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Quality education
The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened a crisis in education, with severe disruptions in education systems worldwide. School closures have had worrisome consequences for children’s learning and well-being, particularly for girls and those who are disadvantaged, including children with disabilities, rural dwellers and ethnic minorities. An estimated 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person instruction over the past two years. As a result, this generation of children could lose a combined total of $17 trillion in lifetime earnings (in current value). Governments need to implement ambitious programmes to ensure that all children return to school, recover their learning losses, and have their psychosocial needs met.
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Reclaiming Our Future
The publication describes pathways to achieve more inclusive and sustainable post-pandemic recovery in Asia and the Pacific. It identifies elements for a common agenda for present and future generations centered on protecting people and planet, leveraging on digital opportunities, trading and investing more together, raising financial resources and managing debt. It underlines the need to listen and work with the youth, placing women at the center for crisis-prepared policy action and new people-centric partnerships, with a readiness of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to serve.
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Places and Spaces
Author: UNICEF Innocenti Research CentreReport Card 17 explores how 43 OECD/EU countries are faring in providing healthy environments for children. Do children have clean water to drink? Do they have good-quality air to breathe? Are their homes free of lead and mould? How many children live in overcrowded homes? How many have access to green play spaces, safe from road traffic? Data show that a nation’s wealth does not guarantee a healthy environment. Far too many children are deprived of a healthy home, irreversibly damaging their current and future well-being. Beyond children’s immediate environments, over-consumption in some of the world’s richest countries is destroying children’s environments globally. This threatens both children worldwide and future generations. To provide all children with safe and healthy environments, governments, policymakers, businesses and all stakeholders are called to act on a set of policy recommendations.
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Reimagining our Futures Together
The interwoven futures of humanity and our planet are under threat. Urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures. Education, long acknowledged as a powerful force for positive change, has new, urgent and important work to do. This report, two years in the making, invites governments, institutions, organizations, and citizens around the world to forge a new social contract for education that will help us build peaceful, just, and sustainable futures.
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Reopening with Resilience
Author: UNICEF Innocenti Research CentreThe COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures around the world, affecting almost 1.6 billion students. The effects of even short disruptions in a child’s schooling on their learning and well-being have been shown to be acute and long lasting. The capacities of education systems to respond to the crisis by delivering remote learning and support to children and families have been diverse yet uneven. This report reviews the emerging evidence on remote learning throughout the global school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic to help guide decision-makers to build more effective, sustainable, and resilient education systems for current and future crises.
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Mind Matters: Lessons From Past Crises for Child and Adolescent Mental Health During COVID-19
Author: UNICEF Innocenti Research CentreCOVID-19 is a crisis like no other in modern times. It has reached every population and community. While the evidence base is still nascent, this report looks at the impacts of disasters and past epidemics – such as Ebola, HIV, SARS/MERS and Zika – on child and adolescent mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, and examines how these insights can guide policies and progammes to support children, their families and communities during the current pandemic. COVID-19 – its associated public health responses and social and economic impacts – is likely to have multiple deleterious effects on mental health, including elevated risks of anxiety and depression, trauma, loss of family and friends, violence, loneliness and social isolation. However, this pandemic also offers opportunities for positive coping and resilience. While there is no magic formula to address the mental health and psychosocial impacts of crises, there are proven and promising interventions from past experiences to mitigate the impact today – especially for the most vulnerable children and adolescents. These include social protection, caregiver skills and support, community and social support, life skills and school based programmes, and specialized care, to name a few.
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Ecosystem Restoration for People, Nature and Climate
This report presents the case for why we all must throw our weight behind a global restoration effort. Drawing on the latest scientific evidence, it explains the crucial role played by ecosystems from forests and farmland to rivers and oceans, and charts the losses that result from our poor stewardship of the planet. While restoration science is a youthful discipline, we already have the knowledge and tools we need to halt degradation and restore ecosystems. Farmers, for instance, can draw on proven restorative practices such as sustainable farming and agroforestry. Landscape approaches that give all stakeholders – including women and minorities – a say in decision-making are simultaneously supporting social and economic development and ecosystem health. And policy makers and financial institutions are realizing the huge need and potential for green investment.
