Context: Recently, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has released the report “Averting a lost Covid generation”, which highlights significant and growing consequences of Covid-19 on children.

• Report titled: ‘Averting a Lost COVID Generation’.
• Aim: The report calls for averting a lost generation as COVID-19 threatens to cause irreversible harm to children’s education, nutrition and well-being.

Key highlights of the report

• Children and adolescents account for 1 in 9 reported COVID-19 infections.
• Around third of the 135 countries analysed witnessed a drop of at least 10% in coverage of health services and there was a 40% decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children.
• The number of children living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water – is estimated to have soared by 15% or an additional 150 million children by mid-2020.

Key Recommendations

• Ensure all children learn by closing the digital divide.
• Guarantee access to nutrition and health 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 safe drinking 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.

Additional Facts

About United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 

• It was formerly known as United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund is special program of UN devoted to aiding national efforts to improve the health, nutrition, education, and general welfare of children.
• It was created in 1946 to provide relief to children in countries devastated by World War II.
• It is headquartered in New York City.
• After 1950, it directed its efforts toward general programs for improvement of children’s welfare, particularly in less-developed countries and various emergency situations.
• Its broader mission was reflected in present name adopted in 1953.
• It was awarded Nobel Prize for Peace in 1965.
• Since 1996 UNICEF programs have been guided by Convention on Rights of the Child (1989), which affirms right of all children to enjoyment of highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health.
• Much of UNICEF’s efforts are concentrated in areas in which relatively small expenditures, but have significant impact on lives of the most disadvantaged children, such as the prevention and treatment of disease.
• Its activities are financed by both government and private contributions.
• It supports immunization programs for childhood diseases and programs to prevent spread of HIV/AIDS.
• It also provides funding for health services, educational facilities and other welfare services.