Publications

Between 2022 and 2025, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) supported 21 countries in advancing child rights and well-being amid overlapping crises, including conflict, displacement, disease outbreaks, climate shocks, and growing fiscal constraints. The region is home to 284 million children, many of whom continue to face significant challenges in health, nutrition, education, protection, and social inclusion.Despite these challenges, UNICEF and its partners contributed to important results. Regional efforts focused on strengthening primary health care and immunization systems, improving nutrition services and fostering healthier, more sustainable food systems, advanced foundational learning, promoted climate resilience, and supported more inclusive social protection systems.ESARO further strengthened evidence generation, emergency preparedness, child rights advocacy, disability inclusion, and strategic partnerships. Looking ahead, the report underscores the importance of investing in resilient systems, local partnerships, evidence-informed programming, and sustainable financing to accelerate results for the most vulnerable children. Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF's commitment to equity, the lessons and achievements documented in this report provide a foundation for advancing children's rights and ensuring that every child can survive, thrive, learn, and be protected.

Climate change is intensifying the education crisis across Eastern and Southern Africa, where learning poverty is already widespread and nine out of ten children aged 10 are unable to read for comprehension. Increasingly frequent and severe climate shocks – including floods, droughts, heatwaves and cyclones – are disrupting schooling, damaging learning environments, and undermining education systems’ ability to respond and recover. This UNICEF and Dalberg report presents the first regional estimates of the economic and non-economic loss and damage caused by climate change to education systems. Between 2005 and 2024, climate-related disruptions affected an estimated 130 million children, contributing to US$1.3 billion in direct damage to education systems and up to US$140 billion in projected lifetime income losses. Without urgent action, these impacts are expected to rise significantly, with hundreds of millions more children at risk of learning disruption by 2050. The findings highlight the urgent need to strengthen climate-resilient education systems and scale up financing to address loss and damage. Investing in resilience not only protects children’s right to learn, but also safeguards future human development and economic growth across the region.

This policy note examines the level of public spending on early childhood development (ECD) in Eastern and Southern Africa and finds persistently low levels of investment, alongside fragmentation and weak prioritization. Estimates from global databases show spending rose from the early 2000s to around 2014 following stronger policy attention and expanded service delivery, then plateaued at low levels. Detailed budget analysis shows that identifiable allocations are lower still and often minimal, especially for early learning and other non-health domains. This divergence between global data and visible budget book allocations reflects both measurement issues and structural weaknesses in how spending is organized across sectors. ECD financing is dispersed and inconsistently executed, and the full picture is obscured, limiting the ability to assess how much is truly being invested in early childhood. However, across both approaches, the underlying signal is consistent: spending patterns do not reflect strong evidence that early childhood investments generate the greatest impact on human capital development. The report reinforces calls to reprioritize and rebalance spending toward the early years, and notes that strengthening ECD investment requires clearer prioritization, better coordination across sectors, improved execution, and a clear focus on a limited set of high-impact interventions to better align spending with this high-return stage of human development.

Countries in Eastern and Southern Africa face repeated shocks and stresses, including political and economic instability, conflict, food insecurity, disease outbreaks and climate hazards including droughts, floods, and cyclones. Many populations experience both chronic and acute vulnerabilities that make them highly susceptible to the impacts of shocks and stresses. If underlying vulnerabilities are not adequately addressed, the risk of malnutrition increases, especially among young children and pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls (PBWGs), leading to increased risk of child morbidity and mortality, and negative impacts throughout the life cycle and into the next generation.The purpose of this guidance is to support UNICEF country offices, Governments, other United Nations agencies and implementing partners to develop context-specific packages of multi-sectoral interventions to prevent malnutrition in humanitarian settings in Eastern and Southern Africa. The guidance presents a list of possible interventions targeted at different stages of the life course, intended to run alongside the early detection and treatment of child wasting, in line with national, regional and global guidance. Possible enabling actions during preparedness, response and recovery phases are also listed, as well as tools to enable practical implementation. 

ARISE Africa Conference (11–13 November 2025, Addis Ababa) was a three-day continental convening that brought together African governments, regional bodies, civil society, survivor-led organisations, UN agencies and development partners to take stock of progress since the Bogotá Global Ministerial Conference and to accelerate Africa-led action to end violence against children. Convened by UNICEF, WHO and the African Child Policy Forum, the meeting focused on translating political commitments into practical, system-level action, with particular emphasis on safe schools, parenting and caregiver support, and integrated, survivor-centred protection systems, underpinned by stronger data, sustainable financing and regional accountability.This website hosts two key documents from the conference. The ARISE Africa Conference Report provides a comprehensive record of the discussions, country experiences, technical sessions and strategic implications across the three days, including annexes with the agenda and participant list. The ARISE Africa Outcome Statement (Addis Ababa Commitment) captures the collective commitments agreed by participants, outlining priority actions, milestones and accountability mechanisms that will guide Africa’s path towards ending violence against children.

