A PLATFORM designed to provide insights into children’s issues in the Philippines was introduced by the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF.

UNICEF’s move was done in coordination with the Council for the Welfare of Children, the National Economic and Development Authority, and the Philippine Statistics Authority.

UNICEF Philippines said the Situation of Children of the Philippines or www.situationofchildren.org/ph analyzes six main dimensions and 25 subdimensions of children’s rights, including health and nutrition, education, protection, safe and sustainable environment, child poverty and social protection, civil and participation rights.

Based on reports, the Philippines has a wealth of data about children but there are key gaps and issues in terms of granularity, periodicity and timeliness, accessibility, reliability, and consistency.

The UNICEF Philippines also said that there are not enough data on child exploitation while other key data gaps also exist in the areas of disaster risk preparedness, planning, and response monitoring, climate change impacts on children, social protection and public financing for children, children with disabilities, early childhood education, children’s civil rights and participation, and richer local-level data on children in the provincial, municipal or city, and barangay levels.

By launching the platform, UNICEF is hoping that they will engage stakeholders through the virtual platform in discussing evolving evidence needs and gaps, as well as advocate for strengthening evidence-based decision making.

The data portal features over 80 key indicators and around 500 data visualizations based on data dating back to 1989 and up to 2023, with subnational breakdowns for certain indicator.

A section covers cross-sectoral issues such as gender, disability, early childhood, and adolescents.