Today, more children than ever before are displaced within their own countries. Their harrowing stories of displacement are unfolding every day, and with increasing frequency. At
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the end of 2019, approximately 45.7 million people were internally displaced by conflict and violence (Fig. 1.1). Nearly half – 19 million – were estimated to be children. And millions more are displaced every year by natural disasters.
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It estimates that there have been 228,000 additional deaths of children under five in these six countries [Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka] due to crucial services, ran
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ging from nutrition benefits to immunisation, being halted.
It says the number of children being treated for severe malnutrition fell by more than 80% in Bangladesh and Nepal, and immunisation among children dropped by 35% and 65% in India and Pakistan respectively...
It also estimates that there have been some 3.5 million additional unwanted pregnancies, including 400,000 among teenagers, due to poor or no access to contraception...
The interruption to health services also affected those suffering from other diseases - the report predicts an additional 5,943 deaths across the region among adolescents who couldn't get treated for tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid and HIV/Aids.
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Child marriage is a widespread practice across Turkana, a nomadic pastoralist region in Kenya. This report explores the issue through the voices of those girls affected by it.
This report makes clear that there is a path to end AIDS. Taking that path will help ensure preparedness to address other pandemic challenges, and advance progress across the Sustainable Development
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Goals. The data and real-world examples in the report make it very clear what that path is. It is not a mystery. It is a choice. Some leaders are already following the path—and succeeding. It is inspiring to note that Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe have already achieved the 95–95–95 targets, and at least 16 other countries (including eight in sub-Saharan Africa) are close to doing so.
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UNICEF CHILD ALERT May 2018
As part of a UNICEF series highlighting the challenges faced by childr
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en in current crisis situations, this Child Alert examines the situation of children affected by violent conflict in Kasai region, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The alert outlines what UNICEF and its partners have achieved to date in providing humanitarian assistance to children in Kasai affected by malnutrition and lack of access to health care, safe water and education. It calls upon all parties to the conflict – and the international community – to take urgent action protecting the lives and futures of children at risk, before it is too late.
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EVALUATION REPORT | The purpose of the evaluation is to strengthen child protection programming in the context of emergencies by assessing
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UNICEF’s performance and drawing lessons and recommendations that will influence ongoing and future programmes, in both preparedness and response. Apart from global and regional interviews and desk reviews, the evaluation is grounded in a solid base of evidence from four indepth case studies of recent emergency responses, in Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and South Sudan, as well as extensive research covering eight additional countries.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a global and gendered crisis that is compounding existing inequalities and disproporti
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onately affecting girls and women. Emerging evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 shows school closures, disruptions in essential services and rising poverty contributed to girls’ increased risk of female genital mutilation (FGM). School closures limited the monitoring and reporting of cases of FGM. Rising household monetary poverty may have contributed to families adopting negative coping mechanisms, including having girls undergo FGM as a precursor to marriage to reduce household costs. A report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates 2 million additional cases of FGM by 2030 due to the pandemic.
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Children expressed the need for organisations to
support in the delivery of services such as health an
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d
sanitation. The children also emphasized that schools
and the child-friendly spaces (CFSs) were effective
and important spaces to provide them with what they
need.
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Listening to what children in crisis have to say is not only a moral and ethical responsibility for donor and humanitarian actors, it is also a hum
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anitarian obligation. Children’s right to participation is recognised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (UNCRC), which provides rights for children to express their views and ‘be heard and taken seriously’.
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UNICEF analysis indicates that:
- Investments that increase access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions by poor groups have saved almost twice as many lives as equivalent investmen
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ts in non-poor groups.
- Access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions has improved rapidly among poor groups in recent years, leading to substantial improvements in equity.
- During the period studied, absolute reductions in under-five mortality rates associated with improvements in intervention coverage were three times faster among poor groups than non-poor groups.
- Because birth rates were higher among the poor, the reduction in the under-five mortality rate translated into 4.2 times more lives saved for every 1 million people. Indeed, of the 1.1 million lives saved across the 51 countries during the final year studied for each country, nearly 85 per cent were among the poor.
- Intensified focus on equity-enhancing policies and investments can help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goal newborn and child mortality targets (SDG3.2).
