My Son Was Little and Now He All Grown Up Went to War and I Never Saw Him Again

An open letter to the globe's children

8 reasons why I'thousand worried, and hopeful, about the next generation.

Love children of today and of tomorrow,

Thirty years agone, against the backdrop of a changing world guild – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reject of apartheid, the nascency of the world broad web – the world united in defence force of children and childhood. While nearly of the world's parents at the fourth dimension had grown upwards nether dictatorships or failing governments, they hoped for amend lives, greater opportunities and more rights for their children. So, when leaders came together in 1989 in a moment of rare global unity to brand a historic commitment to the world's children to protect and fulfil their rights, at that place was a real sense of promise for the next generation.

So how much progress have we made? In the 3 decades following the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in spite of an exploding global population, we have reduced the number of children missing out on primary school by most 40 per cent. The number of stunted children under v years of historic period dropped by over 100 million. 3 decades ago, polio paralyzed or killed about 1,000 children every day. Today, 99 per cent of those cases have been eliminated. Many of the interventions backside this progress – such every bit vaccines, oral rehydration salts and amend nutrition – have been practical and price-effective. The rise of digital and mobile technology and other innovations have made information technology easier and more efficient to deliver critical services in hard-to achieve communities and to aggrandize opportunities.

Yet poverty, inequality, discrimination and altitude continue to deny millions of children their rights every year, as 15,000 children under 5 still die every day, more often than not from treatable diseases and other preventable causes. We are facing an alarming rise in overweight children, simply likewise girls suffering from anaemia. The stubborn challenges of open defecation and child marriage continue to threaten children's wellness and futures. Whilst the numbers of children in school are college than e'er, the challenge of achieving quality teaching is not being met. Being in school is not the aforementioned as learning; more than 60 per cent of primary schoolhouse children in developing countries notwithstanding fail to achieve minimum proficiency in learning and one-half the earth'due south teens face violence in and around school, then it doesn't feel like a place of prophylactic. Conflicts continue to deny children the protection, health and futures they deserve. The list of ongoing child rights challenges is long.

And your generation, the children of today, are facing a new ready of challenges and global shifts that were unimaginable to your parents. Our climate is changing beyond recognition. Inequality is deepening. Technology is transforming how we perceive the globe. And more families are migrating than e'er before. Babyhood has changed, and we demand to alter our approaches along with it.

So, as we await dorsum on 30 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we should also look ahead, to the adjacent 30 years. We must listen to you – today'south children and young people – about the issues of greatest business concern to you at present and brainstorm working with you lot on twenty-outset century solutions to twenty-commencement century issues.

With that in mind, hither are eight reasons why I'm worried for your hereafter, and eight reasons why I call up there is promise:

Why I'thousand worried:

It sounds obvious that all children need these nuts to sustain healthy lives – a clean environment to alive in, clean air to breathe, h2o to drink and food to eat – and it sounds strange to be making this indicate in 2019. Still climate change has the potential to undermine all of these bones rights and indeed well-nigh of the gains made in kid survival and evolution over the past 30 years. There is perchance no greater threat facing the rights of the next generation of children.

The Food and Agriculture Organization noted last yr that climate change is condign a key force backside the recent continued rising in global hunger, and as escalating droughts and flooding degrade nutrient production, the next generation of children volition bear the greatest burden of hunger and malnutrition. We are already seeing show of extreme conditions events driven by climate change creating more than frequent and more destructive natural disasters, and while future forecasts vary, according to the International Organization for Migration, the most frequently cited number of environmental migrants expected worldwide by 2050 is 200 million, with estimates as high every bit 1 billion.

Every bit temperatures increase and water becomes scarcer it is children who will experience the deadliest touch of waterborne diseases. Today, more than half a billion children live in areas with extremely high overflowing occurrence and almost 160 million in high-drought severity zones. Regions like the Sahel, which are specially reliant on agriculture, grazing and angling, are especially vulnerable to the furnishings of climate change. In this barren region, rains are projected to get even shorter and less predictable in the future, and alarmingly, the region is warming upwardly at a rate i and a half times faster than the global boilerplate. In the Sahel, the climate gets hotter and the poor get poorer, and it is all as well common for armed groups to exploit the social grievances that arise under such pressurized conditions.