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The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021
The annual Sustainable Development Goals Report provides an overview of the world’s implementation efforts to date, highlighting areas of progress and areas where more action needs to be taken to ensure no one is left behind. While advances have been made in some areas, monumental challenges remain. The evidence and data spotlight areas that require urgent attention and more rapid progress to realize the 2030 Agenda’s far-reaching vision. This sixth edition of the report also looks at the impact of COVID-19 in reaching the Goals.
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Investigating Risks and Opportunities for Children in a Digital World
Children’s lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies. Yet, when it comes to understanding the long-term effects of internet use and online experiences on their well-being, mental health or resilience, the best we can do is make an educated guess. Our need for this knowledge has become even more acute as internet use rises during COVID-19. This report explores what has been learned from the latest research about children’s experiences and outcomes relating to the internet and digital technologies. It aims to inform policy-makers, educators, child-protection specialists, industry and parents on the best evidence, and it proposes a future research agenda.
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Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2021
The Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2021 analyses trends as well as data availability for monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia-Pacific and its five subregions. It assesses gaps that must be closed to achieve the goals by 2030. This assessment is designed to ensure that the region’s actions remain on target, shortcomings are addressed as they arise, and all interested parties remain engaged. This edition also explores the impact of COVID-19 on achieving the 2030 Agenda, with inputs from partner UN agencies.
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In Focus: Youth and World Heritage
Authors: Inès Yousfi and Pravali VangetiIn 2019, there were about 1.2 billion young people – age 15 to 24 – in the world, making up nearly 16 per cent of the global population. UNESCO has long worked with the conviction that the voice of young people matters in shaping a better future, especially at a time when we have to rethink radically the way we deal with our multifaceted heritage and its challenges.
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People-Smart Sustainable Cities
This publication advocates a “cities-based” approach to sustainable development which recognizes the central and integrating role that cities and urban living play in developing sustainability. It highlights that, similarly to the financial crisis of 2008, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has shown that different cities have different capacities to cope with crises. Both crises disproportionally affected different cities and population groups; the most vulnerable suffering most. Cities need to develop innovative methods to confront infectious diseases without relying on drastic lockdown restrictions.
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COVID-19: How Prepared are Global Education Systems for Future Crises?
This research brief is one of a series exploring the effects of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on education. It focuses on how school closures affect children and the resiliency of education systems to respond to such disruptions and mitigate their effect.
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Sustainable Development Outlook 2020
Author: United NationsThe setbacks caused by COVID-19 (coronavirus) need not be permanent, and it is possible to regain the momentum and move ahead towards the SDGs. It is even possible to convert the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for recovering better, by directing much of the resources earmarked for recovery toward investment in promoting the SDGs. While the impact of COVID-19 for many prosperity-related SDGs was negative, its impact for many planet-related SDGs has been positive: greenhouse gas emissions declined; air and water quality improved; and nature’s regeneration was witnessed in many areas. These opposite impacts revealed that current ways of achieving prosperity conflict with the health of the planet.
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World Youth Report 2020
Author: United NationsThe Report seeks to further the discussion on how youth social entrepreneurship can support youth employment and development while helping accelerate the implementation of the SDGs. To do so, the Report first presents social entrepreneurship and anchors it in the context of the 2030 Agenda. Then, the Report turns toward the situation of youth and examines weather youth social entrepreneurship can offer not only employment opportunities, but also support other elements of youth development such as youth participation. In the third chapter, the Report assesses the potential and the challenges of youth social entrepreneurship. The Report then examines the synergies between technologies and youth social entrepreneurship. The last chapter offers policy guidance to build enabling, responsive and sustainable national ecosystems for young social entrepreneurs.
