Does It Help to Send Same Letter to Politician Over and Over Again?

An open letter to the globe's children

8 reasons why I'thou worried, and hopeful, well-nigh the next generation.

Dear children of today and of tomorrow,

Thirty years agone, against the backdrop of a changing globe order – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the decline of apartheid, the birth of the world broad web – the world united in defense of children and childhood. While most of the world's parents at the fourth dimension had grown up nether dictatorships or declining governments, they hoped for better lives, greater opportunities and more rights for their children. Then, when leaders came together in 1989 in a moment of rare global unity to brand a historic commitment to the earth'southward children to protect and fulfil their rights, there was a real sense of hope for the next generation.

So how much progress have we fabricated? In the three 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 schoolhouse by most 40 per cent. The number of stunted children under five years of historic period dropped past over 100 meg. Three decades ago, polio paralyzed or killed about one,000 children every twenty-four hours. Today, 99 per cent of those cases have been eliminated. Many of the interventions behind this progress – such as vaccines, oral rehydration salts and improve nutrition – have been practical and toll-constructive. The rise of digital and mobile applied science and other innovations have made it easier and more efficient to evangelize critical services in hard-to reach communities and to aggrandize opportunities.

Nonetheless poverty, inequality, discrimination and distance continue to deny millions of children their rights every year, as 15,000 children under 5 still dice every day, generally from treatable diseases and other preventable causes. We are facing an alarming ascension in overweight children, but as well girls suffering from anaemia. The stubborn challenges of open defecation and child marriage continue to threaten children's health and futures. Whilst the numbers of children in school are college than ever, the claiming of achieving quality educational activity is not existence met. Being in school is not the same as learning; more than threescore per cent of primary schoolhouse children in developing countries still neglect to achieve minimum proficiency in learning and one-half the earth's teens face violence in and around school, so it doesn't feel like a identify of safe. 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 set of challenges and global shifts that were unimaginable to your parents. Our climate is changing beyond recognition. Inequality is deepening. Applied science is transforming how we perceive the world. And more than families are migrating than e'er before. Childhood has changed, and we need to change our approaches along with it.

So, as we look back on xxx years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we should also look ahead, to the next 30 years. We must heed to y'all – today'due south children and young people – well-nigh the bug of greatest concern to you now and begin working with you on xx-get-go century solutions to twenty-first century problems.

With that in mind, here are 8 reasons why I'1000 worried for your future, and viii reasons why I think there is hope:

Why I'g worried:

It sounds obvious that all children need these basics to sustain healthy lives – a make clean environs to alive in, make clean air to breathe, h2o to drink and food to eat – and information technology sounds foreign to be making this signal in 2019. All the same climate change has the potential to undermine all of these basic rights and indeed most of the gains made in child survival and development over the past 30 years. At that place is maybe no greater threat facing the rights of the adjacent generation of children.

The Food and Agriculture Organization noted last yr that climate alter is becoming a key force behind the recent continued rise in global hunger, and as escalating droughts and flooding degrade food production, the next generation of children will acquit the greatest burden of hunger and malnutrition. We are already seeing evidence of extreme atmospheric condition events driven by climate change creating more frequent and more destructive natural disasters, and while hereafter forecasts vary, according to the International Organization for Migration, the most ofttimes cited number of ecology migrants expected worldwide by 2050 is 200 million, with estimates as loftier every bit 1 billion.

As temperatures increase and water becomes scarcer it is children who will feel the deadliest impact of waterborne diseases. Today, more than half a billion children alive in areas with extremely high flood occurrence and almost 160 million in loftier-drought severity zones. Regions like the Sahel, which are especially reliant on agriculture, grazing and fishing, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In this arid region, rains are projected to get even shorter and less predictable in the future, and alarmingly, the region is warming up at a rate one and a half times faster than the global average. In the Sahel, the climate gets hotter and the poor get poorer, and it is all likewise common for armed groups to exploit the social grievances that arise nether such pressurized conditions.

These challenges will only exist compounded past the impact of air pollution, toxic waste and groundwater pollution dissentious children's wellness. In 2022 approximately 300 million children were living in areas with the virtually toxic levels of outdoor air pollution – six or more times higher than international guidelines, and information technology contributes to the deaths of effectually 600,000 children nether the age of 5. Even more will suffer lasting damage to their developing brains and lungs.

