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Our Featured Reports

Download our policy and research reports for insight into the issues affecting children right now.

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Visit our resource centre for more information on Child Protection, Child Rights Governance, Health & Nutrition, Education and Child Poverty.

Conflict and humanitarian

Blast Injuries: The impact of explosive weapons on children in conflict 
This report sets out what states need to do to prevent and mitigate the deadly impact of explosive weapons on children.

Stop the War on Children: Protecting Children in 21st Century Conflict
This report looks at the data on grave violations against children in conflict and calls for an independent body to investigate and analyse all violations of international humanitarian law and of human rights, notably children’s rights.

The War on Children: Time to end grave violations against children in conflict
Save the Children has joined forces with the Peace Institute Oslo (PRIO) to identify concerning trends in the safety and well-being of children in conflict-affected areas.

Hunger - A Lethal Weapon of War: The impact of conflict-related hunger on children
Save the Children’s analysis of child malnutrition in the world’s ten worst conflicts for children shows that in 2018, 590,000 children are likely to miss out on treatment and to die as a result of hunger. 

Healing the Invisible Wounds of War: A roadmap for addressing the mental health needs of children and young people affected by conflict
Sets out the priority pathways needed, likely challenges, solutions and necessary collaborations for scaling up mental health and psychosocial support programming for children and adolescents affected by conflict.

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs: The journal aims to be a home and platform for leading thinks on humanitarian affairs
The journal challenges contributors and readers to think critically about humanitarian issues that are often approached from reductionist assumptions about what experience and evidence mean.

Health

Universal Health Care and Coverage Index 2019
This Index presents progress on 12 key indicators for driving progress and accountability on UHC. It covers 81 Countdown to 2030 countries that together account for more than 90% of under-five child deaths and 95% of maternal deaths in the world. It shows that without concerted effort from governments, donors, civil society and the international community, we will not achieve UHC by 2030.

Primary health care first: Strengthening the foundation of universal healthcare coverage
While strengthening primary health care has long been a core component of the health agenda, research into primary health care expenditure has been limited. Primary Health Care First seeks to understand and address that gap, an urgent priority for saving lives and a critical first step toward achieving universal health coverage by 2030 under the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Global Financing Facility: An opportunity to get it right
Launched in 2015, the Global Financing Facility (GFF) has the potential to drive increased investment in health and nutrition from both external and, primarily, domestic finance. Save the Children supports the 2018 replenishment but calls on all governments and civil society to make the GFF transformational by implementing the reforms suggested in this paper, and thereby building adequate, equitable and sustainable financing for health systems.

Fighting for Breath: A call for action on childhood pneumonia
Turns a spotlight on the inequalities, policy failures and indifference holding back progress on tackling childhood pneumonia, the number one infectious killer of children, and proposes a way forward. Read the Country Briefings to accompany this report. 

Further, Faster, Fairer: Reaching every last child with immunisation
Explores which groups of children are missing out on immunisation and the barriers they face.

Within Our Means: Why countries can afford Universal Health Coverage
Why all developing countries can afford to increase spending on health, through different policy decisions and public spending.

  

Education

Save our Education: Protect every child’s right to learn in the COVID-19 response and recovery
We are facing an education emergency. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 1.6 billion learners were out of school. For the first time in human history, an entire global generation has had their education disrupted.

Unlock Education for Everyone: How the UK can ensure children affected by crises get an education
The report calls on the UK to make a renewed commitment to Education Cannot Wait of £75 million over the period 2019-2021.

Time to Act: Providing refugee children the education they were promised
This report shows that it is well within our means to provide a quality education to every last refugee child - by including refugees in national education systems, improving the quality of education for refugees and host community children and by allocating modest additional financing shown through our costings.

Lessons in Literacy: 8 principles to ensure every last child can read
Drawing on evidence from 35 programmes in 22 countries, this report sets out 8 principles for effective literacy action.

Losing out on learning: Providing refugee children the education they were promised
This report provides an overview of the education specific developments associated with the commitments made at the UN General Assembly and the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees in 2016. It calls for urgent reinforcement and sustained commitment to increase investment, refugee inclusion and educational improvement.

Restoring Hope, Rebuilding Futures: A plan of action for delivering universal education for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda
Sets out a costed plan of action to deliver good-quality universal education for South Sudanese refugee children in Uganda.

Inclusive development

Follow the Money: Equitably financing child survival
This report puts forward recommendations to governments and development partners on how the pledge to Leave No One Behind can be turned into action – and ensure every child has the chance to survive and thrive.

Still Left Behind?: Tracking children's progress against the pledge to Leave No One Behind
In 2015, world leaders signed up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a set of 2030 targets for eradicating extreme poverty in all its forms. Evidence set out in this report shows that progress to date has been limited, and that SDG monitoring and review is still focusing on average change rather than those who are the furthest behind. Read the methodological note for details of the research approach for the report.

Next Generation Aid: Making UK Aid deliver for children
This 2017 report sets out Save the Children’s vision for how UK aid can better deliver for children. It sets out the principles to which all UK aid should align that will help ensure our aid continues to have the biggest impact for children. 

Every Last Child: The children the world chooses to forget
Presents new quantitative research findings on excluded groups of children ­ from ethnic minorities, in disadvantaged areas, and excluded girls.

Every Last Girl: Free to live, free to learn, free from harm
Explores three key barriers that hold girls back – child marriage, poor access to health and education, and lack of a voice.

The Lottery of Birth: Giving all children an equal chance to survive
Presents new evidence that equitable progress is not only possible, but faster.

The Future is Ours: Strategic Foresight toolkit 
This toolkit offers a set of 12 techniques to help teams navigate the present and shape the future.

Nutrition

Call to Action: Gender Equality and Women's and Girls' Empowerment
Save the Children, Global Affairs Canada, and Nutrition International have collaborated with the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Lead Group to launch the Call to Action - Scaling Up Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment to Fight Malnutrition 

Youth Leaders for Nutrition Advocacy Toolkit
A toolkit for youth advocates, designed by youth advocates.

Nutrition Boost: Why the world needs a step change in finance for nutrition – and how it can be achieved
The scale of the challenge in tackling child malnutrition is undeniable. Millions of children are malnourished because of who they are and where they live.

Don't Push It: Why the formula industry must clean up its act 
The lives and the health of millions of vulnerable children are at risk from a threat that receives too little attention – the rapid growth of the market for baby milk formula.

Unequal Portions: Ending malnutrition for every last child
Presents new research findings on how the combination of poverty and discrimination robs disadvantaged groups of children of a healthy diet.

UK poverty

COVID's Kids: 
The pandemic has been a stark reminder of our vulnerability as individuals, as societies and as a species. 
 
Untapped Potential: How England's nursery lottery is failing too many children
This report shows that more than a quarter of a million children were locked out of high-quality childcare provision in 2015, affecting children from families right across society, in better-off as well as poor areas. But our analysis also provides compelling evidence that children in the poorest areas are most likely to miss out on this crucial support in their first years.

Lighting up Young Brains: How parents, carers and nurseries support children’s brain development in the first five years
Looks at the science behind young children's brain development and its relationship to children's language development.

The Lost Boys: How boys are falling behind in their early years
Quantifies, for the first time, the impact of the gender gap at age five on primary school attainment.

Make Childcare Work: Fixing upfront childcare costs for families on Universal Credit

 

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