Children and young people across Europe are growing up in a world shaped by climate change, environmental degradation, and health inequalities.

Globally, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death among adolescent girls aged 15–19 years. In Zambia, nearly three in ten adolescent girls have begun childbearing, with rates as high as 35% in rural areas.

The objective of this narrative review of the literature was to present a detailed understanding of unintended adolescent pregnancies and explore the factors associated with these pregnancies, their consequences, and any gaps identified in the extant literature.

In this report, UNICEF has conducted both a mapping of indicators and a new analysis of data on violence against children (VAC) prevalence and incidence across the region.

The global community committed to end all forms of violence against children by 2030. But the Europe and Central Asia region - and the world as a whole - are not on track to keep this promise to children.

Despite recent policy reforms, such as Education Circular No. 2 of 2021 and the Secondary Education Quality Improvement Programme (SEQUIP) initiative, aimed at facilitating school re-entry, adolescent mothers continue to face considerable emotional, financial, and institutional challenges.

Condom education campaigns that aim to prevent early and unintended pregnancies can be undermined by local gender norms, religious edicts and ineffective sexuality education policies. In some schools in Ghana, both condom education and abstinence only education run concurrently.

Adolescents in Nigeria face significant sexual and reproductive health risks, yet the effectiveness of existing sexuality education programs remains uncertain. Addressing these gaps is critical to improving adolescent health outcomes.

Poverty reduction and nutrition are often joint outcomes of many public policies and programs which have education as their primary outcome. Quantification of overall benefits for these programs in a common metric is challenging.

This report presents the findings of the Decentralized Evaluation (DE) of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Livelihoods and School Feeding Activities in Libya from 2019 to 2024.