Publications and resources

The report, Making Children Count in Population and Housing Censuses - Proposals for the 2030 round, emphasizes the critical role census data plays in ensuring that every child, especially those from vulnerable groups, is counted and considered in national planning. Accurate and disaggregated data is essential for developing policies that address children's specific needs in education, health, and protection, while also tracking progress toward international commitments like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNICEF's proposals stress the importance of capturing detailed information on children, particularly those often overlooked, such as children with disabilities or in alternative care arrangements.UNICEF's proposals were developed in close consultation with national and international partners, including UNECE, to ensure that countries in the Europe and Central Asia region are equipped to better capture the living conditions of children in their upcoming census rounds. This document reviews responses from countries during the 2020 Census and highlights key findings and challenges related to collecting data on children, offering targeted guidance to improve future data collection.A particular focus of the report is on ensuring inclusivity in census practices. The proposals urge the adoption of methodologies that more accurately capture children with disabilities and those in institutional households, ensuring no child is left behind in national statistics. The report also provides insights into how different countries have approached these challenges and underscores the importance of collaboration and standardized practices for more reliable data.The report was revised in November 2024, and the updated version is now available. 

This report provides an overview of selected findings from the sixth round (2018–2020) of Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted in Roma settlements in Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. It focuses on Roma children and women, aiming to track progress and highlight disparities within the Roma community compared to the national average. The reference to ‘Roma’, as an umbrella term, encompasses a wide range of different people of Romani origin and groups such as Ashkali, Egyptians and Roma.The analytical report leverages the MICS surveys to track the progress of Roma children and women within the specific Child Rights Monitoring (CRM) framework. Some of the framework’s sub-domains have been excluded because of a lack of indicators.*All references to Kosovo should be understood to be in the context of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). 

The paper presents a comprehensive overview of the Committee's recent recommendations to State parties in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, emphasizing data collection, analysis, dissemination, and utilization concerning children. The analysis encompasses various key themes, including data collection systems, education, health, violence against children, and standard of living. Notably, the Committee targeted the importance of centralized, integrated, and comprehensive data collection systems covering all areas of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols. It centered on the need for disaggregated data to analyze the situation of all children, especially those in vulnerable situations, and advises governments to collaborate with strategic partners, including UNICEF, for technical support. In addressing specific vulnerabilities, the Committee recommends focusing on various groups such as children from disadvantaged households, victims of violence, rural children, minority groups, and children with disabilities in data collection efforts. Recommendations focused on the importance of qualitative indicators alongside quantitative ones, particularly in understanding factors contributing to low attendance and dropout rates in disadvantaged groups. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the necessity of robust data on health, environment, and climate change impacts on children, as well as systematic data collection on violence against children and standard of living. The findings of the recommendations highlighted the critical role of data-driven policies and collaborations in promoting children's rights and welfare in the ECA region. The report is based on the Dashboard of the UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia on the Recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. For further insights, visit the Recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child Dashboard.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the situation of children in alternative care and in adoption in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) based on available data from TransMonEE, as well as other sources such as MICS, DataCare and the Conference of European Statisticians (CES). It marks the first analysis of data on children in alternative care by the UNICEF ECA Regional Office since the publication of the ‘At home or in a home’ report in 2010, highlighting the developments and challenges in collecting and reporting data on children in alternative care and adoption and summarises recommendations derived from recent data review initiatives.

Report Card 18 presents current levels and historic trends of child poverty (monetary and multi-dimensional) in 43 OECD/EU countries; projections of future trends in view of current crises; a detailed analysis of policy responses to child poverty in each country; and practical policy recommendations for tackling child poverty.

With the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the global community made a commitment to end all forms of violence against children by 2030. Although this drew much needed attention to the importance of preventing and responding to violence against children, the availability of comparable data remains limited. The scarcity of comprehensive data concerning the issue is undoubtedly amplifying the problem at hand, as it reinforces the misconception that violence is a peripheral phenomenon. In response, UNICEF has developed the International Classification of Violence against Children (ICVAC) with inputs from over 200 experts from national statistical offices, academia, and international organizations. ICVAC includes operational definitions of all forms of violence against children and covers interpersonal and collective violence, both in times of peace and during internal or international armed conflict. The classification will provide countries with a tool to capture and categorize incidents of violence and consequently assess the extent to which their national definitions and data collection efforts comply with internationally-agreed standards. It will also facilitate the production of comparable data across different countries and contribute to obtaining a clearer understanding of the actual extent of violence, enabling more effective strategies and interventions to combat it. Countries will be able to collaborate more efficiently, exchange best practices, and collectively address the multifaceted challenges associated with violence on a global scale.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 aims to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ and includes targets for universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). The World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund (WHO/UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene produces internationally comparable estimates of progress on WASH and is responsible for global monitoring of the SDG targets related to WASH. This report presents updated national, regional and global estimates for WASH in households for the period 2000 to 2022, and has a special focus on gender and WASH. The importance of progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene for achieving SDG 5 which aims to ‘realize gender equality and empower all women and girls’ is widely recognized. Likewise, gender inequalities impede realization of the SDG 6 targets on WASH.