These challenges volition but be compounded past the impact of air pollution, toxic waste product and groundwater pollution damaging children's health. In 2017 approximately 300 meg children were living in areas with the about toxic levels of outdoor air pollution – half dozen or more times higher than international guidelines, and it contributes to the deaths of around 600,000 children under the age of v. Even more volition suffer lasting damage to their developing brains and lungs.

And, by 2040, one in four children will live in areas of farthermost water stress and thousands will be made sick by polluted water. The direction and protection of make clean, plentiful, accessible groundwater supplies, and the management of plastic waste are very fast condign defining child health issues for our time.

Why there is hope:

To mitigate climate modify, governments and business must work together to tackle the root causes by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Understanding. Meanwhile, we must requite the highest priority to efforts to find adaptations that reduce environmental impacts on children.

UNICEF works to curb the touch of farthermost weather events including by designing water systems that can withstand cyclones and saltwater contamination; strengthening school structures and supporting preparedness drills; and supporting customs health systems. Innovations such as Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) schemes – if deployed at scale – could preserve reservoirs of clean h2o to protect millions of children from the dangers of h2o scarcity and disease.

Fifty-fifty in complex environments like the Sahel, there is hope – it has a immature population, hungry for work and opportunity, and the climate offers vast potential for harnessing renewable, sustainable energy sources. With investment in education and employment opportunities, improved security and governance, there is every reason to experience optimism for the region's ability to develop climate alter resilience and adaptation.

To turn the tide on air pollution, governments and business must piece of work hand in mitt to reduce fossil fuel consumption, develop cleaner agronomical, industrial and transport systems and invest in scaling renewable energy sources. Many governments have taken action to adjourn pollution from power plants, industrial facilities and road vehicles with strict regulations. A 2011 study by the Us Environmental Protection Agency found that the country'due south 1990 Clean Air Act had delivered US$thirty of health benefits to citizens for every US$1 spent. Such policies hold the key to protecting footling lungs and babies' brains from damaging airborne pollutants and particulate matter.

In the meantime, information technology is vital that we search for solutions that can ameliorate the worst furnishings of air pollution on child wellness. Mongolia'south uppercase city Ulaanbaatar has amongst the most polluted air in the globe during winter. The biggest source of pollution comes from coal-burning used by lx per cent of Ulaanbaatar's population. UNICEF innovation experts together with the customs, government, academia and the private sector have begun to design and implement energy efficiency solutions for traditional homes to reduce coal consumption and improve air quality, including past designing "the 21st Century Ger".

And we are finding ways to recycle and reuse plastics in innovative means too, reducing toxic waste and putting rubbish to practiced use. Conceptos Plasticos, a Colombian social enterprise, has adult a technique to make bricks out of non-PVC plastics that are cheaper, lighter and more durable than conventional bricks – and is using them to build classrooms. Africa'southward first recycled plastic classroom was built earlier this twelvemonth in Côte d'Ivoire, in only a few weeks. It price 30 per cent less than traditional classrooms. This innovative approach of transforming plastic waste product into construction bricks has the potential to turn a plastic waste material management claiming into an opportunity, by addressing the right to an teaching with the structure of schools, empowering these communities and cleaning up the surround at the same fourth dimension.

Why I'one thousand worried:

Children accept ever been the commencement victims of war. Today, the number of countries experiencing conflict is the highest it has ever been since the adoption of the Child Rights Convention in 1989. 1 in iv children now alive in countries affected by violent fighting or disaster, with 28 million children driven from their homes past wars and insecurity. Many lose several years of school – too equally records of achievements and qualifications for future learning and careers. Conflicts and natural disasters accept already disrupted learning for 75 million children and immature people, many of whom accept migrated beyond borders or been displaced. That is a personal tragedy for every single child. To abandon the aspirations of a whole generation is a terrible waste of human potential. Worse, creating a lost, disillusioned and angry generation of uneducated children is a unsafe risk that could cost us all.

