United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
UNICEF is a United Nations humanitarian and development organization working for children. Its headquarters are located in New York. UNICEF mobilizes political and financial support to ensure that countries—especially developing ones—provide children and their families with access to essential services: healthcare, education, water, and sanitation (Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, WASH), and protection in emergency situations. The organization played an important role in the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
UNICEF collects, analyses, and shares reliable data on the situation of children and women worldwide. It runs programs such as MICS (Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys), which provide comparable information on children’s health, education, living conditions, and protection. Together with partners within the UN system, UNICEF contributes to global estimates in key areas (including child health and WASH), and through the UNICEF Data platform, it provides open access to datasets, indicators, and documented microdata for research purposes.
Poland’s public statistics system, with Statistics Poland as the national coordinator, provides UNICEF with statistical data on areas such as children’s health, education, and demographics. This ensures that indicators for Poland are included in UNICEF’s global datasets and reports, remain internationally comparable, and are used to monitor the 2030 Agenda as well as to develop national public policies.
Why is this important?
- Recognized standards for measuring child well-being (e.g., MICS and indicators for education, health, and WASH) facilitate the design of national surveys and ensure international comparability of results.
- Including Statistics Poland data in UNICEF’s database increases the international visibility of Polish child-related indicators and enables reliable and consistent cross-country comparisons.
- As part of implementing the 2030 Agenda, UNICEF co-manages selected child-related indicators, which streamlines SDG reporting and reduces the risk of data inconsistencies.
- UNICEF analyses in the areas of early warning and crisis response support rapid decision-making in social policy, public health, and education.
- Applying data quality and ethics principles for children (confidentiality protection, transparency of methods) enhances the credibility of and trust in official statistics.
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