And, by 2040, one in four children will live in areas of extreme h2o stress and thousands will be made sick past polluted water. The management and protection of clean, plentiful, accessible groundwater supplies, and the management of plastic waste are very fast becoming defining child wellness issues for our time.

Why there is promise:

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

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

Even in complex environments like the Sahel, in that location is promise – it has a young population, hungry for work and opportunity, and the climate offers vast potential for harnessing renewable, sustainable free 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 paw in hand to reduce fossil fuel consumption, develop cleaner agricultural, industrial and transport systems and invest in scaling renewable energy sources. Many governments have taken activity to curb pollution from power plants, industrial facilities and road vehicles with strict regulations. A 2011 study by the United States Ecology Protection Bureau found that the state'southward 1990 Clean Air Act had delivered Us$xxx of health benefits to citizens for every US$one spent. Such policies hold the key to protecting little lungs and babies' brains from dissentious 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 health. Mongolia's majuscule metropolis Ulaanbaatar has among the most polluted air in the world during winter. The biggest source of pollution comes from coal-burning used by 60 per cent of Ulaanbaatar's population. UNICEF innovation experts together with the customs, authorities, academia and the private sector take begun to design and implement energy efficiency solutions for traditional homes to reduce coal consumption and amend air quality, including past designing "the 21st Century Ger".

And nosotros are finding means to recycle and reuse plastics in innovative means as well, reducing toxic waste matter and putting rubbish to skilful utilize. 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's kickoff recycled plastic classroom was built earlier this year in Côte d'Ivoire, in but a few weeks. It price 30 per cent less than traditional classrooms. This innovative approach of transforming plastic waste into construction bricks has the potential to plough a plastic waste matter direction challenge into an opportunity, past addressing the right to an didactics with the structure of schools, empowering these communities and cleaning up the environment at the same time.

Why I'm worried:

Children accept always been the first victims of state of war. Today, the number of countries experiencing conflict is the highest it has ever been since the adoption of the Kid Rights Convention in 1989. One in four children now live in countries afflicted by fierce fighting or disaster, with 28 million children driven from their homes by wars and insecurity. Many lose several years of school – likewise as records of achievements and qualifications for future learning and careers. Conflicts and natural disasters have already disrupted learning for 75 million children and immature people, many of whom have migrated across 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 matter of human potential. Worse, creating a lost, disillusioned and angry generation of uneducated children is a unsafe adventure that could toll us all.

Why there is hope:

Some states have demonstrated effective policies to keep refugees learning. When large numbers of children escaping the war in the Syrian arab republic arrived in Lebanese republic, the government faced the claiming of accommodating hundreds of thousands of children in a public-schoolhouse arrangement already under strain. With the support of international partners, they turned that challenge into an opportunity and integrated refugee children into schools while strengthening the education system for Lebanese students at the same time.

And digital innovations can help us do more. UNICEF is collaborating with Microsoft and the University of Cambridge to develop a 'learning passport' – a digital platform that volition facilitate learning opportunities for children and immature people within and across borders. The learning passport is existence tested and piloted in countries hosting refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons. A digitally inclusive globe should let young people, no matter their state of affairs, to go admission to education. Scaling upwardly solutions like the digital learning passport could help millions of displaced children gain the skills they demand to thrive.

Why I'm worried:

If we believed everything we read about teenagers today, and the images portrayed in television and film, we could be forgiven for thinking they are a wild, antisocial bunch. Yet null could be further from the truth. The evidence really shows that teens today smoke less, drink less, go into less trouble and more often than not take fewer risks than previous generations. Yous might even call them Generation Sensible.

Yet there is 1 area of risk for adolescents showing an extremely worrisome trend in the incorrect management – one that reminds united states of the invisible vulnerability that young people yet deport inside of them. Mental health disorders among under 18s have been ascent steadily over the by 30 years and low is now amongst the leading causes of disability in the young. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 62,000 adolescents died in 2022 because of cocky-impairment, which is now the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 15 –19.

