Children living in humanitarian crises face an increased risk of abuse. While the threats of harm are increasing, the established systems in place ...to protect them are breaking down. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, vulnerable families suffer multiple hardships. Schools are closed and families have been pushed to the brink of poverty, sometimes having been denied the opportunity to protect and provide for their children.
The report provides an in-depth analysis of 19 Humanitarian Response Plans and Refugee Response Plans from 2019
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The report showed commitments made three decades ago to protect the rights of children remain unfulfilled ...x">for millions. Violence still affects countless children. Discrimination based on age, gender, disability, sexual orientation and religion harms children worldwide.
Key factors include a lack of investment in critically important services. Most countries fall well short of spending the 5-6% of GDP needed to ensure universal coverage of essential health care. And foreign aid, which many lower income countries rely on, is falling short in areas such as health, education, protection and child care.
Another factor, the report said, is the lack of quality data. Governments tend to rely on data that reflects national averages, making it difficult to identify the needs of specific children and to monitor progress. Comprehensive data collection and disaggregation of data by gender, age, disability and locality, are increasingly important as rights violations disproportionately affect disadvantaged children.
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Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable in humanitarian settings, yet they are often not able to access the services and protection ...they need. While multiple factors create these barriers, a major cause is how data about children with disabilities is collected and mapped. Data collection processes often exclude or underrepresent the views of children with disabilities and thier caretakers. When the experiences of children with disabilities and their caretakers are not defined and collected, they become excluded from mainstreamed protective services, which are meant to serve all children. Children with disabilities also do not get the specialised interventions they need.
This guidance note explores how to use qualitative methods to create more robust assessment processes to ensure more effective programming and services for children with disabilities. This note provides promising practices for engaging with children with disabilities and includes sample tools that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular assessment process. The note also explores the importance of thoughtful cross-sectoral responses so that children with disabilities, and their families, are carefully considered in areas like water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), education, health, and nutrition, and therefore receive the holistic support they need and deserve.
This note is intended for a broad audience of relevant child protection actors, including practitioners, coordination groups, researchers, and donors. The information is not limited to one type of humanitarian setting, geographic region, or culture. As a result, the practices and guidance should be adapted to each specific context, ideally in partnership with well-informed local actors, such as representatives from local organisations for persons with disabilities.
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From Participation to Partnerships (September 2020)
Despite the COVID-19 challenges, children around the world have found meaningful ways to suppo...rt and protect their peers, families, and communities. Children are on the frontlines of innovative responses and are working closely with their adult allies. The leadership demonstrated through these child-adult partnerships is the underlying inspiration for this guide.
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Accessed on 31.03.2020
This Guidance Note aims to provide humanitarian child protection practitioners, particularly child ...-to-highlight medbox">protection advisors and program managers, with guidance on how to engage in responses to infectious disease outbreaks to ensure children’s protection needs are taken into account in preparedness for, and during responses to, the outbreaks. The Guidance Note draws upon lessons learned during infectious disease outbreaks globally in a variety of contexts.
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What school closures under COVID-19 mean for children and young people in
crisis-affected contexts
The Handbook is primarily addressed to child protection coordination teams, which may include coordinators, co-leads and information managers, ...n class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">the guidance is equally valid for all members of the child protection coordination group, including national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government representatives and other members, who seek to achieve an effective and coordinated response
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This study primarily aims to understand how children living in areas of civil strife are denied their basic rights, especially the right to education and ...protection. For this study, eight districts affected by civil strife across the three states (Chhattisgarh: Dantewada, Bijapur, Bastar and Narayanpur, Odisha: Gajapati and Kandhamal and Jharkhand: Khunti and Lohardagga) were chosen to understand the landscape of violence and the state of basic services such as education and protection. This study has attempts to explore the impact of long-term violence on children’s lives and learning.
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The Child Protection handbook provides a synthesis of good practice and learning and enables better advocacy and communication on ...ibute-to-highlight medbox">child protection risks, needs and responses. Standards addressing child protection needs cover core work areas and critical issues. Those addressing strategy relate to case management, community-based child protection, child-friendly spaces and protection of excluded children. A fourth set of standards gives guidance on how workers in other sectors can ensure that their programmes are accessible and beneficial to children. DOCUMENT ALSO AVAILABLE IN: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu on http://cpwg.net/minimum_standards-topics/cpms-full-version/.
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The report presents successful case studies from around the world, including the implementation of minimum ...ox">protection standards for refugee children in Germany, cross border child protection systems in West Africa, and finding alternatives to the detention of migrant children in Zambia. Other countries featured in the report include Afghanistan, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, South Sudan, Vietnam, Uganda and the U.S. Each of the initiatives can be replicated in different contexts and inform child-focused actions and policy change at national, regional and global levels to be agreed in the framework of the Compact.
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This guidance note aims to ensure continuity of case management service provision as well as appropriate response to cases associated with the disease during the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar. Outlined... below are priority areas that Child Protection Case Management agencies should focus on
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Conflict, climate crisis and COVID-19 pose great threats to the health of women and children.
This policy paper underscores that, although children do not represent a high-risk group for direct COVID-19 fatality, the pandemic posts far-reach...ing secondary impacts that heighten risks to African children’s rights and wellbeing.
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Guidance Document
Unite for Children
In March 2020 the IASC Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support uniting 57 humanitarian organizations as member issued the Interim Briefing Note Addressing Mental Health and Psychos...ocial Aspects of COVID-19 Outbreak. This document has proven to be very useful in the response and has till now been translated in 24 languages. It covers a set of recommended activities as well as messages for different target groups.
The current document is an annex to the Interim Briefing Note and is meant to support the MHPSS operational response within the various sectors of humanitarian work. Approaches and interventions to MHPSS are not confined to one sector, but need to be integrated within many existing sectors and clusters.This document contains a wealth of operational information and practical approaches that can be used for humanitarian programming in health, SGBV, community-based protection, nutrition, camp management and camp coordination.
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In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of childr...en, including child prostitution, child pornography and other child sexual abuse material, Mama Fatima Singhateh, focuses on the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on increased risk and various manifestations of sale and sexual exploitation of children. The Special Rapporteur outlines the push and pull factors, protection challenges and good practices, and provides recommendations on measures to address the heightened risks of sale and sexual exploitation of children, both online and offline, during and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and the ensuing lockdowns.
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UNICEF analysis indicates that:
- Investments that increase access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions by poor groups have saved almost twice as many lives as equivalent investments in non-poor groups.
- Access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions has improved ra...pidly among poor groups in recent years, leading to substantial improvements in equity.
- During the period studied, absolute reductions in under-five mortality rates associated with improvements in intervention coverage were three times faster among poor groups than non-poor groups.
- Because birth rates were higher among the poor, the reduction in the under-five mortality rate translated into 4.2 times more lives saved for every 1 million people. Indeed, of the 1.1 million lives saved across the 51 countries during the final year studied for each country, nearly 85 per cent were among the poor.
- Intensified focus on equity-enhancing policies and investments can help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goal newborn and child mortality targets (SDG3.2).
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In Control imparts knowledge, provokes reflection and triggers curiosity. The first half of the book provides an overview of the organisations, pri...nciples, frameworks and themes that every professional deploying to health emergencies should be aware of. The second half of the book provides practical advice to help professionals survive and thrive during their mission – from staying healthy, protecting oneself from cyber-attacks and coping with stress to building trust among the host community or dealing with language barriers and the press.
This handbook is free of charge and can be made available in small quantities as long as supply lasts. To order, please send this form to: incontrol-handbook@rki.de
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