In every region of the world, COVID-19 has turned everything upside-down and inside-out. For many people, the pandemic is compounding all the other stressors and survival issues they face on a daily basis, with detrimental consequences to children and families. In Africa, the question has to be asked whether lockdown may be more dangerous to children than the virus itself.

In this webinar, Dr. Joan van Niekerk, child rights consultant and past president of ISPCAN, and Edith Kriel, executive director of Jelly Beanz, a South Africa-based NPO, will share the experiences of children living in under-resourced countries. Overarching strategies to respond adequately to these challenges will be addressed, including what children need to deal with the emotional consequences of the pandemic. As caregivers, communities, and child protection professionals, we all need to find effective ways to address the potential of a decades-long mental health impact.

In this webinar, UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti launches the third instalment of the Leading Minds Online webinar series What the Experts Say - Coronavirus and Children: Support for Families.

The webcast looks at how stimulus packages measure up and ask our expert panellists: In the rush to protect lives from the virus, who is protecting livelihoods, how? What does history tell us about previous global emergencies and fiscal crises for the present? Indeed, is the very future of social protection itself under threat as well as we hurtle towards an inevitable recession?

As a response to the COVID-19 crisis, child protection actors and service providers are exploring how they can continue to provide support to children and families remotely through the use of technology. This includes child helplines.

The Alliance, the CP AoR, Child Helpline International and UNICEF are co-hosting this webinar to introduce the new guidance note and provide an opportunity for participants to ask questions and share their experience.

This technical note has been developed with two main objectives:

• To provide practical guidance to child protection actors and service providers, including government departments, (I)NGOs, CSOs and UN agencies and child protection coordination groups on how they might provide support to children and families through a helpline service; or by collaboration with an existing national child helpline;
• To explore how existing child helplines can contribute to, and participate in, efforts to support children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic, through child protection mechanisms and systems. This includes expanding their services, and with a view to avoiding duplication.

The Permanent Missions of Norway, Argentina, Nigeria, Qatar, Spain, and Uruguay, together with the Global Coalition to Protection Education from Attack (GCPEA), are hosting a virtual event to examine the latest data on attacks on education and to mark the Fifth Anniversary of the Safe Schools Declaration.

The event will highlight the global scope and impact of attacks on education by presenting findings from the upcoming 2020 edition of GCPEA’s flagship report, Education under Attack*. In conflicts around the world, students and educators are deliberately and indiscriminately killed, injured, recruited, raped, and abducted at, and on the way to education institutions. Schools and universities are bombed and burned and used for military purposes. In addition to the loss of life, these attacks impede education, impacting long-term economic and social development.