No child should be left behind. Yet UNICEF research indicates that among 240 million children with disabilities globally half have never attended school; up to one-third do not eat enough of the right food. Children with disabilities disproportionately represent many of those children left behind.  

Behind those statistics are countless stories, ambitions and obstacles faced every day by children with disabilities. UNICEF’s mission is to include all children with disability in education, health, emergency response, social protection, family and community life.

For this reason, at the Global Disability Summit 2022, UNICEF commits to generating new evidence through research. It commits to establishing a Global Research Agenda and Platform for children with disabilities, and to progressively mainstream disability in all research, to increase investment in inclusion for all children.

UNICEF has a long track record of research and evidence on children with disabilities. Our innovative research at the Office of Research, Innocenti, the Centre of Excellence on Data for Children with Disabilities, and from Region and Country Offices around the world, demonstrate an accomplishment of research and evidence generation spanning decades.  

On this page, we showcase examples of research and evidence from the past five years that focus on children with disabilities.