Across Eastern and Southern Africa, many pregnant and parenting adolescents remain excluded from school despite growing commitments to their right to education. The Right to Return summarises findings from a 2025 regional review across 21 countries on the status and implementation of school re-entry policies. The brief highlights gaps between policy and practice, examines barriers such as stigma, resourcing and limited guidance, and identifies actions to strengthen education systems so that adolescent mothers can return to, remain in, and complete their education.

Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Eastern and Southern Africa continue to face a disproportionate burden of HIV, early and unintended pregnancy, and poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes—particularly during key life transitions such as leaving school, early pregnancy, migration, or exposure to violence.This implementation brief provides practical guidance on how programmes can more effectively identify, prioritize, and reach AGYW most in need of HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services. It outlines four complementary targeting approaches—geographical, risk-based, programme-based, and individual—supported by strong referral systems and data use.Drawing on regional expertise and country examples, the brief supports policy makers, programme planners, and implementers to translate evidence into targeted, adolescent-responsive action that maximizes impact in resource-constrained settings.

The brief on Financing Shock-Responsive Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa examines how governments can better prepare social protection systems to respond to climate, economic, and conflict-related shocks affecting millions of children across the region. It highlights that while many countries are making progress in designing shock-responsive social protection, most mechanisms are in an early stage of development and remain underfinanced. The brief outlines financing options including domestic budgets, contingency funds, insurance, and climate finance. It calls for stronger alignment between humanitarian, development, and climate financing. With aid declining and shocks intensifying, the report underscores the urgent need for sustainable, government-led financing to build resilient, nationally owned social protection systems capable of responding rapidly and effectively to crises.

A strong social service workforce (SSW) is the backbone of effective child protection systems. Across Eastern and Southern Africa, social service workers play a critical role in preventing and responding to violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children. Yet, the workforce remains underfunded and understaffed, limiting its ability to deliver essential services.To address this gap, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) has developed two key resources:A Policy Brief summarizing the rationale and approach for building an investment case for strengthening the SSW.A Synthesis Report providing a detailed guide to developing an investment case, drawing on lessons from Kenya and Zambia.These resources aim to support governments and partners in advocating for increased investment in the SSW, ensuring better protection and well-being for children across the region.

Across Eastern and Southern Africa, crises fueled by rising hunger, protracted conflict, climate shocks, mass displacement, and deepening funding cuts are driving humanitarian needs for children to unprecedented levels. The region is experiencing one of the world’s largest displacement crises, partly due to the conflicts in Sudan and the…, View the region’s individual appeals

Scaling what works for early childhood development: Compendium of good practices in ECD policies and programmes in Eastern and Southern Africa and beyond showcases inspiring examples of success stories in:Strengthening the delivery of multisectoral ECD services across the five components of nurturing care — good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, opportunities for early learning, and safety and security;Designing, implementing and enhancing ECD policies, strategies, financing, coordination and monitoring and evaluation frameworks;Mobilizing communities to support caregivers and promote the well-being of young children. While its primary focus is on the experiences of countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, this Compendium, produced with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, also draws on achievements from other regions, offering a rich source of adaptable lessons. Each featured practice demonstrates tangible results for children and holds strong potential for scale-up, providing a roadmap for those seeking to strengthen ECD systems and outcomes.

The East and Southern Africa Region is among the most affected in the world by climate change. According to UNICEF Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), 16 out of 21 countries in the region are classified as being at “high risk” or “extremely high risk” from the impacts of the climate crisis on children.Climate change has a profound impact on child protection. The climate crisis is increasingly recognized as a “threat multiplier,” exacerbating pre-existing challenges such as armed conflict, ongoing financial and socio-economic tensions, and increasing both the frequency and severity of shocks affecting vulnerable populations. It aggravates risk factors for violence, abuse, and exploitation—including poverty and social inequalities—while undermining protective systems provided by families, communities, and states. In many cases, it also triggers new crises, such as conflict and community tensions over scarce resources. Despite growing evidence of the links between climate change and child protection risk there is limited understanding of girls’ and boys’ experiences and perspectives on their lives and futures.UNICEF’s Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office launched a research initiative in 2022 to explore the intersection of climate change and child protection. Kenya was selected as the first of three countries for the study (data collection is ongoing in Madagascar and Ethiopia) due to the urgent need and opportunities to strengthen protection services in a context where teenage pregnancy, child marriage, and FGM remain significant concerns.Using a qualitative, participatory approach, this initial research gathered insights from more than 500 children, families, and key stakeholders to understand how environmental stressors influence protection risks and coping strategies. This report explores the threats and opportunities that girls, boys, and families face in specific settings and how these evolve throughout childhood—particularly during adolescence—as well as during a climate event and its aftermath. It examines the strategies these groups employ to mitigate threats and the strengths and resources they draw upon. Additionally, the study considers the interventions and services available to them and analyzes the factors that determine their effectiveness.