What does this Privacy Policy cover?
Taking care of your information is important to us. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information on the situationofchildren.org site and what steps we take to protect your information.
It applies to all “our sites” – that is, all sites within the “situationofchildren.org” domain name and other UNICEF-managed sites. In some of our sites, you can create accounts, order merchandise, make donations, join and participate in discussion forums, and apply for jobs. Those sites generally have their own specific privacy policy, but if they don’t, this Privacy Policy applies.
Please read our Privacy Policy carefully before using our sites and refer back to it regularly to check for updates. Remember, this Privacy Policy will govern the way in which we collect and use your personal information from the moment you start visiting or using our sites.
What does this Privacy Policy NOT cover?
You should note that through our sites you may reach or be directed to other sites that relate to Situation of Chidren, such as the sites of our national committees. All those sites have their own privacy policies which follow the same key personal data privacy and protection principles, but may have some differences.
Please be aware that this Privacy Policy does not apply to other websites that may be linked through one of our sites or to any collection of your personal information after you click on links to such other sites. The inclusion of a link in any of our sites to those other sites does not imply endorsement by UNICEF and its partners of the linked site or of those sites’ privacy policies.
What is Personal Information?
For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “personal information” is any information that enables us to identify you, directly or indirectly, by reference to any identifiers such as your name, address, phone number, email address, identification number, location data, online identifier - or one or more other factors specific to you as an individual that would allow us to identify you.
In brief: How do we protect your personal information?
- We will only use your personal information for the purposes described in this Policy and for no other purpose.
- We will not sell your personal information.
- We will not keep your personal information for longer than is necessary for the stated purposes except to the extent required by applicable regulations.
- We will take all reasonable and necessary technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information.
Special note for children
A number of sites in the situationofchildren.org domain are focused on children, including interactive sites such as group discussions. Some of these sites require the child user to provide us with personal information, for example, to create an account. If so, we will only ask for the minimum amount of personal information necessary. Those sites will generally have a site-specific privacy policy which you should read carefully.
Depending on how you interact with us, the personal information that we collect may include your name, postal address, email address, telephone or mobile number, social media name, your contact preferences, bank details, the date and/or year of your birth, and gender (where this is appropriate, such as when you register for a running event). We may also collect personal information about the donations you make to us, any actions you take as part of a campaign for us, or events that you register for or participate in, and details from any interactions with our support team. We may combine this information with information we gather during your general browsing from standard server logs (such as your IP (Internet Protocol) address, domain name, browser type, operating system, and information such as the web site that referred you to us, the files you downloaded, the pages you visit, and the dates/times of those visits). We do this to make sure our communications to you are appropriate and tailored – something we know means a lot to our supporters. We’ve set out some examples below.
Personal information provided when you contact us or create an account through our sites
- If you contact us directly, we may receive personal information about you. For example, when you contact our team, subscribe to a newsletter, request information, provide feedback, apply for a job, create an account or join a discussion group, we may receive your name, email address, postal address, phone number, and other personal details necessary for the purposes of addressing your engagement with us, as well as the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide.
Personal information provided when you make a donation
- If you make a donation through one of our sites, you will be asked to provide certain personal information to help us process the payment and make sure that your donation goes where you intend it to go. For example, we may receive your name, email address, postal address, phone number, a record of your consent, and other information you choose to provide.
Publicly Available Personal information about you
- We may also gather personal information that is publicly available to build up a better picture of you and your interests, as well as behavioural data on digital platforms so we can consider how best to ask for your support. To do this we do research, which may include using third-party subscriptions, to help us understand things such as the demographic information associated with your postal code, an estimate of your age, information about directorships and shareholdings, employment and earnings as well as your charitable interests and giving history.
We may use your personal information:
To communicate with you
- If you have reached out to us with a question or feedback, we may communicate with you to respond to that question or feedback.
- We may communicate with you to provide you with access and use of the services you have requested or signed up to, such as newsletters and updates.
