Press releases

Friday 13 November – Children and young people from the UK and around the world are set to join in virtual conversations with some of the world’s biggest celebrities in celebration of Unicef UK’s World Children’s Day, a day for children, by children on Friday 20 November.  

Measles surged worldwide in 2019 reaching highest number of reported cases in 23 years.  Highlighted in a publication by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), measles cases worldwide increased to 869,770 in 2019, the highest number reported since 1996 with increases in all WHO regions. Global measles deaths climbed nearly 50 percent since 2016, claiming an estimated 207,500 lives in 2019 alone. 

UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced today the launch of a tender inviting all COVID-19 vaccine developers to submit a proposal for supply in 2021.

More than seven months into the pandemic, the coronavirus is putting education on hold for more than 137 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean according to a new UNICEF report on the devastating impacts of the pandemic on education.   

5 November 2020 - Statement from Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

6 November 2020 – There has been an alarming spike in attacks on schools and education centers in the North- and South-West of Cameroon, UNICEF said today.

6 November 2020 – UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) today issued an urgent call to action to avert major measles and polio epidemics as COVID-19 continues to disrupt immunization services worldwide.

3 November 2020 – Hurricane Eta hit Nicaragua early Tuesday as a powerful Category 4 storm, potentially impacting 1,227,000 people.

29 October 2020 – Schoolchildren in low-and lower-middle-income countries have already lost nearly four months of schooling since the start of the pandemic, compared to six weeks of loss in high-income countries, according to a new report published today by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank.

28 October 2020 – Storm Molave, which today battered Viet Nam’s central coastal region, is one of the strongest storms to hit the country in 20 years, according to the country’s meteorological agency. Molave.

27th October 2020 - Statement from Jesper Moller, UNICEF Somalia Representative a.i.

27 October 2020 - UNICEF strongly condemns the attack on a religious school which took place in Peshawar earlier today, reportedly killing at least seven people and injuring more than 75 -- some of them children and teachers.

27 October 2020 – Acute malnutrition rates among children under five are the highest ever recorded in parts of Yemen, with more than half a million cases in southern districts, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Malnutrition analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.

22 October 2020 - All remarks have been checked against delivery.

22 October, 2020 - Widespread flooding and landslides in 5 provinces in central Viet Nam, have left more than 1.5 million children at risk of disease, poor nutrition and delayed development.

An estimated 1 in 6 children – or 356 million globally – lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic, and this is set to worsen significantly, according to a new World Bank Group-UNICEF analysis released today.

20 October 2020 – Three UN agencies are calling for greater stabilization efforts and assistance to the most vulnerable in Burkina Faso, Mali and the Niger.

The multiple crises converging in the Central Sahel, including a surge in armed violence and the socio-economic fallout from COVID-19, is worsening conditions for children in one of the world’s poorest, least-developed regions.