Each generation is faced with new challenges - listening for and to the views of children is one of ours. This year, The State of the World's Children focusses on the responsibility of adults to seek out the perspectives and opinions of children and to take them seriously; and on the responsibility of adults to help children and adolescents develop their competencies for authentic and meaningful participation in the world.
One in every seven children is disabled. Children with disabilities are among the most likely to be marginalized, poor and vulnerable. UNICEF is committed to improving the lives of children, particularly those who face the greatest disadvantages. The report will investigate the web of barriers disabled children face: discrimination, harmful norms and the lack of accurate information. The report will analyse and provide good-practice guidance on: inclusive health and education; prevention; nutrition; protection from violence, exploitation and abuse; emergency response; institutionalization; and the role of appropriate technology and infrastructure
On 20 November 2009, the global community celebrates the 20th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the unique document that sets international standards for the care, treatment and protection of all individuals below age 18. To celebrate this landmark, the United Nations Children's Fund is dedicating a special edition of its flagship report The State of the World's Children to examining the Convention's evolution, progress achieved on child rights, challenges remaining, and actions to be taken to ensure that its promise becomes a reality for all children. The statistical tables presented in this volume assist in meeting the demand for timely, reliable, comparable and comprehensive data on the state of the world's children.
The theme of leadership in this publication is related to the role of governments and international institutions in protecting the well being of children. It is in three sections; the first "birth and broken promises", contrasts the reality of the life of a child born eleven years ago with the promises made at the World Summit for Children, held in New York in 1990. The section, "to change the world with children", looks at the way UNICEF has called attention to the plight of children. The last section, "actions that can change the world", concludes that investing in children is the best investment a country can make and that no country has made a leap to sustainable development without investing significantly in its children.
On 20 November 2009, the global community celebrates the 20th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the unique document that sets international standards for the care, treatment and protection of all individuals below age 18. To celebrate this landmark, the United Nations Children's Fund is dedicating a special edition of its flagship report The State of the World's Children to examining the Convention's evolution, progress achieved on child rights, challenges remaining, and actions to be taken to ensure that its promise becomes a reality for all children.
Milestones of the same decade, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Internet together changed childhood forever, giving a new generation of children specific rights and an unprecedented opportunity to exercise them.
The 2005 edition of UNICEFs annual report examines the key issues which threaten the welfare of children around the world, using the concept of childhood as the state and condition of a childs life. The Convention of the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, offers a new definition of childhood based on human rights; yet for hundred of millions of children the promise of childhood is threatened by poverty, armed conflict and HIV/AIDS threaten their survival and development. The report examines these three major threats in detail, and offers a comprehensive agenda of action to combat them. It concludes by calling on all stakeholders, including governments, donors, international agencies and communities to reaffirm and recommit to their moral and legal responsibilities to children.
The 2006 edition of UNICEF's annual report focuses on the millions of children who are most in need of access to essential education, health and protection services, but who are also the hardest to reach and often overlooked by current development programmes. These include children living in the poorest countries and most deprived communities within countries, children who face discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity or disability, children caught up in armed conflicts or affected by HIV/AIDS, children who lack a formal identity and who suffer from abuse and exploitation. The report examines the factors which result in their exclusion from current child development programmes and services, and highlights the policy options and actions required to address these challenges, in order to ensure all children benefit from the progress being made to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Topics discussed include: income disparities and child survival, the marginalisation of Roma communities and their children, disability issues, children and HIV/AIDS, children living on the streets, early marriages, child labour, child protection and child rights.
This astute book initiates a broad discussion from a variety of different disciplines about how we place children nationally, globally and within development discourses. Unlike other books of its kind, it does not seek to dwell solely on the abiding complexities of local comparisons. Rather, it elaborates larger concerns about the changing nature of childhood, young people’s experiences, their citizenship and the embodiment of their political identities as they are embedded in the processes of national development and globalization. In particular, this book concentrates on three main issues: nation building and developing children, child participation and activism in the context of development, and globalization and children’s live in the context of what has been called "the end of development." These are relatively broad research perspectives that find focus in what the authors term "reproducing and developing children" as a key issue of national and global concern. They further argue that understanding children and reproduction is key to understanding globalization.
