World Children’s Day 2024: listen to the future, stand up for children’s rights

World Children’s Day, established in 1954 and observed on 20 November, marks the UN’s adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989.

To uphold child rights is to invest in a better world, one where children are protected, provided for, and can participate in decisions that affect their lives.

This World Children’s Day, we want to shine a spotlight on ways our network is actively promoting and protecting children’s rights and wellbeing around the world.

17 promises to children

With only six years remaining to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress has stalled and, in some areas, declined. Save the Children’s report, Racing Against Time: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals with and for children, finds that most countries are off-track to achieve key SDG promises for children.

Analysis includes reports from children in five countries piloting a Children’s Scorecard forChild Rights and Sustainable Development. The children’s scorecards revealed that children prioritise inclusion and reducing inequalities, their right to participate in decision-making and solution-finding, and solutions that reflect the interconnectedness of the SDGs.

Progress towards the SDGs has also fallen short of the pledge world leaders made that “no one will be left behind […] and we will endeavour to reach the furthest behind first”, with inequalities becoming even more entrenched. Children with disabilities are already marginalised. Compared with their peers without disabilities, they are 49% more likely to have never attended school, 34% more likely to be stunted, and 41% more likely to feel discriminated against.  Watch Able Child’s panel discussing why, if we want to radically improve the lives of children with disabilities, the global community cannot afford to fall behind in the implementation of the SDGs.

Investing in children

We know that investing in children transcends generations, providing huge returns for society. Yet, we are seeing a consistent trend of underinvestment in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) targeting children.

Earlier this year, World Vision published research that found for every US dollar invested in children, there is a return of US$10 in wider benefits. Despite this, the research also revealed that, globally, only 12% of ODA relates to children. Read more about the transformative potential of investing in children in their report, ‘Putting Children First for Sustainable Development’.

Next week, UNICEF UK will publish new research showing that child-focused bilateral ODA has been disproportionately impacted by cuts since 2019, recommending the adoption of a new strategic approach to child rights in UK international development and reversing the cuts to child-critical services.

Lack of investment in children is seen acutely in the education sector. Over the past decade, the UK’s funding for global education has dropped from 13.5% in 2013 to just 3.5% of ODA in 2023. In their briefing, Invest in My Friends’ Learning, the Send My Friend to School Coalition calls on the UK government to recommit an increased proportion of ODA to education, prioritising the most marginalised learners, fully-funding education multilaterals, supporting global tax reform to grow domestic budgets and taking action on debt.

The world through the eyes of girls

At the current rate of progress, gender equality will take a further five generations to achieve, with girls’ rights under critical threat from embedded and harmful social norms, funding cuts, the rise of the anti-rights movement and the brunt they bear within conflict and climate crises.

Plan International’s State of the World’s Girls Report 2024 looks at the gendered dimensions of conflict, emphasising the neglected needs and rights of girls and young women. Over 10,000 children and young people participated in the research from ten countries. The research highlights the importance of understanding the varied experiences of girls and young women across different conflicts, contexts and identities.

Action Aid’s Girl-Led Research is shifting power to adolescent girls as primary researchers, using an intersectional feminist and decolonial approach. This collaborative participatory action research project, conducted in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, addresses a crucial research gap by focusing on adolescent girls’ unique perspectives, often overlooked in studies centred on children or adult women. Building on a previous report, adolescent girls led every research phase, shaping questions, collecting and analysing data, and developing solutions to address the root causes of injustice. Action Aid will launch a new report, ‘Shifting the Power: Advancing Girl-Led Research’ in January 2025.

Protecting children’s psychosocial wellbeing

Crises can be extremely harmful for children’s brain development, wellbeing, and learning. In a world changing so rapidly, with increasing conflict, and unpredictable threats linked to rapidly advancing technologies, it is important that our concern for children’s rights extends to ensuring protection of their psychosocial wellbeing.

SOS Children’s Villages’ Global Report on Children’s Care and Protection explores child-family separation, a widespread issue with detrimental long-term consequences for children’s development and wellbeing, violating their right to be cared for in a family environment. The report seeks to fill a global knowledge gap regarding child-family separation in middle and low-income countries, the contexts of which are not well understood. The research adopts a child-centred approach to value the lived experiences and voices of the children and families impacted by separation that are largely missing in current studies.

The right to play, enshrined in the UNCRC, reflects the unique role of play for children’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social development, and how it helps children make sense of the world around them. Right to Play’s policy brief, Promoting Psychosocial Wellbeing Through the Power of Play, emphasises the importance of integrating play into educational and humanitarian responses to support children affected by crises, especially refugee, internally displaced and host community children. Children’s psychosocial wellbeing is largely overlooked in bilateral aid spending and remains one of the most underfunded areas of humanitarian assistance.

This World Children’s Day we celebrate children’s rights as universal, interdependent, and undeniable. If you are a champion for children’s rights or would like to learn more, we would love to meet you in the Bond Child Rights Working Group.