On 19 November 2025, UNICEF released The State of the World’s Children 2025: Ending Child Poverty – Our Shared Imperative, a powerful statistical compendium revealing the staggering scale of deprivation facing children worldwide. The report underscores how poverty continues to break the promise of childhood—denying millions of children their basic rights, access to essential services, and the opportunity to reach their full potential.
UNICEF’s analysis highlights multidimensional poverty across health, education, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and water. It calls for urgent and coordinated action from governments, civil society, and global partners to dismantle structural barriers and strengthen social protection systems so every child can survive and thrive.
For those working in palliative care in humanitarian settings, these findings reinforce what providers witness every day: children living with serious illness are often among the most marginalized. Poverty, conflict, displacement, and weak health systems compound suffering, making access to timely, holistic, and culturally grounded palliative care even more essential.
The report’s focus on survival, development, and protection speaks directly to the mission of PallCHASE and its partners. As global actors commit to addressing child poverty, palliative care must be recognized as part of that roadmap—ensuring that children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions, and their families, are not left behind. Strengthening palliative care in humanitarian and resource-limited settings is not only a health imperative but a matter of rights and equity.
UNICEF’s statistical compendium provides crucial data to guide advocacy, policy, and programming. As we reflect on its findings, PallCHASE continues to champion integrated, compassionate, and context-responsive palliative care for children and families living through crisis—a vital component of the global effort to protect childhood and dignity for all.
See full compendium at https://data.unicef.org/resources/sowc-2025/
Image is from the Unicef site – UNICEF © 2025.