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A Rapid Review of Economic Policy and Social Protection Responses to Health and Economic Crises and their Effects on Children
This rapid review seeks to inform the initial and long-term public policy responses to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, by assessing evidence on past economic policy and social protection responses to health and economic crises and their effects on children and families. The review focuses on virus outbreaks/emergencies, economic crises and natural disasters, which, like the COVID-19 pandemic, were 'rapid' in onset, had wide-ranging geographical reach, and resulted in disruption of social services and economic sectors, without affecting governance systems. Evidence is also drawn from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, due to its impacts on adult mortality rates and surviving children. The available evidence on the effects of economic policy and social protection responses is uneven across outcomes, regions, and type of policy response as a large body of literature focused on social assistance programmes. Future research on the COVID-19 pandemic can prioritize the voices of children and the marginalized, assess the effects of expansionary and austerity measures, examine the role of design and implementation, social care services, pre-existing macro-level health, demographic and health conditions and the diverse regional health and economic impacts of the pandemic. The paper also provides key lessons for public policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Shared Responsibility, Global Solidarity: Responding to the Socio-economic Impacts of COVID-19
Author: United NationsThis report is a call to action, for the immediate health response required to suppress transmission of the virus to end the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic; and to tackle the many social and economic dimensions of this crisis. It is, above all, a call to focus on people – women, youth, low-wage workers, small and medium enterprises, the informal sector and on vulnerable groups who are already at risk. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
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Protecting and Mobilizing Youth in COVID-19 Responses
Author: United NationsThe COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has resulted in severe economic and social impacts around the world. Young people are particularly vulnerable to the disruptions the pandemic has caused, and many are now at risk of being left behind in education, economic opportunities, and health and well-being during a crucial stage of their life development. Young people are more likely to be unemployed or to be in precarious job contracts and working arrangements, and thus, lack adequate social protection. At the same time, young people are responding to the crisis through public health promotion, volunteering and innovation. Young people will form a key element in an inclusive recovery and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during this Decade of Action. However, the response and recovery must be done in a way that protects the human rights of all youth.
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Realizing Youth Inclusion for a More Sustainable Asia and the Pacific
Author: United NationsThis report aims to broaden understanding of the multitude of institutional and sociocultural barriers youth face in realizing their potential. It uses findings revealed by a primary research project in six countries in the Asia-Pacific region covering over 10,000 youth aged 18-24, and providing a unique wealth of information from youth talking first-hand about their situation, concerns and hopes. Motivated by requests of ESCAP member States, the report aims to provide insight into the most pressing issues that affect youth inclusion in social, economic and civic domains. The findings are derived from analysing data collected through a comprehensive questionnaire and a series of focus group discussions in 12 cities in the six countries. However, relevance of the findings extends beyond the context of the areas surveyed. Throughout Asia and the Pacific significant numbers of youth are excluded from the impressive socioeconomic advances of recent decades. This report sheds light on these people and how they differ from those who are more privileged. The findings reveal that gender remains a large contributor to inequality, often restricting access to education and employment, and participation in political activities. Nevertheless, those of low wealth, ethnic minorities, certain castes or religious groups are often even more excluded from such spheres, while also receiving fewer opportunities to increase social and human capital, such as through access to associations and the Internet. The report considers the options many developing countries face as they seek to more effectively tap into the potential of youth and progress along the pathways delineated by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It further calls upon policymakers and other stakeholders to pay more attention to the evolving needs and aspirations of youth, and work closely with them, for a more prosperous, inclusive and shared future.
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Transformative Change for Children and Youth in the Context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Authors: Katja Hujo and Maggie CarterThe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a new opportunity to address the key development challenges of our time with the aim to improve the well-being and rights of all people while protecting the natural environment. Children are important agents and beneficiaries in this process: many children are not only among the most vulnerable groups affected by poverty, inequality, conflict and climate change, they are also the generation that will reach adulthood during the realization of the 2030 Agenda. To create the sustainable, long-term transformation ambitiously laid out in Agenda 2030, new transformative approaches to policy must be implemented and applied to children and youth—approaches that target the underlying generative framework of social injustice as opposed to implementing affirmative remedies that simply seek to alleviate the symptoms. The objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to help assess the transformative potential of policies – particularly with regard to their impact on children and youth – and how these are meaningfully integrated and represented in decision-making processes. It will shed light on the policy space for transformative change by analysing a range of relevant factors which present both challenges and opportunities for fostering child rights and well-being through the implementation of Agenda 2030. The paper then applies the framework to a selection of policy areas that are of high relevance for child development, such as social policy and care policy assessing necessary means of implementation such as resource mobilization and governance systems and looking at economic and environmental impacts in a cross-cutting way. The aim is to stretch boundaries and invite new thinking on how to grasp the numerous opportunities offered by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to approach development challenges holistically and from a child-centred perspective. This involves integrating economic, social and environmental dimensions of development and fostering cross-sectoral approaches.
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