Adolescents – defined by the United Nations as those between the ages of 10 and 19 – number 1.2 billion in the world today, making up 16 per cent of the world’s population. As children up to the age of 18, most adolescents are protected under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet, their vulnerabilities and needs often remain unaddressed.
Neither young children nor adults, adolescents lack the services that respond to their distinctive needs. Interventions for children very often focus on the younger ages; adolescents ‘age out’ of paediatric health care, for example, and they are often unreached by programmes for adults.
Adolescent Country Tracker brochure
The Adolescent Country Tracker (ACT) is an outcome-based framework to track adolescent wellbeing, developed by UNICEF in collaboration with partners. The framework includes globally comparable indicators which are closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. The framework aims to provide a common platform to advocate for greater attention and investments in adolescent girls and boys and help track the progress of adolescent development and wellbeing at a country level.
Guidance Document: Strengthening the Adolescent Component of National HIV Programmes through Country Assessments
This guidance document and its accompanying tool, the Adolescent Assessment and Decision-Makers Tool (AADM), were devised to facilitate country assessments aimed at strengthening the adolescent component of national HIV programmes. The purpose of the country assessments is to: (1) support country teams in the identification of equity and performance gaps affecting adolescent HIV programming; and (2) define priority actions to improve the effectiveness of the national adolescent HIV response.
The State of the World’s Children 2011: Adolescents: An Age of Opportunity
In the foreword to this State of the World’s Children 2011 edition, Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF writes: “Adolescence is not only a time of vulnerability, it is also an age of opportunity. This is especially true when it comes to adolescent girls. We know that the more education a girl receives, the more likely she is to postpone marriage and motherhood – and the more likely it is that her children will be healthier and better educated. By giving all young people the tools they need to improve their own lives, and by engaging them in efforts to improve their communities, we are investing in the strength of their societies.”
Adolescent well-being encompasses many dimensions and UNICEF monitors several adolescent-specific indicators in the following vital areas: