Cardiff is being decked with blue flags and lit up with blue lights to mark the city being named the UK's first Unicef Child Friendly City. It follows five years of work, starting before the pandemic, helping tens of thousands of children and young people.

The city's iconic buildings will all be lit in the Child Friendly Cardiff colour, blue, and there will be flags at Cardiff Castle and street dressing across the capital. Hundreds of children will join a celebratory event at Cardiff City Stadium when the UNICEF UK Child Friendly City Recognition Agreement will be signed.

Unicef said the international status was in recognition of measures Cardiff Council has taken in the last five years to advance the human rights of children and young people. Cardiff Council joined the UK Committee for UNICEF’s (UNICEF UK) Child Friendly Cities and Communities programme in 2017 . Since then, the council said it has been embedding children’s rights into its polices and services, as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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The council said it prioritised six key areas, cooperation and leadership, communication, culture, health, family and education. As part of this there were more than 700 opportunities available to children and young people to meaningfully take part in Cardiff Council decision-making, a spokesperson said.

Other work achieved to date includes:

• 40,000 young people participated in Summer of Fun and Winter of Wellbeing events
• 42,254 have accessed early help and support since April 2019.
• 66,324 five to 14 year-olds have accessed local authority play provision since April 2020
• 73% of Cardiff schools are embedding children’s rights as part of UNICEF’s work
• 50 teams of children were involved in designing new areas of the city through Minecraft education.
• 2,785 children have taken part in evaluating and designing council services. Traffic has been reduced in 19 of the city’s streets to make the roads by 22 schools safer
• Nearly 3,000 children have accessed more than 90 free extra-curricular activities

Jon Sparkes, Chief Executive of the UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK), said: “Becoming the first UNICEF Child Friendly City in the UK is testament to the significant commitment and hard work that has taken place by Cardiff council and its partners over the past five years. It also marks a promise to the city’s children and young people – that the council will continue to make sure children’s voices are at the heart of local decisions, and to making sure all children and young people – especially those who are most vulnerable and marginalised –have their rights upheld, now and in the future.”

Children, young people, representatives from UNICEF UK, Cardiff Council and the city’s Civic Society will join in the celebrations today and formally sign the UNICEF UK Child Friendly City Recognition Agreement.

The city will shine blue to commemorate the occasion with city centre street dressing, flags flying at Cardiff Castle and the city’s iconic buildings lit up in the Child Friendly Cardiff colour - blue.

Cardiff Council leader Huw Thomas said: “We remain committed to making children’s rights a reality and look forward to working with children and young people to further develop our rights approach.”