20 November is Universal Children’s Day. This year, it also marks the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
To honour the occasion, we asked more than 6,000 children in 44 countries about their hopes, dreams and concerns for children around the world. It’s an annual project we call Small Voices, Big Dreams. (We’ll be releasing the results of the survey on 20 November.)
This year, we also invited children in eight countries – Australia, Colombia, France, Laos, Paraguay, Timor-Leste, the US and Zambia €“ to take part in an accompanying video project about children’s rights. The film shows children penning their thoughts in a letter to world leaders.
ChildFund staff ran activities with children in each country to explore the concept of “respect” and what it means to have their rights respected, then worked with filmmaker Miguel Herrera to capture their views in a beautiful 3-minute video.
“We used participatory techniques that are similar to the ones we use in the ChildFund Connect program, which is about creating a safe space for the children to lead the discussion and express their views and concerns,” says ChildFund Australia`s digital program manager Raul Caceres.
“We started with a simple activity with prompters to get the children thinking not only about their own views but issues for children around the world. In the cases where children were not able to write, we used other tools such as drawing or video cameras for them to interview each other to contribute their ideas.”
The children also took part in a role-play activity where they had to imagine a world leader had come to their school to ask children what they need to make the world a better place. After spending time discussing and thinking through their ideas, they produced letters or drawings addressed to world leaders covering issues ranging from war and peace, racism, violence and abuse to education, the environment and feeling loved and protected.
“The children had some very powerful things to say,” says Raul. “We hope people will take a few minutes to watch the video and help us share it far and wide on Universal Children’s Day.”
Help us share this video on 20 November by joining our Thunderclap!
Thank you to Mario Lagos of creative agency Lowe and Partners who donated time to this project.
UNICEF has released its latest report on child survival. The 2014 Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed progress report is the second in a series intended to track progress on child survival and hold Governments accountable to their promise of reducing by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate between 1990 and 2015, a promise that was renewed by world leaders in 2012.
The report finds that globally, major progress has been made in improving child survival. The lives of almost 100 million children under age 5 have been saved over the past two decades, including 24 million newborns. Despite these advances, the toll of under-five deaths over that same period is staggering: between 1990 and 2013, 223 million children worldwide died before their fifth birthday.
Some highlights from the report:
The under-five mortality rate globally has declined by almost half since 1990. The absolute number of under-five deaths was also cut in half during the same period, from 12.7 million to 6.3 million, saving 17,000 lives every day. Despite this, progress is insufficient to meet the target of reducing by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate by 2015. If current trends continue in all countries, the target will only be reached globally by 2026.
Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria make up about one-third of all under-five deaths. Although child deaths from leading infectious diseases have declined significantly, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria were still the main killers of children in 2013. Importantly, neonatal deaths account for 44% of all under-five deaths.
The lives of 24 million newborns have been saved since 1990. The worldwide neonatal mortality rate fell by 40 per cent between 1990 and 2013. Yet despite the availability of effective, proven strategies to prevent newborn deaths, 2.8 million babies still died in the first month of life in 2013, largely of preventable causes.
For 1 million babies every year, their day of birth is also their day of death, accounting for more than a third of neonatal deaths. Close to 2 million newborns die in the first week of life. Investments in maternal care, specifically labour and delivery care and other high-impact interventions focused on the 24 hours around the time of birth, hold the greatest potential for reducing neonatal mortality.
Investments in educating girls and high-quality care for mother and baby are critical for child survival. Neonatal mortality rates of babies born to mothers with no education are nearly twice as high as those babies born to mothers with secondary education or higher. And while we know that complications during labour are responsible for around one-quarter of all neonatal deaths, in 2012, one in three babies, an estimated 44 million newborns, entered the world without the help of a skilled health care provider, putting them at even greater risk during this most vulnerable time.
Read the full report here.
