child protection Archives - Page 11 of 14

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identifies a major protracted refugee situation as one where more than 25,000 refugees have been in exile for more than five years. Protracted refugee situations refer to those that have moved past the emergency phase, but for which there seems to be no possibly of safe and durable repatriation in the foreseeable future. They are not always static populations; there are often periods of increase and decrease in the numbers of people displaced and changes within the population. Today in the world there are around 30 major protracted refugee situations. Populations are living in this state of limbo for an average of 20 years – an increase from an average of nine years in the early 1990s. There are not only more people living in protracted refugee situations, but they are lasting much longer. (Milner & Loescher, 2011) Protracted displacement often originates from states whose chronic insecurity lies at the centre of wider regional instability. (Milner & Loescher, 2011)

This is certainly true in the case of the population living as long-term refugees in Rwanda, almost all of whom originate from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Since the early 1990’s the African Great Lakes Region has been torn apart by conflict. 8 The 1994 Rwandan genocide and its consequences served as a catalyst precipitating further breakdown and crisis in the region including across Eastern DRC, where ongoing conflict and displacement continue today. (Prunier, 2011)

Rwanda currently hosts a population of 72,856 refugees9. Of this population, 99% of refugees come from the DRC, with small numbers of others coming from Burundi, Chad, Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. Recent renewed violent conflict over land and ethnic tensions in North and South Kivu in Eastern DRC has seen large numbers of newly displaced Congolese flooding across the borders into Rwanda. Since April 2013, UNHCR have registered 26,700 new refugees mostly relocated to the newly established Kigeme Camp and Nkamira Transit Centre (while they await transfer). (UNHCR; Government of Rwanda, 2013)

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8 An area including the countries of Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda.
9 Figures as of June 2013. The decrease in population figures is due to: absenteeism at the refugee verification exercise, double registration, persons inactivated pending resolution of Rwandan ID issue, and persons inactivated because of lack of adequate documentation.

Worldwide, there is an increasing trend toward urbanization, a phenomenon that is highly conspicuous in developing countries and in war- and disaster-affected areas.2 The majority of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, which have become home to most of the world’s poor people. Frequently, urban areas have slums, which most governments regard as illegal settlements. Urban slums may include long-term residents and also migrants—typically the rural poor—who come to the city in hopes of improving the economic circumstances of themselves and their children.

Urban slums warrant special concern because over 900 million people worldwide are estimated to live in urban slums. Slum dwellers frequently lack access to clean water, adequate sanitation, sufficient living space, and security in tenure. In Africa, children living in urban slums have higher under-five mortality rates from preventable diseases than do children who are not living in slums.3 Also, people who live in urban slums experience high levels of poverty and have reduced access to the services and the rule of law that other urban populations enjoy.4 A study by the African Population and Health Research Center found that in some Kenyan slums, more than half of children of school going age did not have access to the free education benefits that were available to children not living in slums.5

Despite the global urbanization trend, relatively little is known about child protection in urban areas. 6 Practitioners recognize that urban areas frequently present multiple, interacting risks to children such as family separation, living and working on the streets, sexual exploitation and abuse, HIV and AIDS, violence, being out of school, trafficking, being in conflict with the law, child labor, neglect, substance abuse, and recruitment into armed forces and groups, among others. Less is known, however, about the processes, practices, and mechanisms for responding to and preventing the harm caused by these issues. If little is known about child protection in urban areas, even less is known about child protection in slum areas, which have been invisible to most people.

A significant question in urban slum areas is which mechanisms or processes at community level do people use to protect children, who are defined under international law as people under 18 years of age. Globally, community-based child protection mechanisms (CBCPMs) are front line efforts to protect children from exploitation, abuse, violence, and neglect and to promote children’s well-being.7 CBCPMs are defined broadly to include all groups or networks at grassroots level that respond to and prevent child protection issues and harms to vulnerable children. These may include family supports, peer group supports, and community groups such as women’s groups, religious groups, and youth groups, as well as traditional community processes, government mechanisms, and mechanisms initiated by national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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2 WHO & UN-Habitat (2010). 3 African Population and Health Research Center (2002). 4 UN Millennium Project (2005). 5 African Population and Health Research Center (2002). 6 UNHCR (2009) ; UNICEF (2012). 7 Eynon & Lilley(2010); Wessells (2009).