The world is facing unprecedented compounding crises. The war in Ukraine, the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, a looming economic crisis, energy shortages, the increasing cost of living, and the ongoing effects of climate change and the associated food insecurity have created challenges across the world, and continue to disrupt the lives of children, their families and communities. More than ever, UNICEF needs to understand the implications of the emerging situation to be able to adapt programmes and approaches effectively to achieve the objectives of the 2022–2025 Strategic Plan, especially that of aiding recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating efforts towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNICEF Innocenti directed much of its research and foresight work in 2022 towards generating and supporting the use of quality research and analysis to inform programming for children, prioritizing focus on the most marginalized populations. The office collaborated closely with UNICEF offices and partners in countries, regions and globally, and published research and evidence regularly. The office also facilitated knowledge management on research, including ethics, capacity development and standard-setting for the organization.

Child malnutrition estimates for the indicators stunting, wasting, overweight and underweight describe the magnitude and patterns of malnutrition aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 2.2. The UNICEF-WHO-WB Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates inter-agency group updates the global and regional estimates of prevalence and numbers for each indicator every other year. The key dissemination materials for the 2023 edition includes global, regional and country trends from 2000-2022 for stunting and overweight. For wasting and severe wasting, country estimates are based on available primary data sources (e.g., household surveys), global trends are presented for 2000-2022 and the regional estimates show the latest estimates (2022). Country progress assessment towards the 2030 targets are aggregated into regional summaries are included in the brochure. The Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates (JME) released in 2023 reveal insufficient progress to reach the 2025 World Health Assembly (WHA) global nutrition targets and SDG target 2.2. Only about one third of all countries are ‘on track’ to halve the number of children affected by stunting by 2030, and assessment of progress to date not being possible for about one quarter of countries. Even fewer countries are expected to achieve the 2030 target of 3 per cent prevalence for overweight, with just 1 in 6 countries currently ‘on track’. Further, an assessment of progress towards the wasting target is not possible for nearly half of countries. More intensive efforts are required if the world is to achieve the global target of reducing the number of children with stunting to 89 million by 2030. With current progress, the 2030 target will be missed by 39.6 million children, with more than 80 per cent of these ‘missed’ children in Africa. Gaps in the availability of data in some regions makes it challenging to accurately assess progress towards global targets. Regular data collection is therefore critical for monitoring and reporting on country, regional and global progress on child malnutrition.

“Situation Analysis of Children Rights in Europe and Central Asia: Unequal progress, Children left behind” spotlights deepening inequalities and urges countries to put in place sound systems to support children at risk of poverty and social exclusion. The report is the first of its kind to bring together existing data and analysis for all countries in the region, while highlighting critical data gaps that need to be filled.

In total, more than 5.0 million children under age 5, including 2.3 million newborns, along with 2.1 million children and youth aged 5 to 24 years – 43 per cent of whom are adolescents – died in 2021. This tragic and massive loss of life, most of which was due to preventable or treatable causes, is a stark reminder of the urgent need to end preventable deaths of children and young people. Sadly, these deaths were mostly preventable with widespread and effective interventions like improved care around the time of birth, vaccination, nutritional supplementation and water and sanitation programmes. Timely, high-quality and disaggregated data – which allow the most vulnerable children to be identified – are critical to achieving the goal of ending preventable deaths of children. Yet as the COVID-19 pandemic has put into stark light, data of this nature are more the exception than the rule: Just 36 countries have high-quality nationally representative data on under-five mortality for 2021, while about half the world’s countries have no data on child mortality in the last five years. These substantial data gaps pose enormous challenges to policy- and decision-making and prolong the need for modelling mortality from what little data are available. To improve the availability, quality and timeliness of data for monitoring the health and survival situation of children and youth, much greater investments must be made to strengthen data systems.

This brief summarises the findings of a mapping exercise that reviewed the status of the child-related SDG targets and indicators in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, focusing on the following: progress with data availability and data sources; and the integration of national policies and programmes. The ECA region encompasses 55 countries and territories with great context diversity. Some countries in the region have seen conflict or civil strife in recent years, including the current conflict in Ukraine, leaving a complex landscape to monitor and advance the SDG Agenda for children. Political instability is a major challenge for many countries in the region, making it more difficult to integrate SDG indicators into national monitoring and reporting systems.