This is non but a rich country trouble – WHO estimates that more than 90 per cent of adolescent suicides in 2022 were in low or middle-income countries. And while young people with severe mental disorders in lower-income countries oftentimes miss out on treatment and support, at that place is no state in the world that can merits to have conquered this challenge. To quote the WHO'south mental health adept Shekhar Saxena, "when it comes to mental wellness, all countries are developing countries." With virtually depression-income and middle-income countries spending less than 1 per cent of their full health upkeep on mental health, and high-income countries just four–v per cent, information technology is clear that it needs greater priority around the earth.

UNICEF works with children who have suffered unthinkable traumas, gender discrimination, extreme poverty, sexual violence, disability and chronic disease, living through conflict and other experiences that identify them at high hazard of mental distress. The cost is not only personal, it is societal – the World Economic Forum consistently ranks mental wellness as having one of the greatest economic burdens of whatsoever non-communicable health issue. Despite this overwhelming evidence of a looming crisis and the alarming trends in rising cocky-harm and suicide rates, adolescent mental health and well-beingness have ofttimes been disregarded in global health 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 treatment are key to preventing episodes of mental distress reaching a crisis point and precious immature lives beingness damaged and lost. But all too ofttimes, what stands in the mode of young people seeking assist at an early stage is the ongoing stigma and taboo that prevents communities talking openly about mental health problems. Fortunately, this taboo is beginning to autumn, and immature people, one time once more, are leading the mode – founding non-governmental organizations, developing apps, raising awareness, and being vocal about their ain struggles with mental illness and their efforts to accost their condition, in hope that others feel empowered to do the same.

UNICEF uses campaigns in schools to promote open discussion about mental health. For example, in Kazakhstan, which has 1 of the highest suicide rates among adolescents worldwide, UNICEF stepped up efforts to better the mental well-being of adolescents through a large-calibration pilot program in over 450 schools. The programme raised awareness, trained staff to place high-risk cases, and ensured referral of vulnerable adolescents to health specialists. Nearly fifty,000 young people participated in the pilot with many significant improvements in well-being. The programme has since been scaled up to over 3,000 schools.

The prioritization of adolescent mental health promotion and suicide prevention has resulted in a 51 per cent decrease of self-injury bloodshed in the 15 –17 years age group at the national level and the number of suicide cases decreased from 212 in 2013 to 104 in 2022 for this historic period group. And maybe most chiefly, mental health is now existence integrated into mainstream primary health care services, helping to overcome the stigma which frequently puts immature people off from seeking help.

Why I'm worried:

Migration has been part of the human experience throughout history. For thousands of years, children and families have left their place of birth to settle in new communities in search of educational or employment opportunities. Today is no unlike. We live in a mobile world in which at least 30 1000000 children have moved beyond borders.

For many, migration is propelled past a bulldoze for a better life. But for likewise many children, migration is not a positive option just an urgent necessity – they merely do non accept the opportunity to build a safe, good for you and prosperous life in the place they are born. When migration is driven past desperation, it tin lead to children migrating without the legal permissions they need, becoming so-chosen 'irregular migrants'. They often have perilous journeys across deserts, oceans and armed borders, encountering violence, corruption and exploitation on the way.

And one of the greatest migrations the earth has always 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 alive in cities, and the urbanization rate is set to abound. Though urban residents on boilerplate relish better admission to services and opportunities, inequalities can be so large that many of the most disadvantaged children in urban areas fare worse than children in rural areas. For example, the poorest urban children in one in four countries are more likely to die before their 5th birthday than the poorest children in rural areas. And the poorest urban children in 1 in 6 countries are less probable to consummate primary school than rural children.

Why at that place is hope:

No child should feel forced to drift from their home, still until the root causes are addressed, the situation is unlikely to change. That means tackling community and gang violence, strengthening protection systems so children can be rubber in their communities, improving access to quality education and job opportunities, and making sure young people take the risk to gain the skills they need to build meliorate – 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 whatever their story, migrant children are children first and foremost. Governments tin can protect kid migrants by prioritizing the best interests of children in the application of immigration laws, and wherever possible, they must proceed families together and use proven alternatives to detention, such as foster families or group homes – many governments are testing such approaches successfully.

