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Global recognition has increased in recent years that early motherhood and HIV are inextricably linked to the overall health and broader well-being of adolescent girls and young women. The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030) (17) aims to achieve “a world in which every woman, child and adolescent realizes…

UNICEF's 2021 World AIDS Day report provides global and regional statistical updates on children, adolescents and pregnant women. It further provides a brief history of the HIV epidemic and response for children together with a series of human interest stories that shine light on inequalities faced by children and adolescents, especially in HIV treatment and prevention services.Flip through the 2021 World AIDS Day Spotlight Photo Report, which amplifies the voices of the most marginalized children, adolescents and young mothers along the theme of stolen childhood, lost adolescence. 

Building on previous summaries, this brief summarizes the current evidence and lessons learned from the Transfer Project after more than a decade of research on cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa.Since 2009, the Transfer Project has generated rigorous evidence on the impacts of cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and has supported their expansion. It aims to provide evidence on the effectiveness of cash transfer programmes, inform the development and design of cash transfer policy and programmes, and promote learning across SSA on the design and implementation of research and evaluations on cash transfers. The Transfer Project is a collaborative network comprising UNICEF (Innocenti, Regional and Country Offices), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, national governments and researchers

Adolescents in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) are key to achieving the global goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. ESA is home to 1.74 million adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV), representing 60 per cent of this population globally. In 12 ESA countries, AIDS is the leading cause of adolescent mortality. While there is an increasing focus on adolescents, the pace of progress remains slow, especially when compared with the growing needs of ALHIV.It is time to deliver programmes at scale to address the needs of ALHIV, accelerating evidence of interventions producing results or showing significant promise for scale. This document examines and consolidates the current experiences of ALHIV programming in the region to support further implementation and scale-up of evidence-driven models. The findings serve as a call to action and the key considerations as a guide for governments and funding and implementing partners in scaling up service delivery to ALHIV.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with collaborating partners from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Secretariat of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), have developed this guidance to build upon and complement the UN International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education (ITGSE). It offers more in-depth programmatic guidance on how to develop CSE programmes that are appropriate and safe for different groups of children and young people, especially those who are unlikely to be addressed in CSE programmes for children and young people generally.Available in English and Spanish.

This questions + answers brief was developed by UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Offices in partnership with Y+ and country-level networks of adolescents and young people living with HIV (A&YPLHIV). The questions are directly from A&YPLHIV and were the most common questions submitted through social media. They focus on key concerns specific to A&YPLHIV about COVID-19.The Q+A is available for download in English and Spanish.

EGPAF, with funding and support from Unitaid and DNDi, is bringing new-to-market pediatric ARV formulations to full-scale implementation in eight African countries. We gathered and documented lessons learned from these eight project countries to inform, streamline and accelerate the introduction and roll-out of new, child-friendly ARVs so that all children living with HIV have access to optimal, WHO-recommended treatment and care.

This implementation brief addresses integration of HTS into FP services. It is intended as a practical resource for national health programmes seeking to introduce or scale up HIV testing and linkage to HIV prevention, STI, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) services in FP. The World Health Organization (WHO) publication Providing contraceptive services in the context of HIV treatment programmes describes considerations for delivering family planning to women living with HIV within HIV services.This document highlights emerging good practices and country experiences of integrated HIV prevention and testing services within FP and advocates for increased linkage for FP clients to HIV services according to their needs.It also brings together information on models of integration of HIV testing into FP services, programme examples from east and southern Africa and guidance on the implementation monitoring process.

This regional report aims to strengthen risk-informed programming and facilitate scale up of simple and effective tools to identify and reach those adolescent girls and young women who are most in need of services and support. All the available tools included in the review are linked in the annexes and included in UNICEF's AGYW Programming and Implementation Repository. 

Forms for data collection, surveys for SOPs on blood handling, household screening, and registration for PMTCT monitoring and screening. 

Social protection programming has continued to expand globally in recent years, but coverage gaps remain, with children and adolescents having the lowest rates of coverage globally compared with other age groups. Social protection can promote the development of capabilities across the life course, but given relatively low coverage rates among children and adolescents, social protection’s potential may be limited, as opportunities are missed to facilitate key inputs or address inequities early in an individual’s life.Our analysis of programme implementation and design features indicates that adolescents may benefit from an intervention to varying degrees depending on the eligibility criteria. We identified three cases. First, some interventions targeted to poor and vulnerable households are purely poverty-targeted at the household level and do not target adolescents by design. However, if adolescents are present in the households, they can benefit from the programme to varying degrees, depending on the intrahousehold allocation of benefits. The second case are programmes that directly target adolescents or households with adolescents. The third case includes programmes that have a categorical targeting component inclusive of children but not adolescents, which may: (i) produce spillover effects on adolescent siblings of younger, targeted children; or (ii) have long term effects on children when they become adolescents.

Social protection is a human right, but it is not yet a universal reality. Only half of the world’s population are effectively covered by at least one social protection cash benefit, leaving 4 billion people unprotected. This global estimate hides stark regional differences – with the highest coverage gaps found in Asia and Africa – but also differences across countries and population groups. Extending social protection coverage is therefore a matter of urgency in order to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, facilitate access to healthcare and education, promote gender equality, and more broadly, to achieve well-being for all. That is why closing the social protection gap lies at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.The present working paper aims at highlighting concrete examples of institutional practices that were changed and adapted by social protection institutions with a view to improving their responsiveness and their inclusiveness with respect to HIV and TB. We hope these practices provide inspiration to encourage social protection institutions and practitioners to systematically integrate this dimension to maximize the impacts of social protection systems on health and well-being.