Why at that place is hope:

Some states have demonstrated effective policies to go on refugees learning. When big numbers of children escaping the war in the Syrian Arab Commonwealth arrived in Lebanon, the regime faced the challenge of all-around hundreds of thousands of children in a public-school system already nether strain. With the support of international partners, they turned that challenge into an opportunity and integrated refugee children into schools while strengthening the didactics system for Lebanese students at the same time.

And digital innovations can assistance usa do more than. UNICEF is collaborating with Microsoft and the Academy of Cambridge to develop a 'learning passport' – a digital platform that will facilitate learning opportunities for children and young people within and beyond borders. The learning passport is being tested and piloted in countries hosting refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons. A digitally inclusive earth should allow young people, no matter their situation, to get access to education. Scaling up solutions like the digital learning passport could help millions of displaced children gain the skills they need to thrive.

Why I'yard worried:

If we believed everything we read nigh teenagers today, and the images portrayed in television and motion-picture show, we could exist forgiven for thinking they are a wild, antisocial agglomeration. Yet nothing could exist further from the truth. The evidence actually shows that teens today smoke less, drink less, get into less problem and mostly have fewer risks than previous generations. You might fifty-fifty call them Generation Sensible.

All the same at that place is one area of take a chance for adolescents showing an extremely worrisome trend in the wrong direction – one that reminds us of the invisible vulnerability that young people still behave inside of them. Mental health disorders among under 18s have been rising steadily over the past 30 years and depression is now amidst the leading causes of inability in the young. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 62,000 adolescents died in 2016 because of cocky-impairment, which is at present the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 15 –19.

This is not only a rich country problem – WHO estimates that more 90 per cent of adolescent suicides in 2016 were in depression or middle-income countries. And while young people with astringent mental disorders in lower-income countries oftentimes miss out on treatment and back up, there is no land in the world that can claim to take conquered this challenge. To quote the WHO's mental health expert Shekhar Saxena, "when it comes to mental health, all countries are developing countries." With most low-income and middle-income countries spending less than 1 per cent of their full health budget on mental health, and high-income countries but iv–five per cent, it is articulate that information technology needs greater priority effectually the world.

UNICEF works with children who accept suffered unthinkable traumas, gender discrimination, extreme poverty, sexual violence, disability and chronic disease, living through disharmonize and other experiences that identify them at high risk of mental distress. The cost is not only personal, it is societal – the Earth Economical Forum consistently ranks mental health equally having one of the greatest economic burdens of whatsoever non-communicable health issue. Despite this overwhelming bear witness of a looming crunch and the alarming trends in rising self-harm and suicide rates, adolescent mental wellness and well-being accept ofttimes been overlooked in global wellness programming.

Why there is hope:

With half of lifetime mental health disorders starting before age 14, age-appropriate mental health promotion, prevention and therapeutic treatment and rehabilitation must be prioritized. Early detection and handling are key to preventing episodes of mental distress reaching a crisis bespeak and precious young lives being damaged and lost. But all too frequently, what stands in the fashion of immature people seeking help at an early phase is the ongoing stigma and taboo that prevents communities talking openly about mental wellness problems. Fortunately, this taboo is commencement to autumn, and young people, one time once more, are leading the way – founding non-governmental organizations, developing apps, raising sensation, and being song about their own struggles with mental affliction and their efforts to address their condition, in hope that others experience empowered to practise the same.

UNICEF uses campaigns in schools to promote open word about mental health. For example, in Kazakhstan, which has one of the highest suicide rates among adolescents worldwide, UNICEF stepped up efforts to improve the mental well-being of adolescents through a large-calibration pilot plan in over 450 schools. The programme raised sensation, trained staff to identify high-take chances cases, and ensured referral of vulnerable adolescents to wellness specialists. Nearly l,000 young people participated in the pilot with many significant improvements in well-being. The program has since been scaled up to over three,000 schools.

