A new international report card comparing childhood experiences in wealthy countries shows the need for urgent progress in Aotearoa New Zealand, says Chief Children’s Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad.

Published today, the latest UNICEF Innocenti ‘Report Card 19: Fragile Gains – Child Wellbeing at Risk in an Unpredictable World’ ranks New Zealand in 32nd place out of 36 countries for overall child wellbeing.

It ranks New Zealand last – in 36th place of the world’s wealthy countries – for child and youth mental health.

The report card shows New Zealand has the highest suicide rate for children out of the world’s wealthy countries, at a rate of almost three times higher than the average*.

It also shows again that New Zealand’s children face a major problem when it comes to bullying, with the second highest rate of children experiencing bullying, out of the countries included.

Dr Achmad says these rankings, published just a week before Budget Day, show that meaningful investment in children and young people is urgently needed to support child and youth mental health, including suicide prevention measures, and to better support the prevention of bullying in schools and communities.

“I’ve been clear that we need to see a central focus on children in Budget 2025,” she says. “This is necessary to deliver on the Government’s own Child and Youth Strategy to ‘make New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child.’

“It’s devastating that among other high-income countries, we reported the highest youth suicide rate. We also know that attempted suicide rates for rangatahi Māori, Rainbow children and young people and disabled children are higher.

“This is absolutely unacceptable and we need to focus on making our country one where all children and young people are included, safe and where their diversity is respected and valued. I call on the Minister for Mental Health, and all ministers, to pay close attention to these findings and progress implementation of recommendations that already exist under reports such as the cross-party ‘Under One Umbrella’ and the Auditor-General’s ‘Meeting the mental health needs of young New Zealanders’ reports.

“I’m also calling on the Government to collect and publish good-quality, disaggregated and timely data relating to child mortality.

“Significantly reducing childhood poverty must be a core investment area for the Government, given the ripple effects it has on children’s lives. The data in the Government’s own recent Annual Report on Children and Young People’s wellbeing shows that we are going backwards when it comes to providing enough safe housing, healthy food and primary health and dental care.

“I want to see all children in our country flourish to their full potential. As this international comparison shows, we can and must do much, much better for children. These are their basic rights that we are talking about, and as a small, relatively rich country, it shouldn’t be like this.”

“The solutions to the problems highlighted in this report card have already been identified by children and young people themselves, and are well documented in our mokopuna voices reports such as such as ‘A place to talk peacefully’ and ‘You need to get in early, as soon as you see people struggling’.

“These solutions must now be actioned because children only get one chance at childhood, and right now for too many in New Zealand, it’s far from the best in the world.”

* UNICEF Innocenti used the most recent reliable data from each country, with 3-year averages to smooth fluctuations. The most recent reliable suicide data from New Zealand was from 2020. Therefore, the New Zealand youth suicide data in the report card relates to 2018 – 2020. The Ministry of Health has stated that unpublished data on suspected suicides indicates that rates are falling. However, New Zealand’s youth suicide rate is still a notable outlier among the group of countries in this report card, which is consistent with other sources like the New Zealand Youth Health Survey.

Find the UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 19 here: https://www.unicef.org.nz/stories/report-card-19-what-it-means-for-aotearoa

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