The so-called urban reward breaks downward when we look beyond averages and command for wealth, and then social policies and programmes designed to support child survival and evolution must pay greater attention to the poorest and virtually marginalized urban children. Modern cities generally offer better access to make clean h2o, health and social services, and educational opportunities. Thus, if urban center governments can piece of work to create inclusive admission and equality of opportunity for the children in their cities, urban life could indeed provide a boost for kid survival and development.

Why I'm worried:

Every kid has a right to a legal identity, to birth registration and a nationality. Simply a quarter of yous born today – almost 100,000 babies – may never have an official birth certificate or qualify for a passport. If your parents are stateless, from a persecuted or marginalized community, or simply if you live in a poor remote region, you may never be given an identity or birth document. You may even be denied citizenship or accept your citizenship stripped from you. This lack of formal recognition past any land ways you may be denied health intendance, instruction and other government services. Later in life, the lack of official identification can mean you enter into wedlock, dangerous work, or get conscripted into the armed forces earlier the legal age. Every bit an unregistered or 'stateless' child, you lot are invisible to the authorities – it'southward as if you never existed.

For example, in the makeshift camps in People's republic of bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugee families accept fled seeking sanctuary, babies are built-in every day. A Rohingya baby is unlikely to have their nativity registered and have a nationality conferred upon them, robbing them of this basic 'passport to protection' from the very starting time of life.

And in that location is some other group of children today facing the threat of life without a articulate legal identity and being left stateless. If you are an innocent child born to a strange fighter from an armed group, you may not take citizenship, or you may have your citizenship stripped from you. In the Syria alone, UNICEF estimates that at that place are close to 29,000 foreign children, almost of them under the age of 12, and an boosted 1,000 children believed to be in Iraq, who may have no civil documentation. They are at gamble of becoming stateless and invisible.

Why there is promise:

Registering children at birth is the first step in securing their recognition before the law, safeguarding their rights, and ensuring that any violation of these rights does non go unnoticed. The United Nations has prepare a goal that every homo being 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 status, the simply 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 built-in to nationals from other states, who may exist migrants, refugees or foreign fighters – considering children are children first and foremost.

In other circumstances, engineering and innovative partnerships promise a way forward. In the Plurinational State of Bolivia, for example, TIGO – a nationwide telecommunications company – the Electoral High Tribunal and UNICEF worked to increase nativity registration in hospitals and health centres, resulting in registration at nascency increasing by more than 500 per cent between 2022 and 2018. In Rwanda, the automatic registering of children at birth in hospitals led to nascency registration increasing from 67 per cent in 2022 to 80.two per cent in 2018. Nosotros must urgently scale upward programmes similar this to reach more children. This means dramatically expanding digital access to the well-nigh remote and vulnerable communities, and so registration systems can happen in real-fourth dimension.

Why I'm worried:

There are more than than 1.viii billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the earth, one of the largest cohorts in human history. Besides often, they lack access to an education that will prepare them for contemporary job and business opportunities – giving them the skills and outlook they need for a twenty-beginning century economic system. Meanwhile, in the by 30 years, relative income inequality betwixt countries has reduced, just absolute income inequality has increased significantly, so that some children and families with low incomes are left behind and miss out on the opportunities their richer peers enjoy. Moreover, mobility has stalled over the final xxx years, miring some other generation in a poverty trap adamant entirely past the family she or he is born into.

Why at that place is hope:

UNICEF and our global partners have launched a new initiative to fix young people to get productive and engaged citizens. Generation Unlimited aims to ensure every immature person is in school, learning, grooming or employed by 2030. 1 programme in Argentina connects rural students in remote areas with secondary school teachers, both in person and online. An initiative in South Africa chosen TechnoGirl gives immature women from disadvantaged backgrounds job-shadowing opportunities in the STEM fields. And in Bangladesh, tens of thousands of young people are receiving preparation in trades such every bit mobile-phone servicing. Through our Youth Challenge, we are bringing together brilliant young minds to solve problems in their communities, considering young people are experts in their own lives and experiences. The Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge has worked with more 800 innovators across 16 countries and produced innovative solutions such every bit the SpeakOut mobile app, developed by young people in North Macedonia as an anonymous mode to reach out to peers for help with bullying, and The Red Lawmaking, a self-sustaining micro-entrepreneurial scheme from Pakistan, which helps immature women with both menstrual hygiene management and income generation.