The prioritization of adolescent mental health promotion and suicide prevention has resulted in a 51 per cent decrease of self-injury mortality in the 15 –17 years age grouping at the national level and the number of suicide cases decreased from 212 in 2013 to 104 in 2018 for this age group. And perchance most importantly, mental health is at present being integrated into mainstream chief health care services, helping to overcome the stigma which oft puts young people off from seeking help.

Why I'yard worried:

Migration has been part of the man feel throughout history. For thousands of years, children and families have left their identify of birth to settle in new communities in search of educational or employment opportunities. Today is no dissimilar. We live in a mobile world in which at least 30 million children have moved across borders.

For many, migration is propelled by a drive for a amend life. Simply for too many children, migration is non a positive choice but an urgent necessity – they simply practise not have the opportunity to build a safe, salubrious and prosperous life in the place they are built-in. When migration is driven by desperation, information technology can pb to children migrating without the legal permissions they need, becoming and so-called 'irregular migrants'. They often take perilous journeys across deserts, oceans and armed borders, encountering violence, corruption and exploitation on the fashion.

And i of the greatest migrations the world has e'er seen is happening not across borders, but within borders, with millions migrating internally from rural to urban areas. In 1989, when the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted, the bulk of the world's children lived in rural areas. Today the bulk live in cities, and the urbanization rate is prepare to grow. Though urban residents on boilerplate enjoy better admission to services and opportunities, inequalities can be so big that many of the most disadvantaged children in urban areas fare worse than children in rural areas. For example, the poorest urban children in i in iv countries are more likely to die earlier their fifth altogether than the poorest children in rural areas. And the poorest urban children in 1 in 6 countries are less likely to complete primary school than rural children.

Why in that location is hope:

No child should feel forced to migrate from their domicile, yet until the root causes are addressed, the situation is unlikely to alter. That means tackling community and gang violence, strengthening protection systems so children can be safe in their communities, improving access to quality didactics and job opportunities, and making sure young people have the take a chance to gain the skills they need to build ameliorate – and safer – futures for themselves and their home countries.

UNICEF estimates that tens of thousands of children do migrate without legal permission, some with family and some alone, making them extremely vulnerable. It is essential that child migrants – legal or otherwise – have their rights upheld. Wherever they are, and whatsoever their story, migrant children are children first and foremost. Governments tin can protect child migrants past prioritizing the best interests of children in the application of immigration laws, and wherever possible, they must keep families together and utilise proven alternatives to detention, such as foster families or grouping homes – many governments are testing such approaches successfully.

The then-called urban advantage breaks downwards when nosotros look beyond averages and control for wealth, so social policies and programmes designed to support child survival and development must pay greater attending to the poorest and nigh marginalized urban children. Modernistic cities mostly offer ameliorate access to make clean h2o, health and social services, and educational opportunities. Thus, if city governments tin work to create inclusive access and equality of opportunity for the children in their cities, urban life could indeed provide a boost for child survival and evolution.

Why I'k worried:

Every child has a right to a legal identity, to nascence registration and a nationality. Just a quarter of you born today – almost 100,000 babies – may never take an official nascency certificate or qualify for a passport. If your parents are stateless, from a persecuted or marginalized community, or simply if yous live in a poor remote region, y'all may never exist given an identity or birth certificate. Y'all may fifty-fifty exist denied citizenship or have your citizenship stripped from y'all. This lack of formal recognition past whatever state means you lot may be denied health care, educational activity and other government services. After in life, the lack of official identification can hateful yous enter into marriage, dangerous work, or get conscripted into the armed forces before the legal age. As an unregistered or 'stateless' kid, you lot are invisible to the authorities – it's equally if you never existed.

For example, in the makeshift camps in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugee families accept fled seeking sanctuary, babies are born every day. A Rohingya babe is unlikely to have their birth registered and take a nationality conferred upon them, robbing them of this bones 'passport to protection' from the very first of life.

And there is another grouping of children today facing the threat of life without a clear legal identity and being left stateless. If you lot are an innocent kid born to a foreign fighter from an armed grouping, you may not have citizenship, or y'all may take your citizenship stripped from you. In the Syrian Arab Republic alone, UNICEF estimates that there are close to 29,000 foreign children, most of them under the age of 12, and an additional 1,000 children believed to be in Iraq, who may accept no civil documentation. They are at risk of condign stateless and invisible.

