The UNICEF Vision for Early Childhood Development is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and supports the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It outlines UNICEF's intent to support an organization-wide approach to child development in the early years of life, drawing on its mandate for child rights, multisectoral expertise,…

The call to transform education must begin with the youngest children. The world is not on track in meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 committing countries to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030. There is solid scientific evidence that early…

The Sustainable Development Goals highlight the critical importance of pre-primary education and set the broad ambition that by 2030 all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Today, the world is facing a learning crisis: While millions of…

"Growing Steady and Strong: Early Childhood Development Regional Guidance in East Asia and the Pacific" was developed against the backdrop of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis to support the country offices of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in implementing the early childhood development (ECD) agenda as a key pillar…

This Statistical Compendium to the report "The State of the World's Children 2024: The Future of Childhood in a Changing World," offers vital statistics on child survival, development, and protection worldwide, supporting UNICEF's commitment to tracking progress toward global goals for children's and women's rights. It includes the…

The global effort to achieve sanitation and water for all by 2030 is extending beyond the household to include institutional settings, such as schools, healthcare facilities and workplaces. This has been reinforced by global education for all strategies highlighting how water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in schools improves access to education…

This edition of "The State of the World's Children" report examines children, food and nutrition. It seeks to deepen understanding around the causes and consequences of children's malnutrition in all its forms and to highlight how governments, business, families and other stakeholders can best respond. Chapter 1 examines the changing…

Over 11 million cases of coronavirus have been reported in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than seven months after the first case hit Brazil, COVID-19 has deprived 97 per cent of the region's students of their normal schooling. Across the region, the prolonged closure of schools means that 137 million boys and girls continue to miss out on…

Two years into the COVID-19 global pandemic, education has been seriously disrupted. In response to this crisis, the global priority remains to ensure every child is supported so they can return to school and catch up on lost learning. Recognizing the need to accelerate education recovery with urgent, at-scale action, this joint report by UNICEF…

This paper aggregates the academic literature reviewing and reporting interventions for out-of-school children (OOSC) around the world to serve as a guide for potential interventions in South Asia and elsewhere. It complements the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children (OOSCI) South Asia Regional Study (2014). Thus the interventions reviewed…

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised huge concerns for the mental health of an entire generation of children. But the pandemic may represent only the tip of a mental health iceberg -- an iceberg we have ignored for far too long. For the first time, "The State of the World's Children" examines the mental health of children and adolescents.…

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) emphasizes that all children have the right to be full members of society, and be included in all forms of participation inside the home and out in the community. Unfortunately, many children with disabilities are not afforded this…

The science is clear: A child's brain is built, not born. The process begins before birth and involves a complex interplay of neural connections that are shaped by experience and environment. In the early years, these neural connections occur at lightning speed--a speed never again repeated. They establish a foundation of development that will…

Throughout history, the advance of civilization has been closely tied to the idea that all people have rights: universal, inalienable entitlements to freedom, dignity and security, to be treated fairly and to live free from oppression. The health and soul of all societies depend on how these human rights are recognized--and acted upon. Until the…

Reports such as this typically begin with a statistic designed to highlight a problem. The girls and boys to whom this edition of "The State of the World's Children" is dedicated are not problems. Rather, each is a sister, brother or friend who has a favourite dish, song or game; a daughter or son with dreams and the desire to fulfil…