The Lancet CommissionsA future for the world's children? A WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission
Section snippets
Executive summary
Despite dramatic improvements in survival, nutrition, and education over recent decades, today's children face an uncertain future. Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country. In 2015, the world's countries agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet nearly 5 years later, few countries have recorded much progress towards achieving them.
The Commission
This Commission reports on urgent and actionable agendas for our children's future. First, we make the case for putting child wellbeing at the centre of SDG policies. Second, we describe what needs to be done: the package of entitlements that governments and other stakeholders should ensure each child receives, and the equity-focused investments and social mobilisation required to make it happen. Third, we describe how global, national, and subnational governance must be reconfigured to provide
Placing children at the centre of SDG policies
Concern for future generations is already at the centre of the SDG endeavour. Here, we further theorise the concept of sustainability around children's health and wellbeing, and existing global frameworks, such as the Survive-Thrive-Transform framework of the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health (2016–2030).17 We also synthesise the evidence in favour of intervening in childhood to not only achieve child health goals, but also derive key benefits throughout the life
How to ensure that children receive their entitlements?
Putting children at the centre of the SDG agenda will enhance our drive for sustainable development. Here, we define the actions needed to achieve this agenda by laying out a set of entitlements for children and detail the responsibility of families, communities, and governments, required to deliver them (panel 4).
Getting governance right for children
The task of achieving the SDGs should galvanise governments to deliver the rights and entitlements of children and young people, but child advocates and governments must generate the political priority and build fiscal and administrative capacities to do so. In the SDG era three leadership and governance challenges stand out: first, how to move interest in child health beyond the health sector to develop holistic, integrated national policies for children, with augmented governmental capacity
Regulating commercial marketing to children
Unregulated commercial activity poses many well documented threats to children, not least environmental ones. However, commercial marketing of products that are harmful to children represents one of the most underappreciated risks to their health and wellbeing (panel 8). We have examined the harms children suffer from commercial marketing, looked at the insufficiency of voluntary regulation, and propose a political process to control commercial marketing to children by developing an Optional
How to monitor, review, and act on SDG progress for children?
Compared with the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs encompass a more comprehensive view of development, which poses greater challenges for the data and information required to make the best policy choices, track SDG progress, and ultimately, deliver on the targets of the global goals.320 The data needs for children range from monitoring survival, intervention coverage, and disease prevalence to indicators related to growth, education, and wellbeing, including socioeconomic and
Conclusion
We live in an era like no other. Our children face a future of great opportunity, but they stand on the precipice of a climate crisis. Working together, the world's countries have agreed to the SDG framework to usher future generations into a cleaner, healthier world, but the SDG agenda has yet to gain traction. Our challenge is great and we seem to be paralysed.
This Commission proposes a new global movement to place children at the centre of the SDGs. The CRC is the world's most ratified human
References (359)
- et al.
High-quality health systems in the Sustainable Development Goals era: time for a revolution
Lancet Glob Health
(2018) - et al.
The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come
Lancet
(2018) - et al.
Nurturing care for children with developmental disabilities: a moral imperative for sub-Saharan Africa
Lancet Child Adolesc Health
(2018) - et al.
Birth weight and muscle strength: a systematic review and meta-analysis
J Nutr Health Aging
(2012) - et al.
Our future: a Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing
Lancet
(2016) - et al.
The UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health: the health of a world on the move
Lancet
(2018) - et al.
Early origins of inflammation: an examination of prenatal and childhood social adversity in a prospective cohort study
Psychoneuroendocrinology
(2015) - et al.
Maternal and child undernutrition: consequences for adult health and human capital
Lancet
(2008) - et al.
Early childhood development coming of age: science through the life course
Lancet
(2017) - et al.
The rate of return to the HighScope Perry preschool program
J Public Econ
(2010)
Reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health: key messages from Disease Control Priorities 3rd Edition
Lancet
Global, regional, and national causes of under-5 mortality in 2000–15: an updated systematic analysis with implications for the Sustainable Development Goals
Lancet
Investing in the foundation of sustainable development: pathways to scale up for early childhood development
Lancet
Global health 2035: a world converging within a generation
Lancet
Advancing social and economic development by investing in women's and children's health: a new Global Investment Framework
Lancet
Investment in child and adolescent health and development: key messages from Disease Control Priorities, 3rd Edition
Lancet
Reassessing the value of vaccines
Lancet Glob Health
Effect of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria on health and education in schoolchildren: a cluster-randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
Lancet
Building the foundations for sustainable development: a case for global investment in the capabilities of adolescents
Lancet
Air pollution and noncommunicable diseases: a review by the Forum of International Respiratory Societies' Environmental Committee, part 1: the damaging effects of air pollution
Chest
A review of neighborhood effects and early child development: How, where, and for whom, do neighborhoods matter?
Health Place
Can the neighborhood built environment make a difference in children's development? Building the research agenda to create evidence for place-based children's policy
Acad Pediatr
The influence of the neighborhood physical environment on early child health and development: a review and call for research
Health Place
Physical activity in relation to urban environments in 14 cities worldwide: a cross-sectional study
Lancet
Patterns of neighborhood environment attributes in relation to children's physical activity
Health Place
Age-dependent health risk from ambient air pollution: a modelling and data analysis of childhood mortality in middle-income and low-income countries
Lancet Planet Health
Ambient air pollution and overweight and obesity in school-aged children in Barcelona, Spain
Environ Int
Longitudinal association between air pollution exposure at school and cognitive development in school children over a period of 3·5 years
Environ Res
Towards a fuller assessment of benefits to children's health of reducing air pollution and mitigating climate change due to fossil fuel combustion
Environ Res
Bill Gates: why I decided to edit an issue of TIME
States of Fragility 2018
Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials
New York Times
Every newborn: an executive summary for The Lancet's Series
Developmental aspects of a life course approach to healthy ageing
J Physiol
Are rates of ageing determined in utero?
Age Ageing
Intelligence in youth and all-cause-mortality: systematic review with meta-analysis
Int J Epidemiol
Childhood overweight and obesity
Management of physical health conditions in adults with severe mental disorders
Joined-up governance
25 giant companies that are bigger than entire countries
The global strategy for women's, children's and adolescents' health
Budapest declaration on the rights, health and well-being of children and youth on the move
Global impact of air pollution on children's health
JAMA
Air pollution and children's health in Chinese
Air pollution and children's health
Pediatrics
Statement on visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
Statement on visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
Neural plasticity: the effects of environment on the development of the cerebral cortex
From neurons to neighborhoods: the science of early childhood development
Childhood circumstances and adult outcomes: act II
J Econ Lit
Cited by (544)
Australian youth perspectives on the role of social media in climate action
2024, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public HealthAre advertising policies affirmative in restricting the marketing of foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) in India?: evidence from SWOT Analysis
2024, The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast AsiaHousehold income supplements in early childhood to reduce inequities in children's development
2024, Social Science and Medicine