Why there is promise:

Registering children at nascency is the starting time pace in securing their recognition before the law, safeguarding their rights, and ensuring that any violation of these rights does not go unnoticed. The United nations has set a goal that every human on the planet will have a legal identity past 2030. UNICEF is supporting governments to work towards this goal, starting with registering all births.

For some children denied an official identity because of disagreements over their legal condition, the only real solution is a political one. UNICEF urges Member States to fulfil their responsibilities to protect everyone nether the age of 18 in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This includes children who are born to nationals from other states, who may be migrants, refugees or strange fighters – because children are children first and foremost.

In other circumstances, technology and innovative partnerships promise a way frontwards. In the Plurinational State of Bolivia, for example, TIGO – a nationwide telecommunications company – the Electoral High Tribunal and UNICEF worked to increase nascency registration in hospitals and health centres, resulting in registration at birth increasing by more than 500 per cent between 2015 and 2018. In Rwanda, the automated registering of children at birth in hospitals led to nascence registration increasing from 67 per cent in 2017 to fourscore.two per cent in 2018. Nosotros must urgently scale upwards programmes similar this to attain more children. This means dramatically expanding digital access to the about remote and vulnerable communities, and so registration systems can happen in existent-time.

Why I'1000 worried:

There are more than than ane.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world, one of the largest cohorts in human history. Also often, they lack access to an instruction that will prepare them for contemporary task and business organisation opportunities – giving them the skills and outlook they demand for a twenty-first century economy. Meanwhile, in the past xxx years, relative income inequality between countries has reduced, but accented income inequality has increased significantly, so that some children and families with depression incomes are left behind and miss out on the opportunities their richer peers savour. Moreover, mobility has stalled over the terminal 30 years, miring another generation in a poverty trap determined entirely past the family unit she or he is born into.

Why there is hope:

UNICEF and our global partners accept launched a new initiative to ready young people to get productive and engaged citizens. Generation Unlimited aims to ensure every young person is in school, learning, preparation or employed by 2030. 1 plan in Argentina connects rural students in remote areas with secondary school teachers, both in person and online. An initiative in South Africa called TechnoGirl gives young women from disadvantaged backgrounds task-shadowing opportunities in the Stem fields. And in Bangladesh, tens of thousands of immature people are receiving training in trades such every bit mobile-telephone servicing. Through our Youth Challenge, nosotros are bringing together bright immature minds to solve issues in their communities, because immature people are experts in their own lives and experiences. The Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge has worked with more 800 innovators across sixteen countries and produced innovative solutions such equally the SpeakOut mobile app, adult by immature people in North Macedonia as an anonymous way to reach out to peers for help with bullying, and The Red Code, a self-sustaining micro-entrepreneurial scheme from Pakistan, which helps immature women with both menstrual hygiene management and income generation.

Why I'm worried:

The world wide web was born in the same year every bit the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 30 years ago. Today information technology has radically changed the globe and reshaped childhood and adulthood alike. More than 1 in iii children globally are idea to be regular users of the internet, and as this generation grows up, that proportion is gear up to grow and grow.

Debates about the benefits and dangers of social media for children are condign familiar, and more action to protect children from bullying and exposure to harmful content is certainly needed. Parent and children are also becoming enlightened of the risk of sharing too much personal information on social media. But the truth is, the information contained within social media profiles created past children are just the tip of the data iceberg. Less well understood just at least as important, is the enormous accumulation of data being collected about children. As children go well-nigh their daily online lives, browsing social media, using search engines, eastward-commerce and regime platforms, playing games, downloading apps and using mobile geolocation services, a digital footprint equanimous of thousands of pieces of data is accumulating around them. Some of the data may even have been gathered before birth and certainly earlier children are able to knowingly consent to its collection and employ.