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The report finds that, as of 3 November, in 87 countries with age-disaggregated data, children and adolescents under 20 years of age accounted for
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1 in 9 of COVID-19 infections, or 11 per cent of the 25.7 million infections reported by these countries. More reliable, age-disaggregated data on infection, deaths and testing is needed to better understand how the crisis impacts the most vulnerable children and guide the response
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Young people living in the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau are the most at risk of
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the impacts of climate change, threatening their health, education, and protection, and exposing them to deadly diseases. The report is the first comprehensive analysis of climate risk from a child’s perspective. It ranks countries based on children’s exposure to climate and environmental shocks, such as cyclones and heatwaves, as well as their vulnerability to those shocks, based on their access to essential services.
Additional translations of the Executive Summary are available in the following languages, with thanks to Climate Cardinals: English, French, Arabic, Hausa, Portuguese, Spanish, Somali, Yoruba
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and partners from 27 humanitarian and development organisations
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and governments are appealing for USD 84 million to provide life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of African migrants and host community members affected by COVID-19 in the Horn of Africa and Yemen. The many partners include the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children, among others.
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This edition of UNICEF’s annual Humanitarian Action for Children highlights UNICEF’s funding appeal, which sets out an ambitious agenda to addr
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ess the major challenges facing children and young people living through conflict and crisis. It presents the investments needed in 2021 to save their lives and protect their futures.
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Palm Oil and Children in Indonesia : Exploring the Sector's Impact on Children's Rights
EVALUATION REPORT | This evaluation is the first comprehensive global exercise to examine UNICEF’s programme response in protecting children in e
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mergencies. Its purpose is to strengthen child protection programming by assessing performance in recent years and to draw lessons and recommendations that will influence ongoing and future programmes. It is expected that the findings of the evaluation will inform the roll-out of the Strategic Plan 2014-2017. The evaluation design includes country case studies analysing outcomes for children against the medium term strategic plan (MTSP, 2006-2013), the CCCs and selected evaluation questions. Twelve countries provided data for the analysis, four as case studies with country visits and standalone reports (Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC], Pakistan and South Sudan) and a further eight countries as desk studies (Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, State of Palestine and Sudan). Four of the countries (Haiti, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines) are disaster-affected and sudden-onset contexts while the remainder are primarily contexts of protracted conflict that include sudden-onset upsurges in violence.
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Beat the heat: child health amid heatwaves in Europe and Central Asia finds that half of these children died from heat-related illnesses in their f
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irst year of life. Most children died during the summer months.
"Around half of children across Europe and Central Asia – or 92 million children – are already exposed to frequent heatwaves in a region where temperatures are rising at the fastest rate globally. The increasingly high temperatures can have serious health complications for children, especially the youngest children, even in a short space of time. Without care, these complications can be life-threatening,” said Regina De Dominicis UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Heat exposure has acute effects on children, even before they are born, and can result in pre-term births, low birth weight, stillbirth, and congenital anomalies. Heat stress is a direct cause of infant mortality, can affect infant growth and cause a range of paediatric diseases. The report also notes that extreme heat caused the loss of more than 32,000 years of healthy life among children and teenagers in the region.
As the temperatures continue to rise, UNICEF urges governments across Europe and Central Asia to:
- Integrate strategies to reduce the impact of heatwaves including through National Determined Contributions (NDC), National Adaptation Plans (NAP), and disaster risk reduction and disaster management policies with children at the centre of these plans
Invest in heat health action plans and primary health care to more adequately support heat-related illness among children
- Invest in early warning systems, including heat alert systems
- Adapt education facilities to reduce the temperatures in the areas children play in and equip teachers with skills to respond to heat stress
- Adapt urban design and infrastructure including ensuring buildings, particularly those housing the most vulnerable communities are equipped to minimize heat exposure
- Secure the provision of safe water, particularly in countries with deteriorating water quality and availability.
UNICEF works with governments, partners and communities across the region to build resilience against heatwaves. This includes equipping teachers, community health workers and families with the skills and knowledge to respond to heat stress.
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In its resolution 34/16, the Human Rights Council decided to focus its next full-day meeting on “Protecting the rights of the child in humanitari
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an situations” and invited the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare a report on that issue, in close collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The report is to be presented to the Human Rights Council at its thirty-seventh session to inform the annual day of discussion on children’s rights.
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This report, written by ATAA Humanitarian Relief Association, BINAA for Development, Children Of One world, Hand in Hand for Aid and Development, Horan Foundation, Hurras Network, MARAM Foundation,
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Orange Organization, Syrian American Medical Society, Save the Children and Shafak Organization, provides insights on the humanitarian situation on the ground in north west Syria.
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