As of March 2020, the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and the virus has spread to many countries and territories.
Nearly 64 million girls were born in 1995, the year the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted, beginning their lives as the global community committed to improving their rights. In 2020, nearly 68 million girls are expected to be born.
The global community has good cause to celebrate the progress achieved over the last quarter century in the name of girls’ rights. But we cannot lose sight of the challenges girls still face every day. Twenty-five years ago, the Beijing Platform for Action recognized that childhood is a separate space from adulthood.
Although more children than ever are enrolled in school, far too many are not learning. A key factor that affects quality of education is the availability of public funding. Underinvestment in education can result in several conditions that negatively impact how and what children learn.
The number of deaths among children under the age of five has reduced by half since 1990. Yet over 5 million children are still dying every year from mostly preventable causes. Pneumonia is responsible for nearly 20% of these deaths and is the leading infectious cause of death in this age group.
The surge in armed violence across Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is having a devastating impact on children’s survival, education, protection and development. The Sahel, a region of immense potential, has long been one of the most vulnerable regions in Africa, home to some countries with the lowest development indicators globally.
In conflict and disaster, children suffer first and suffer most. Today, one in four of the world’s children lives in a conflict or disaster zone — a fact that should shake each of us to our core. All of these children face an uncertain future. Around the world, more than 30 million children have been displaced by conflict.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) issued a report titled, ‘Children Uprooted in the Caribbean: How Stronger Hurricanes Linked to a Changing Climate are Driving Child Displacement,’ which takes stock of the links between a changing climate, extreme weather events and forced displacement of children and families in the 29 Caribbean small island deve
On 20 November 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark achievement that has since become the world’s most widely ratified human rights treaty. The Convention sets strict standards for signatory governments to protect the rights of every child.
An alarmingly high number of children are suffering the consequences of poor diets and a food system that is failing them, UNICEF warned in a new report on children, food and nutrition.