The era of so-chosen 'big information' has the potential to transform – for the better – the provision of efficient, personalized and responsive services to children, but information technology also has potential negative impacts on their safety, privacy, autonomy and future life choices. Personal data created during babyhood may be shared with third parties, traded for profit or used to exploit immature people – particularly the about vulnerable and marginalized. Meanwhile, identity thieves and hackers have exploited vulnerabilities in eastward-commerce platforms to defraud and exploit adults and children alike; search engines track users' behaviour regardless of their age, and government surveillance of online activity is increasingly sophisticated around the world. Moreover, data collected during childhood have the potential to influence future opportunities, such as admission to finance, educational activity, insurance and wellness care. The relationship between information collection and usage, consent and privacy is complex enough for adults, but it is doubly and then for children, since the cyberspace has never been designed with children's rights and needs in listen, and few are equipped to navigate the complexities of data sharing and privacy control.

Likewise often, children do non know what rights they have over their ain data and practice not sympathise the implications of their data utilise, and how vulnerable information technology can leave them. Privacy terms and conditions on social media platforms are often barely understood by highly educated adults, let lone children. An analysis from The New York Times, showed that many social media privacy policies crave a reading comprehension level that exceeds that of the boilerplate college educatee, meaning many users, especially the very young, are probably consenting to things they can't fully understand.

Why there is hope:

The challenge facing us all today is to ensure that we design systems that maximize the positive benefits of big data and bogus intelligence, while preserving privacy, providing protections from harm and empowering people – including children – to practice their rights. And nosotros are beginning to see action: governments are strengthening regulatory frameworks; private sector providers are recognizing their part; and educators are thinking about how to equip children with the tools to navigate the online world safely. It is a start.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it articulate that children accept a specific right to privacy and at that place is no reason this should not apply online. Contextualizing children'south correct to privacy within the full range of their other rights, best interests and evolving capacities, it is evident that children's privacy differs both in scope and application from adults' privacy and there is a strong argument that children should be offered even more robust protection.

Where children use social media they need to take real opt-in or opt-out opportunities in relation to how their data are used by the provider or other commercial interests, and the terms and conditions need to be clear and understandable to children. As some children take argued themselves, this might extend to deleting historical social media profiles for instance. Where data is collected almost children through tracking their online behaviours, information technology is crucial that clear, transparent and attainable privacy policies are fabricated available so that children have a meliorate chance of offering informed consent, can understand their rights and know what the intended usage of the collected data is. Equipping immature people with the knowledge and skills to claim their digital rights is essential.

Private sector internet service providers and social media platforms have a crucial role to play in strengthening protections for children. They must develop transparent, upstanding standards and implement heightened scrutiny and protection for the total range of information concerning children, including information on children's location and browsing habits and specially regarding their personal data.

And some new regulatory frameworks, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), represent a promising attempt at progress. The European union GDPR says that net users, including children, have the right to be provided with a transparent and clear privacy notice, which explains how their data will be candy, that they should be able to become a copy of their personal information and have incorrect information nigh them rectified.

Global Pulse is a United Nations initiative that explores how new, digital data sources and existent-time analytics technologies tin provide a meliorate agreement of changes in human well-existence and emerging vulnerabilities, with the potential to support development. Responding to legitimate concerns about privacy and data protection, in consultation with privacy experts, Global Pulse has developed a set of privacy principles which ensure transparency about the purpose of data use, protect individual privacy, acknowledge the need for proper consent for utilise of personal data and respect a reasonable expectation of privacy, while making all reasonable efforts to prevent any unlawful and unjustified re-identification of individuals.

Why I'm worried:

Every child has the correct to actively participate in their societies, and for many of you, your outset experiences of borough date will exist online. However, the majority of you will abound upward every bit natives of a digital environment that is saturated with misinformation and so-called 'false news,' which undermines trust and engagement with institutions and data sources. Studies indicate that many children and young people today accept a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction online and every bit a consequence, your generation is finding it more hard to know who and what to trust.