- If you have created an account with us under any of our sites, we may send you a message to check and see if there is any help we can give or check whether you encountered any problems. And we may reach out to you to verify if the email or postal address we hold for you is correct.
To fulfill administrative tasks, including processing donations
- We will use your information to keep a record of your relationship with us.
- We may use your information to process payments of donations and contact you about the payment transaction or donation and verify the payment transaction.
- If we have a contractual arrangement with you or your employer (and you have been named as the contact person), we may use your information to contact you about that contractual arrangement.
- We may also use your information to analyse and improve our website, services, products or information we provide to you.
To engage your support to advocate for children’s rights
- We may collect pledges of support for campaigns to stand up for children’s rights, like petition signatures or connecting you with your representatives so that you can contact them directly to ask them to take action.
To engage support from you and other potential supporters
- We may use your information to ask you to participate in surveys or research, to carry out and analyze research surveys, focus groups or other research methods.
- We may also use you and other supporters’ information, and combine it with other publicly available information, to create supporter ‘profiles’ and assess trends.
- We may also carry out research to identify individuals who have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch. We use sources from the public domain, and our volunteer campaign boards and committees, to identify other individuals who may be able to support us or introduce us to others, usually at a major gift level.
- The purpose of doing so will be to better understand you and our other supporters and to engage with you and them in appropriate and efficient ways.
- In certain cases, we may use the information we’ve collected to conduct due diligence on all major gifts in accordance with our legal and regulatory obligations and internal risk management policies and procedures. This is to safeguard our reputation and to help us mitigate any associated risk.
To protect our legal rights
- We may use your personal information to enforce our Terms of Use, to defend our legal rights, and to comply with our legal obligations and policies.
Aggregate data
- We may de-identify (i.e. anonymize) and aggregate information collected through our sites for statistical analysis and other legitimate purposes, including in research studies.
We may share your personal information with our National Committee Partners and other partners, agents or service providers. They will only use your Personal Information for the purposes set out in the Section above.
We will only share your personal information with these partners if they provide sufficient guarantees that your personal information will be protected and kept secure, including in cases where those third parties are located in countries outside your country of residence. We will also take reasonable steps to ensure that the means of transfer of your personal information provide adequate safeguards.
We promise to always keep your details safe and we’ll never sell or swap your personal information with any other organisation.
We may provide your email address or mobile phone number to digital advertising or social media companies who work on our behalf, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. This is so we can
reach you and others like you with our latest news and information about how you can help keep children safe. This personal information is always provided in an encrypted format and is deleted immediately after use.
If you don’t want to see targeted advertising from us on social media, please refer to the instructions provided by the specific social media website or app, for example on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google.
You can request more information about how we hold and use your information or make any other request in relation to your personal information, including withdrawing your permission to use your personal information, by contacting us at dataprotection@situationofchildren.org.
We will only use and store your personal information for so long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. How long personal information will be stored for depends on the personal information in question and what it is being used for, as well as whether there is any administrative or regulatory requirement for retaining the personal information. For example, we retain your personal information as long as necessary to comply with our obligations, including our obligations to you, to address any request by you (including to administer your donation), or to enforce our rights.
We have in place reasonable commercial standards of technology and operational security to protect all personal data provided by individuals from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. Only authorized personnel, who have been made appropriately aware of our privacy obligations, are provided access to personal information.
Situation of Children’s websites use cookies to provide statistics that help us to give you the best experience of our sites. You can find out more in our cookies policy page or switch them off if you prefer. However, by continuing to use our sites without changing settings, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
If we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated Privacy Policy to www.situationofchildren.org and those changes will become effective immediately on posting. For this reason, we encourage you to check our Privacy Policy frequently. The “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. The updated Privacy Policy will apply from the date it is posted on www.situationofchildren.org and will govern the way in which we collect and use personal information from then on.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at dataprotection@situationofchildren.org.
Last Updated: August 2023