14 November 2024

Failing Grades for Humanity?

Did you know that not only students like us get report cards, but even governments do? Last year at COP28, the world received its climate report card, and it is disheartening to see how we have failed to keep our promises to build a healthy and resilient planet. Imagine this was your report card day at school and ...
02 July 2024

Maria's Journey: Transforming Birth Registration Across Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Ermera is a picturesque province in the heart of Timor-Leste, surrounded by lush coffee plantations and dense vegetation. To reach it, involves a one and a half-hour drive from the capital, Dili, winding through a mountain pass that reaches an impressive altitude of 1,000 meters. Along the roadside, improvised fru...
17 November 2023

Child Sexual Exploitation in Online Gaming

Gaming is great fun. If it wasn’t, 1.7 billion people around the world wouldn’t be regularly gaming. Not only are games entertaining, they also help people connect, and even learn. Fast growth and rapid technological developments have reshaped online gaming, but also introduced significant new risks for children a...
12 October 2023

Digital solution offers hope to 2.5 million zero dose children

Jonaila, a curious two-year-old is yet to receive her first measles and rubella vaccination. One that should be given within the first 12 to 15 months of a baby’s life. She lives with her mother, in the Bangsamoro region in the Philippines which is home to 60 per cent of the country’s ‘zero dose’ children. Her m...
21 August 2023

The role of businesses in keeping children safe from disaster & climate impacts in East Asia Pacific

Year in year out, typhoons batter Faye’s hometown in the Philippines. Along with many others, she’s had to flee her home, abandon her belongings and rush to evacuation centers – unsure of what she and her family may come back to. In Fiji, Temo lost her house and school when a powerful cyclone made landfall. These ...
18 July 2023

A Pain That Resides in the Mind

Young people in East Asia and Pacific face significant mental health challenges, which have become even more apparent since the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescence is an important time in our lives, a time in which it is essential to spend time with peers, learn new things, explore and have fun. The pandemic caused maj...
12 May 2023

UNICEF East Asia and Pacific launches flagship research on children affected by migration in ASEAN

Until recently, children were invisible in migration literature. Migration was viewed as an adult experience, with child migrants typically being seen only as an extension of their parents. As a result, little is known about the unique realities of migration for children, or about the impact of migration policies ...
15 September 2022

Wasting in the East Asia and Pacific region

Wasting, also known as acute malnutrition, is when a child’s weight is too low for his or her height. “Children suffering from wasting are some of the most vulnerable children on the planet. They are the poorest of the poor, the youngest of the young, and often left behind by mainstream development. Without treat...
09 November 2021

Sacrificing children’s health for corporate wealth

A generation of children in East Asia and the Pacific is growing up surrounded by advertisements and promotions for food and drink. Images of oversized burgers and ice-cold drinks jostle for space in shopping malls, on public transport and TV, at sports events, in schools and increasingly on social media. The prom...
22 July 2021

Dump the junk

Deakin University logo In the East Asia and Pacific region, obesity-promoting environments are driving an epidemic of child overweight and obesity through the increasing promotion and sale of unhealthy food and drink. Food retail businesses play an important role in shaping the food retail environment through thei...
28 June 2021

The child obesity crisis

Alongside the Covid-19 epidemic, another alarming but less noticed epidemic has taken hold in the East Asia and Pacific region: an epidemic of child overweight and obesity. We are witnessing a transition from active lifestyles and traditional healthy fresh food diets to ever increasing consumption of highly proces...
10 June 2021

Protecting children from the economic impact of COVID-19 on small businesses

Businesses play a crucial but often overlooked role in shaping the world in which children live – through their actions, influence and command of resources., Businesses produce and deliver many vital products and services for child development, sometimes alongside government, as in the case of education and health...