A United Kingdom Parliament-backed Commission on Fake News, run in partnership with Facebook, Start News and The Twenty-four hour period, plant that only a quarter of the children reading online news actually trust the sources they are reading. It is tempting to come across this as a positive sign of healthy disquisitional thinking skills at piece of work, but the same study also found that simply 2 per cent of children and young people in the United Kingdom take the critical literacy skills they demand to tell if a news story is real or fake. Worryingly, almost two thirds of teachers said they believe fake news is harming children'south well-beingness by increasing levels of anxiety and skewing children's' world view. And a study in the U.s.a. on schools from 12 states of the Us assessing 'borough online reasoning' – or the ability to judge the credibility of online information – plant that when evaluating data on social media, children and young people are easily duped.

We know the impact of misinformation is pernicious and has real-world impacts. For case, thousands of the current generation of parents have been misled by misinformation spread through social media and mobile messaging apps about the safety of vaccines, prompting a moving ridge of vaccine hesitancy and a worrisome resurgence of measles in high- and low-income countries alike, including French republic, India and the Philippines.

Misinformation campaigns have duped children into handing over money, giving abroad their data and existence groomed and exploited for sex. And in the past few years, we've seen how misinformation can skew democratic argue, voter intentions, and sow dubiety about other ethnic, religious or social groups – creating partitioning and unrest. This is a global issue, with reports emerging from countries as various as Brazil, Ukraine and the United States where  sophisticated disinformation campaigns have necessitated the teaching of 'Learn to Discern' classes in schools. And in Myanmar, it has been alleged that a misinformation campaign played a role in inciting horrific violence against the Rohingya minority.

This is only the tip of the post-truth iceberg. As the technology to deceive improves, and verifying content becomes more difficult, the potential for lowered trust in institutions and social discord grows exponentially. For example, with sophisticated video manipulation engineering using AI-generated synthetic media, it is becoming easier to distort and manipulate reality, making it seem as though individuals have said things they have not, in so-called 'deep fakes'. If these technologies accelerate, with no mitigating activeness to help the next generation root out fakes, they have the potential to fundamentally undermine confidence in science and medicine, erode cadre institutions and beliefs, split up communities, and pose a grave threat to our democracies.

We can no longer remainder on the naïve assurance that truth has an innate upper hand against falsehood in the digital era, and and so we must, every bit societies, build resilience confronting the daily deluge of falsity online. We should start by equipping young people with the power to empathize who and what they can trust online, so they can become active, engaged citizens.

Why there is hope:

At that place is some evidence to propose that adults should identify their trust in children and young people not to fall for fakes. A recent inquiry study published past the American Association for the Advancement of Scientific discipline establish that social media users over 65 shared most seven times as many manufactures from fake news domains as the youngest historic period group. While the reasons for this are as yet unexplained, it may indicate that a higher level of digital and media literacy amongst 'digital natives' acts equally a protective filter. Still, it is articulate nosotros demand to work harder to prepare savvy young citizens to resist manipulation and retain a trusting connection to reliable and verifiable data and institutional noesis.

While social media platforms appear to exist serious in their attempts to gainsay misinformation and piece of work with news organizations to clearly label trusted sources, we cannot rely on the supply side for solutions. Children have a right to an education that prepares them for the earth they will live in, and today, this includes much improved digital and media literacy, critical thinking and weighing upwardly evidence. The Director of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is including questions about distinguishing what is true from what is non true in the next round of the influential international PISA tests, seeing critical judgment equally a global competency, and similar initiatives could aid to mainstream teaching and training in digital literacy skills that could be among the most important for the side by side generation. Moreover, we must piece of work hard to build meaningful connections between young people and institutions, rebuilding trust, if we are to preserve democratic societies in the future.

A terminal give-and-take...

Finally, the biggest reason for hope is because yous – the children and young people of today – are taking the lead on enervating urgent activity, and empowering yourselves to learn about, and shape the world around yous. You are taking a stand at present, and nosotros are listening.

Simply as the children of 1989 have emerged as leaders of today, yous the children and immature people of 2019 are the leaders of the future. You inspire u.s.a..

We desire to work together with you to find the solutions you need to tackle the challenges of today, to build amend futures for yourselves and the earth you volition inherit.

Henrietta H. Fore
UNICEF Executive Manager

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Source: https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/open-letter-to-worlds-children

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