United Nations Children's Fund

The United Nations Children’s Fund–or UNICEF–is a United Nations Agency that was formed to provide aid to children in the tragic wake of World War II. Over the decades, UNICEF has expanded into a development agency focusing not only on child survival, but a holistic array of youth needs. As the world’s leader in advocating for children’s rights, UNICEF seeks to address the multitude of challenges that threaten the wellbeing of children and adolescents worldwide.

In this 2026 World Summit for Children, delegates will decide to discuss one of UNICEF’s outlined Goal Areas, focusing on either health or education in children and adolescents. This committee will also examine the role of development agencies at large, emphasizing the importance of both grassroots community involvement as well as a recognition of the broader structural factors that create poor health and educational conditions. What tools should governments draw upon to create multidisciplinary responses to these challenges? How can collaboration between different governments bring about effective change while avoiding an attitude of paternalism? How can these threats to wellbeing not only be treated, but also prevented in the face of escalating environmental and political shocks? We look forward to the answers you create together at UCBMUN XXX: UNICEF.

Topic A: Ensure that Every Child Survives and Thrives (UNICEF Goal Area 1)

In this topic, we will focus on multifaceted threats to morbidity and mortality in one of the world’s most vulnerable groups–children and adolescents. Infectious disease, malnutrition, traffic injuries, and complications during pregnancy and childbirth kill millions of children every year, and have a devastating impact on quality of life for survivors. Tragically, most of these causes are easily preventable or treatable with appropriate detection and management. Many children, however, lack either the money, geographic access, or government attention required to receive such care. While development strategies such as antimicrobial drugs, vaccines, and therapeutic food have certainly saved the lives of millions, each comes with its own set of challenges that fail to address the root causes of poor health. This committee will also examine the resilience and quality of health and sanitation systems, and how breakdowns in such facilities can cause health conditions to rapidly deteriorate. Issues such as gender-responsive health and health during humanitarian conflict will be central to comprehensively addressing child health as well.

Topic B: Ensuring Every Child Learns and Acquires Skills for the Future (UNICEF Goal Area 2)

Education is a critical way to promote skills that enable children to find employment, avoid adverse health outcomes, and become more involved with the structural and sociopolitical changes that affect their own lives. Unfortunately, over 600 million children are unable to reach minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. This committee aims to help children get ready to learn in pre-primary school, teach them foundational literacy and numeracy skills in primary school, and increase long-term career education and civic engagement for adolescents. These goals come with several challenges; in many areas, education systems have to make difficult trade-offs between equitably expanding access and increasing education quality. Obstacles such as poverty, geographic isolation, gender inequality, and the digital divide are all barriers to education as well; in this topic, we will focus on these and other roadblocks to develop strategies that empower children and adolescents with the skills they need to succeed in their futures.