The UNICEF Annual Report 2013 provides highlights of UNICEF’s programmes, humanitarian assistance, partnerships and policy advocacy for children in 2013.

The year 2013 was one of progress and promise for children, although disparities remain high even as we approach the 2015 target date for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The year was also a pivotal one for UNICEF. Some highlights of UNICEF’s achievements in 2013:

• UNICEF strengthened its focus on equity and on reaching the poorest, most marginalized and vulnerable children. Major advances included the launch of the flagship publication The State of the World’s Children 2013 on the inclusion of children with disabilities; and scale-up of the application of the Monitoring Results for Equity System (MoRES) that identifies, tracks and addresses bottlenecks to effective delivery of programmes for children.
• UNICEF reinforced the momentum to end violence against children through the launch of the global #ENDviolence initiative that aimed to raise awareness, engage the public to take action and show that there are solutions to this pervasive, but often invisible issue. In its first six months, more than 60 countries from every region had launched the initiative, UNICEF National Committees spotlighted #ENDviolence on television and in print media, and European Union dignitaries used their prominence to support the effort.
• UNICEF played a leading role in supporting United Nations Member States in crafting the next development agenda. UNICEF co-led five global thematic consultations on key development themes and was actively involved with more than 85 national-level consultations. To ensure that the needs, concerns and rights of all stakeholders were taken into account, the consultations included hearing the views of children and young people, people with disabilities, indigenous and ethnic groups, people living in poverty and other marginalized groups.
• UNICEF continued to fuel and leverage innovation at every level of its work. Mobile phone-based apps were applied more broadly, for example helping to quickly and accurately reunite Congolese children in Uganda with their families, and to trace children in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. The UNICEF Supply Division established a pipeline for 19 product innovations, completed two projects for life-saving medicines, and developed a new markets ‘dashboard’ that provides data-driven analysis of market characteristics for more than 50 essential products for children.
• UNICEF made several internal shifts to strengthen its ability to operate more efficiently and effectively in the coming years. In 2013, a new Strategic Plan 2014 ̶ 2017 was approved; the plan is UNICEF’s blueprint for fulfilling the promises of the Millennium Development Goals and directing its equity focused work beyond 2015. UNICEF became increasingly transparent: Just one year after joining the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), UNICEF achieved a first major milestone by publishing on IATI’s website details of its work in countries across the globe.
• In the face of overwhelming evidence that a generation of Syrian children is at risk of losing hope for the future, UNICEF joined a group of partners to develop the No Lost Generation Initiative that aims to provide Syrian children with access to education, a protective environment and other opportunities. In 2013, No Lost Generation contributed to providing 2.1 million children in the Syrian Arab Republic and 668,000 children in neighbouring countries with educational assistance.

These examples are but a few of the many results that UNICEF, with its partners, achieved for children in 2013.