The WeWorld Index 2020 has new features compared to the previous editions. The goal for which it was first conceived in 2015 still stands: to measure the inclusion of women and children in 172 countries around the world, considering inclusion as a multi-dimensional process, affecting various aspects of life (in line with the 2030 Agenda). The starting point for fostering the inclusion of women and children is to guarantee their rights. To achieve that, resorting to legal tools protecting them is not enough. In practice, women’s and children’s rights are often not respected, while gender and generation discriminations persist in several parts of the world, more or less explicitly. For women and children to be able to really exercise their rights it is necessary to support their capabilities. This is the first new feature of the WeWorld Index 2020: to restate the need to move on from a mere recognition of some rights to their effective implementation through the development of capabilities.
But since women’s rights are intertwined with children’s rights, fostering the exercise of capabilities of one of them has effects on the other. This is the second new feature of this edition: in the WeWorld Index 2020 we provide some practical examples of how a woman’s living conditions (and hence the possibility to exercise her own rights) do affect the living conditions of her children, and vice-versa. These considerations are not a purely theoretical exercise, but are meant to be a landmark for the action for those who daily work with women and children, within international cooperation and national programs.
Lastly, the WeWorld Index 2020 provides a snapshot of the world in times of Covid-19. The pandemic has widened social inequalities and created enormous tensions in every country, which will have long term consequences. A cumulative loss of the global economy over the next two years (2020–21) is estimated at over $12 trillion (IMF, 2020), only one third of students will return to school for the ac-ademic year 2020-21 (UNESCO, 2020a), children living in poor household will increase by 117 million (UNICEF, 2020a). Hence, this year’s ranking, in addition to the 34 previous indicators of the WeWorld Index series, takes into account three new indicators, concerning Covid-19.