Children participate in a handwashing activity before receiving their meal at the Project Pearls community center in Tondo, Manila, on October 15, 2024, in observance of International Handwashing Day. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN Newsna, ABS-CBN News/file

MANILA — The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has launched an online platform that houses different data on children, in a bid to promote evidence-based decision-making for both existing and future programs of the government, the private sector, and advocacy groups.

The "Situation of Children of the Philippines" may be accessed through www.situationofchildren.org/ph.

This contains "six main dimensions and 25 subdimensions of children's rights, including health and nutrition, education, protection, safe and sustainable environment, child poverty and social protection, civil and participation rights," UNICEF explained in a press release, as it presented the online portal to the media.

The platform is also in collaboration with the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC), the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and the Philippine Statistics Authority, which help provide available data.

Xavier Foulquier, Chief Planning Monitoring, Evidence, and Data of UNICEF Philippines, estimates it took a year to develop the website.

"This is the first time that UNICEF is doing such a platform. Traditionally, we're doing a publication. And the last 'Situation of Children in the Philippines' - if you look online that would be from 2019 and it's big, thick document. As an innovation here in the Philippines, because we have such a dynamic data environment, we thought, the situation analysis of publication after the next round of data, then the document is not valid. You need to updated it. So we looked at technology and innovation," he told reporters.

"So this took us about year to a year and a half of collecting the data, doing the analysis, but also packaging it to be useful to everyone to be able to deep dive and find the information that they look for. It's always also the challenge of pulling all the data working with working with the different sectors," he added.

Foulquier said the data will be updated in "real time", as they are made available by other government agencies and other official sources.

He assured that the data posted in the portal are "cleared" and "vetted", saying that sectors have been "very cooperative".

"We got the data that we needed, and we build those relationship that we get updated of the data. But it also was an opportunity to discuss the quality of the data and opportunity to strengthen the available data," Foulquier explained.

"Because we're depending yet a lot on the surveys and administrative data. If we would want to have real time data, administrative data system is the key. So we've engaged with them to discuss on strengthening those data system," he added.

Foulquier shared that among the data in the portal, child protection data is "very much in demand".

Data on the impact of climate on children are also sought after, but he admitted that this aspect is part of "data gaps" that can be improved, along with data on disabilities.

"Children with disabilities, that's where we're hoping that the government with PSA to adopt the Washington Group's definition of disability and be integrated in surveys, which will help us to more accurately identify the children," he said.

"The other area of gaps - there are several, but major ones... I would say... violence," which Foulquier also described as "very sensitive data to collect" as it has implications on the privacy of children.

Other data gaps mentioned are on the impact on children of climate change, disaster, and weather disturbances.

Behzad Noubary, Deputy Representative for Programmes of UNICEF Philippines, is pushing for the inclusion of more data in the online portal.

"We also do not have sufficient information, data on the well-being of children in indigenous populations... how are indigenous children faring differently from others in the country," he said.

UNICEF Philippines wants data to become more localized, which will help decision-makers - like the national government and the local government units - to turn these into policies that will be actually felt by children, their families, and communities.