In the framework of World Soil Day 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), and the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) launched a children's book contest on Soil Biodiversity with the motto "Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity".

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the world’s population. Although it has been established that children are at lower risk of falling seriously ill with COVID-19, the pandemic has had, and continues to have, far-reaching effects on them. The pandemic poses a health crisis that has become a child rights’ crisis.

Around 1 in 8 countries globally spends more on debt than on social services, according to a UNICEF report.

In October 2019, the World Bank and UNESCO Institute for Statistics proposed a new metric, Learning Poverty, designed to spotlight low levels of learning and track progress toward ensuring that all children acquire foundational skills.

Over recent decades, South Asia has made remarkable progress in improving the health of mothers and children. But the year 2020 brought a great shock to South Asia, as it did to the whole world. The COVID-19 pandemic has had major and multiple impacts – both direct and indirect.

Ten million additional child marriages may occur before the end of the decade, threatening years of progress in reducing the practice, according to a new analysis released by UNICEF.

Schools for more than 168 million children globally have been completely closed for almost an entire year due to COVID-19 lockdowns, according to new data released by UNICEF. Furthermore, around 214 million children globally – or 1 in 7 – have missed more than three-quarters of their in-person learning.

Today, 1.42 billion people – including 450 million children – live in areas of high or extremely high water vulnerability. Less than 3 per cent of the world’s water resources is freshwater, and it is growing increasingly scarce.

The share of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 a day has been cut by more than half since 2000. The pace of progress has slowed in recent years, however, and is likely to regress with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to WFP’s report, State of School Feeding Worldwide, 370 million children in 199 countries and territories were suddenly deprived of school meals, when schools closed due to the pandemic. That meal was for many their only nutritious food of the day.