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UNICEF

UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND. UNICEF RESEARCHERS PLEASE CONTACT US HERE: UNICEF@HMLIRB.COM

HML IRB UNICEF LTA

HML IRB has a Global Long Term Arrangement for Services with UNICEF (LTAS #42107154).  With this, HML IRB has been pre-qualified to provide research ethics reviews and services to all Regional Offices and individual Country Offices.

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THESE ARE THE MATERIALS YOU WILL NEED TO SUBMIT FOR ETHICS REVIEW:

  1. A Completed UNICEF How to Request an ERB Review

  2. Research Protocol / Inception Report: including, e.g.: abstract, specific aims or objectives, research question(s), study design, analysis & dissemination plans.

  3. Copies of all surveys and data collection instruments.

  4. Copies of all Informed Consent documents.

  5. Written protocols to ensure subjects’ safety.*

  6. Written protocols for the protection of human subjects’ identities.*

  7. Written protocols for the protection of data.*

  8. Other relevant documents.

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*These may be statements incorporated into research plans and/or embedded in a single protection protocol.

USEFUL DOCUMENTS

Please refer to these UNICEF/HML IRB guidelines in preparation for your research ethics review:

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We periodically update these documents, so please use the ones attached here.

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Please note that all requests and submitted materials must be submitted in English.

BACKGROUND

In 2013, the UNICEF Executive Board approved the ‘Revised Evaluation Policy’ to ensure that UNICEF has timely, strategically focused and objective information on the performance of its policies, programmes and initiatives.  The policy defines evaluation as “an assessment, as systematic and impartial as possible, of an activity, project, programme, strategy, policy, topic, theme, sector, operational area or institutional performance.”  All evaluations in UNICEF should follow the same guiding principles of rigour and transparency and share the same purpose of organizational learning and accountability.  

In 2015, UNICEF also approved the ‘Procedure for Quality Assurance in Research’ to guide UNICEF’s research and support quality.  As per the procedure, research is “the systematic process of the collection and analysis of data and information, in order to generate new knowledge, to answer a specific question or to test a hypothesis.  Its methodology must be sufficiently documented to permit assessment and replication.  UNICEF research should examine relevant issues and yield evidence for better programme and policy advice”.

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All research activities in UNICEF should follow the aforementioned research quality procedure.  The Director, Division of Data, Research and Policy at UNICEF approved the UNICEF Procedure for Ethical Standards in Research, Evaluation and Data Collection and Analysis to guide UNICEF’s evidence generation activities and to support the integrity of UNICEF’s evidence base in order to ensure that UNICEF’s programmes, policy and advocacy activities are grounded in ethical principles and practices.  All evaluation and research/studies in UNICEF involving human subjects or analyzing sensitive secondary data should follow these ethical standards.

UNICEF RESEARCH ETHICS & FACILITATION
OFFICE OF RESEARCH – INNOCENTI

The Office of Research – Innocenti is UNICEF’s dedicated research centre located at the Piazza SS. Annunziata in Florence, Italy.  It undertakes research on emerging or current issues in order to inform the strategic directions, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, and particularly for the most vulnerable.

This building, the Ospedale Degli Innocenti, was Europe’s first foundling hospital.  Begun in 1419, it was also the first independent design of Filippo Brunelleschi, architect of Florence Cathedral’s dome.  The glazed blue roundels were added in 1487 and are by Antonio della Robbia.

HML IRB Research & Ethics
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