Speaking Out for Child Rights

With 60 years of experience, and a presence in 191 countries and territories, UNICEF is uniquely able to speak out about the reality of life for children worldwide.

UNICEF exists to ensure the protection of children's rights worldwide, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.

One stepping stone to achieving child rights is the promotion of gender equality, so that girls and boys have equal rights to health care, education, decision-making and employment. Another is the protection of the rights of women, so that mothers are better able to protect their children and influence how children are cared for.

UNICEF works on the ground with children and families,  but we also increasingly seek to influence and work alongside decision makers and policy makers.  To support this, we publish findings from our emergency and development work and conduct research into the situation of children and child rights worldwide. We debate and discuss our findings with like-minded organisations in civil society and with policy makers and government.

Children and young people however do not only want to be talked about, they have ideas and valuable recommendations to make themselves. UNICEF believes in the right of children to be heard, and we actively seek to give children and young people a voice in public debates. In the summer of 2006, for example, children addressed the world leaders at the G8 Summit in St Petersburg.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, form the legal foundations for UNICEF’s protection work.

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre

Research into children's rights and issues is needed by all who seek to advance humanity by nurturing and caring for children's progress. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (IRC) in Florence, Italy, was established in 1988 to strengthen the capacity of UNICEF and its cooperating institutions to respond to the evolving needs of children and to develop a new global ethic for children.

It promotes the effective implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in both developing and industrialized countries, thereby reaffirming the universality of child rights and of UNICEF's mandate.

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