What we do

In Senegal, UNICEF works every day to give children a good start in life, an opportunity to learn, protection against violence and abuse, and a chance to break the cycle of poverty.

Our programmatic focus is on the whole child, particularly the most marginalized children. Special attention is also given to adolescents and youth.

We do this by working ‘upstream’ to build an enabling national policy and legislative environment for child rights, and ‘downstream’, with a focus on parts of the country and population groups that are the most vulnerable and under-served by essential social services. 

Our programmes are run in the following areas:

• Child survival and development: we support interventions in health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene and early childhood development, that contribute to women’s health and the survival and development of newborns, children, adolescent girls and boys.
• Early learning and quality basic education: To ensure that all children, especially girls have access to quality education, we support pre-primary, primary, secondary and non-formal education to offer inclusive and gender-sensitive education.
• Child protection: we focus on building a protective environment for children, in particular girls, against violence, abuse and harmful practices, and on promoting birth registration.
• Equity, governance and social policies: we aim to contribute to reducing poverty, vulnerability and inequity in access to basic social services for children and adolescents.

UNICEF seizes opportunities to work on emerging challenges that affect children such as climate change or the multiple challenges faced by adolescents and young people.

Partnerships are key to advancing social change and advocating for children’s rights. UNICEF works with a wide range of national and local partners, as well as implementing joint initiatives with other UN agencies.

In addition, resources are leveraged from international development cooperation partners in accordance with the international principles and standards elaborated within the Paris Declaration.