Why I'k worried:

The www was born in the same twelvemonth as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, thirty years ago. Today it has radically changed the earth and reshaped babyhood and adulthood akin. More than one in 3 children globally are thought to be regular users of the internet, and as this generation grows upwards, that proportion is set up to grow and grow.

Debates nearly the benefits and dangers of social media for children are becoming 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 besides much personal information on social media. But the truth is, the data contained inside social media profiles created past children are only the tip of the data iceberg. Less well understood but at to the lowest degree as of import, is the enormous aggregating of data beingness collected about children. As children become nigh their daily online lives, browsing social media, using search engines, due east-commerce and regime platforms, playing games, downloading apps and using mobile geolocation services, a digital footprint composed of thousands of pieces of information is accumulating around them. Some of the data may fifty-fifty have been gathered before birth and certainly before children are able to knowingly consent to its collection and use.

The era of and then-chosen 'big data' has the potential to transform – for the better – the provision of efficient, personalized and responsive services to children, simply it also has potential negative impacts on their safety, privacy, autonomy and future life choices. Personal information created during childhood may be shared with third parties, traded for turn a profit or used to exploit young people – particularly the most 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 rail 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 plenty for adults, but it is doubly so for children, since the net has never been designed with children's rights and needs in mind, and few are equipped to navigate the complexities of data sharing and privacy control.

Likewise oftentimes, children do not know what rights they take over their own data and do non sympathise the implications of their data use, and how vulnerable information technology can leave them. Privacy terms and conditions on social media platforms are frequently barely understood by highly educated adults, let lonely children. An assay from The New York Times, showed that many social media privacy policies crave a reading comprehension level that exceeds that of the boilerplate college pupil, meaning many users, particularly the very immature, are probably consenting to things they tin can't fully sympathize.

Why there is hope:

The challenge facing u.s. all today is to ensure that we design systems that maximize the positive benefits of large information and artificial intelligence, while preserving privacy, providing protections from impairment and empowering people – including children – to practise their rights. And we are beginning to see action: governments are strengthening regulatory frameworks; private sector providers are recognizing their office; 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 Kid makes it articulate that children have a specific right to privacy and there is no reason this should not employ online. Contextualizing children'southward right to privacy inside the full range of their other rights, best interests and evolving capacities, information technology is evident that children's privacy differs both in scope and application from adults' privacy and there is a potent argument that children should exist offered fifty-fifty more than robust protection.

Where children utilize social media they need to have 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 atmospheric condition demand to be clear and understandable to children. Every bit some children have argued themselves, this might extend to deleting historical social media profiles for example. Where data is collected about children through tracking their online behaviours, information technology is crucial that clear, transparent and attainable privacy policies are made available then that children accept a better run a risk of offering informed consent, can understand their rights and know what the intended usage of the nerveless data is. Equipping immature people with the noesis and skills to claim their digital rights is essential.

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

And some new regulatory frameworks, such as the European General Information Protection Regulation (GDPR), represent a promising try at progress. The European union GDPR says that cyberspace users, including children, have the right to be provided with a transparent and articulate privacy observe, which explains how their data will be processed, that they should be able to get a copy of their personal data and have incorrect information most them rectified.

Global Pulse is a Un initiative that explores how new, digital data sources and real-fourth dimension analytics technologies can provide a meliorate understanding of changes in homo well-being and emerging vulnerabilities, with the potential to support evolution. 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 well-nigh the purpose of information employ, protect individual privacy, acknowledge the need for proper consent for apply 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'k worried:

Every child has the correct to actively participate in their societies, and for many of you, your start experiences of civic engagement volition be online. Withal, the majority of y'all volition grow up equally natives of a digital environment that is saturated with misinformation and so-called 'false news,' which undermines trust and engagement with institutions and information sources. Studies indicate that many children and young people today take a hard fourth dimension distinguishing fact from fiction online and equally a outcome, your generation is finding information technology more than difficult to know who and what to trust.

