The 2020 countdown country profiles on ECD will be launched this year through a virtual event on November 23, 2020. The Profiles give a clear picture of the situation of ECD by country and draw attention to progress as well as gaps, especially in data pertaining to the youngest children and in measuring services and practices to improve nurturing care. An initial set of 91 country profiles was released in 2018 and then expanded to 138 low- and middle-income countries in 2019. This year, the existing profiles cover 197 countries, including new profiles for high-income countries.

The event is jointly hosted by UNICEF and the Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development Metrics Joint Technical Working Group of the Countdown to 2030. The director of ANECD, Dr. Ghassan Issa, will participate among other experts and representatives to discuss the current state of knowledge on ECD and rally partners around investing in strengthening the availability, quality and strategic use of data on ECD to support country and cross-country action and monitoring. The event will be moderated by the Associate Director of the Data and Analytics Section from UNICEF, Mr. Mark Hereward, while the participating panelists are:

• Omar Abdi, Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF
• Linda Richter, Distinguished Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
• Ghassan Issa, General Coordinator, Arab Network for ECD, Arab Resource Collective
• Cesar Victora, Emeritus Professor, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil
• Claudia Cappa, Senior Adviser Statistics and Monitoring, Data and Analytics Section, UNICEF
• Tonatiuh Barrientos, Director of the Center for Population Health Research, National Institute of Public Health, Mexico
• Felix Phiri, Director of the National Nutrition Body, Malawi
• Anshu Banerjee, Director, Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, World Health Organization

To join the event, register now here