A broad range of UNHCR’s key priorities overlap with MHPSS issues – for example, child protection and sexual and gender-based violence [SGBV] prevention
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and response.
Despite all these existent synergies, UNHCR’s current policies and guidelines do not sufficiently link with MHPSS principles. For example, the Community Services section, which is closely aligned to the principles of MHPSS and could be well-positioned to guide the implementation of related programs, has not adopted the MHPSS language or approach.
There are opportunities for UNHCR to engage more strongly and clearly in this field. However, this requires a vision for how the organisation as a whole, and particular sectors within the organisation, will engage within the field of MHPSS activities. For a start, UNHCR can work to improve its understanding and framing of mental health and psychosocial issues, and how these issues fit within its broader mandate.
While the majority of MHPSS activities are delivered by implementing partners, UNHCR staff require familiarity with core principles in the field, such as the Intervention Pyramid contained in the IASC Guidelines, in order to support and monitor quality MHPSS activities.
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The Minimum Standards for Age and Disability Inclusion in Humanitarian Action inform the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian programmes across all sectors
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and phases of response, and in all emergency contexts, ensuring older people and people with disabilities are not excluded.
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How do local authorities and humanitarian agencies collaborate when refugees are in transit? An IIED-supported research project is looking at the transit refugee response in Croatia.
The report presents successful case studies from around the world, including the implementation of minimum protection standards for refugee children in Germany, cross border child protection systems in West Africa, and finding alternatives to the de
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tention 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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Successful detonation of an improvised nuclear device (IND) would be a catastrophic event, causing an unprecedented number of injuries and lives lost, as well as economic, political, and social disr
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uption. However, an effective medical response and an infrastructure prepared to protect itself from fallout could save tens of thousands of lives. Since 2001, all levels of government, academic institutions, and professional organizations have done significant work to enhance our ability to prepare for and respond to a nuclear detonation. The following manual is intended to simplify and translate the necessary protective actions and medical response modalities in order to make them more accessible and easier to translate into practice. The approach of this manual is to provide a common baseline application for various allied response disciplines (to include senior operational responders, emergency managers, public health advisors, and municipal, State, and Federal executives and elected officials). This manual will enhance mutual understanding of the basics of nuclear response.
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