World Children Day 2020 focuses on reimagine the type of world we want to create; a better future for every child. Learn more about this year’s theme and how each one of us can take part in World Children Day 2020 campaign.
Children will never accept a return to ‘normal’ after the pandemic because ‘normal’ was never good enough. Our post-pandemic rebuilding must meet the scale of this moment by overcoming our differences - and working across generations – to rebuild a world we want our children to grow up in. World Children’s Day must be a day to reimagine a better future, for every child.
After almost one year since the COVID-19 pandemic began, killing over 1 million people and putting futures into doubt, the impact of the virus onthe world’s children and young people is becoming clearer – and increasingly alarming.
Despite being less affected than any other age group, emerging data suggests that children and young people’s health may be more directly impacted by COVID-19 than originally anticipated when the crisis began in late 2019. Disruption to essential services such as education, healthcare, nutrition, and child protection interventions are harming children. A severe global economic recessions is impoverishing children and compounding deep-pre-existing inequalities and exclusion, as the most disadvantaged households struggle to cope with the damaging fallout from the loss of jobs, livelihoods, income, mobility, learning, health, and access to services.
What Needs to Happen
UNICEF is calling for A Six Point Plan to protect our Children, a list of urgent actions to mitigate the worst effects of the pandemic and a practical recovery plan to safeguard child rights now and to reimagine a better future. Children and young people will be living with the impacts of this pandemic for years to come.
This plan aims to bring the world back together around a common cause: the health and well-being of current and future generations and the full realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UNICEF is calling on government and partners to :
- Ensure all children learn, including by closing the digital divide.
- Guarantee access to health and nutrition services and make vaccines affordable and available to every child.
- Support and protect the mental health of children and young people and bring an end to abuse, gender-based violence, and neglect in childhood.
- Increase access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene and address environmental degradation and climate change.
- Reverse the rise in child poverty and ensure an inclusive recovery for all.
- Redouble efforts to protect and support children and their families living through conflict, disaster and displacement.
It is in our hands now to reimagine and deliver on a better future for children and young people coming of age during this first truly global emergency.
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