poverty’, i.e. they cannot read and understand a simple text by the end of primary school age. In sub-Saharan Africa, the learning poverty rate is 87 per cent overall, and ranges from 40 per cent to as high as 99 per cent in the 21 countries with available data. Teachers attending lessons and spending quality time on task is a critical prerequisite to learning. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, there is evidence that teacher absenteeism ranges from 15 to 45 per cent.

(3 September 2020) Visit our Innocenti Report Card 16 microsite where we dive deep into the activities, relationships, networks, resources, policies and context that combine to shape child well-being with a focus on 41 'rich' countries of the OECD and the EU. The result is one of the most comprehensives studies on child well-being ever produced and a ranking of the world's rich countries on key outcomes for children in mental well-being, physical health and skills.

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.

Blanket restrictions on children’s internet use prevent them from taking advantage of critical learning and skills development opportunities, according to a new UNICEF report, launched today at the Internet Governance Forum in Berlin.

Family-friendly policies matter because they help children to get a better start in life and help parents to find the right balance between their commitments at work and at home. This report focuses on two key policies: childcare leave for parents and early childhood education and care for preschool children.

Sport is a powerful tool for involving all children – including the most marginalized and vulnerable – in group activities from an early age (UNHCR, 2013). This report analyses the available evidence on S4D initiatives for children and youth.

In the world’s richest countries, some children do worse at school than others because of circumstances beyond their control, such as where they were born, the language they speak or their parents’ occupations. This report focuses on educational inequalities in 41 of the world’s richest countries.