Though child marriage is an age-old tradition, the practice is becoming less common. Over the past decade, the proportion of young women globally who were married as children decreased by 15 per cent, from nearly 1 in 4 to 1 in 5. This means that, over the last 10 years, the marriages of some 25 million girls have been averted. What… Read more →←
Topic: Publication & data launches
Where childcare policies are failing parents and what countries can do to fix it As I transition back to work after six months of maternity leave, I can’t believe my timing during the launch of a major new UNICEF report Where Do Rich Countries Stand on Childcare? Published by UNICEF’s Office of Research – Innocenti, where I work,… Read more →←
Oyele, who is from Nigeria, and her husband were eagerly anticipating the arrival of their first child. But then, tragedy struck: The baby was stillborn. In a flash, Oyele’s dreams of motherhood vanished. “I have little to say about him because I did not see him. He was taken away before I became fully conscious. My… Read more →←
The story of the COVID-19 pandemic is one of vulnerability, in which those with pre-existing deprivations are likely to suffer most. While the full range of economic and social consequences of the crisis are yet to emerge, it will undoubtedly affect many children, by exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and their underling… Read more →←
West and Central Africa today is the home of the forgotten girl. She may be Fatima in Western Cameroon, who at 12 years old can be found hiding behind her mother, about to be forcibly married to a 22-year-old man. Or 15-year-old Umu, hiding her pregnancy so she can finish high school in Sierra Leone. Or 10-year-old Sanya in Northern… Read more →←
If UNICEF were a rich country instead of my employer, it would rank 24th out of 41 EU and OECD countries in the league table of our new report “Are the world’s richest countries family friendly?” on the indicator of full-rate equivalent childcare leave available to female staff (see figure below, which shows where UNICEF would… Read more →←
Getting the ‘development’ right in sport for development (S4D) means that on the pitch, disabilities are dissolved into strengths. It means that traditional ‘no girls allowed’ attitudes are torn away. It means that children’s voices are valued in both the planning and the playing, and real efforts are made to protect children… Read more →←
The world pledged to end AIDS by 2030. Though great strides have been made toward this goal for young children, adolescent girls and boys are being left behind. We used existing trends to project what the future will look like for adolescents, and we found that the outlook depends mostly on the region of the world where they live.… Read more →←
It is no surprise that children who are bullied do worse in academic tests. However, after re-analyzing children’s reading test data for 30 school systems in some of the world’s richest countries, we found that an environment of bullying drags everyone’s achievement down, not just that of the victims. We published our… Read more →←
With the launch of Generation Unlimited, UNICEF has assumed global leadership to advance the quality of life for children in the second decade. Yet many programs designed for young people, including by UNICEF, are not framed by well-developed theories of the developmental process. Recent scientific discoveries and studies demonstrate… Read more →←