A United Kingdom Parliament-backed Commission on Simulated News, run in partnership with Facebook, First News and The Day, found that just a quarter of the children reading online news actually trust the sources they are reading. Information technology is tempting to see this as a positive sign of good for you critical thinking skills at work, merely the same study as well institute that merely two per cent of children and young people in the United kingdom have the critical literacy skills they need to tell if a news story is real or simulated. Worryingly, almost two thirds of teachers said they believe imitation news is harming children'due south well-beingness by increasing levels of anxiety and skewing children's' globe view. And a study in the United States on schools from 12 states of the U.s.a. assessing 'civic online reasoning' – or the ability to judge the brownie of online data – institute that when evaluating information on social media, children and young people are easily duped.

We know the impact of misinformation is pernicious and has real-world impacts. For example, thousands of the current generation of parents have been misled by misinformation spread through social media and mobile messaging apps most the safety of vaccines, prompting a wave of vaccine hesitancy and a worrisome resurgence of measles in high- and depression-income countries alike, including France, Republic of india and the Philippines.

Misinformation campaigns have duped children into handing over money, giving abroad their data and being clean-cut and exploited for sex. And in the past few years, we've seen how misinformation can skew democratic debate, voter intentions, and sow doubt well-nigh other ethnic, religious or social groups – creating sectionalisation and unrest. This is a global effect, with reports emerging from countries as diverse as Brazil, Ukraine and the Us where  sophisticated disinformation campaigns have necessitated the teaching of 'Learn to Discern' classes in schools. And in Myanmar, information technology has been declared 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 applied science 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 science using AI-generated synthetic media, it is becoming easier to distort and manipulate reality, making it seem as though individuals accept said things they have not, in so-called 'deep fakes'. If these technologies accelerate, with no mitigating activity to help the adjacent generation root out fakes, they accept the potential to fundamentally undermine confidence in science and medicine, erode cadre institutions and beliefs, divide communities, and pose a grave threat to our democracies.

We tin can no longer remainder on the naïve assurance that truth has an innate upper hand confronting falsehood in the digital era, and so we must, equally societies, build resilience confronting the daily deluge of falsity online. We should first past equipping young people with the ability to understand who and what they can trust online, and then they can get active, engaged citizens.

Why there is hope:

There is some evidence to suggest that adults should place their trust in children and young people non to fall for fakes. A recent research study published by the American Association for the Advocacy of Science establish that social media users over 65 shared near vii times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age grouping. While the reasons for this are equally yet unexplained, it may indicate that a higher level of digital and media literacy among 'digital natives' acts every bit a protective filter. Nonetheless, it is clear we need to piece of work harder to prepare savvy young citizens to resist manipulation and retain a trusting connexion to reliable and verifiable information and institutional knowledge.

While social media platforms appear to be serious in their attempts to combat misinformation and piece of work with news organizations to conspicuously label trusted sources, nosotros cannot rely on the supply side for solutions. Children have a right to an instruction that prepares them for the globe they will alive in, and today, this includes much improved digital and media literacy, critical thinking and weighing up evidence. The Director of the System for Economic Co-operation and Development is including questions virtually distinguishing what is truthful from what is non true in the adjacent circular of the influential international PISA tests, seeing critical judgment as a global competency, and like initiatives could help to mainstream didactics and training in digital literacy skills that could be amid the most of import for the next generation. Moreover, we must work difficult to build meaningful connections between young people and institutions, rebuilding trust, if nosotros are to preserve democratic societies in the futurity.

A concluding discussion...

Finally, the biggest reason for hope is considering yous – the children and young people of today – are taking the pb on demanding urgent action, and empowering yourselves to larn about, and shape the world around you. You are taking a stand now, and we are listening.

Just every bit the children of 1989 accept emerged equally leaders of today, you the children and immature people of 2022 are the leaders of the time to come. You inspire us.

We want to work together with yous to find the solutions you lot need to tackle the challenges of today, to build better futures for yourselves and the globe you will inherit.

Henrietta H. Fore
UNICEF Executive Director

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

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