A Syrian Teacher, November 2015

On November 3, 2015 I received a message from one of my contacts, a human smuggler. A group of 25 Syrians was stuck on a beach in Dikili, north of Izmir. They had failed to pay the outstanding amount for the passage to Greece. So the smugglers just rendered the dinghy unusable and left. The group had been there for a week.

‘’That’s just the story for you’’ my contact said, sarcastically.

I was in Dikili the next day. I grabbed a cab and hit the road to find that beach. After half an hour, I found the group. The beach was hard to spot from the main road. Trees were blocking the view. I had to climb down, as there was no marked path.

The group was living a hell in this actual paradise. Almost all their savings had been stolen by the smugglers. All that was left on the beach was the destroyed boat and the made-in-China life vests scattered all over. The men were searching for firewood while the women were trying to bring some kind of order to the camp site. It was a hot day, and the light breeze was carrying the stench of a makeshift toilet in my direction – a rocky portion of the beach was cordoned off with cardboard. Getting food and water was a logistical nightmare. They had to walk to Dikili. Fortunately, a few individuals from a nearby village had provided them with bread, some fruit and beverages.

The group was from the Syrian city of Kamishli. The men had decided to flee with their families in the face of imminent conscription. Their journey had started almost a year ago, but they had come to a dead end on this beach. Their worst fear was to be taken back to Izmir by the Turkish security forces. They were adamant that they would find the money and complete their voyage to Greece. Lesbos could be seen in the distance, despite a light wall of fog. So close, you could almost touch the island.

I had been on the beach for more than two hours. Everybody was telling me their story. The children were staring at me with curiosity, sometimes touching me. As I photographed them, they posed and laughed uncontrollably.

Then, something interesting happened. One of the women called out for the children. Without hesitation, all twelve children hurried in the direction from which that authoritative voice was coming. They sat in a circle and the woman started handing out notebooks, textbooks and pencils. I could not believe my eyes. She was reading out loud, the children repeating. Then the children began reading by themselves, one by one. The woman listened intensely; praising those who read correctly and making the others work harder. An hour later, class was over.

I had just had experienced an amazing moment. This teacher had refused to give up. Long ago, she had concluded that Syria was facing a lost generation and had decided to fight against that outcome, on her own. She was not going to leave these children alone.

Throughout the research, I never forgot about that teacher. She should be an inspiration to us all.

People destabilized by armed conflict, including refugees, internally displaced persons, in particular, women and children are at increased risk of exposure to HIV infection (United Nation General Assembly 2001). The above quotation suggests that internally displaced persons in general and women and children in particular are among the most vulnerable groups who are exposed to an increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. As a matter of fact, a number of factors may facilitate the prevalence of the disease among the IDPs. On one hand, the vulnerability of the women emerges from the fact that they are at increased risk of sexual violence and abuse during conflicts and wars (Amowitz et al. 2002, p. 329). This is because at the time of conflicts, rape was considered a weapon of war. Moreover, conflicts and wars usually break down the institutions as well as the social networks that provide support and protection to the women (UNESCO and UNHCR 2007). On the other hand, the psychological effect which is caused by the exposure to the mass trauma during wars leads to alcohol and drug abuse, especially among young people. This may influence their attitudes towards risky behaviors such as unsafe sexual practices that lead to sexual transmitted diseases such as AIDS (UNESCO and UNHCR 2007).

In the absence of an effective medical cure or vaccine, knowledge and awareness about HIV/AIDS are considered the most powerful weapons against the disease (Kelly 2009). The question posed here is: From where do vulnerable people in IDPs situation acquire knowledge about HIV/AIDS? To answer this question, this paper aims to identify the main channels from which young people in Dar el Salaam IDPs camp in Omdurman-Sudan acquire knowledge about HIV/AIDS.

The researcher will first highlight the methods which used to collect data in this study, then will explain how samples for this study were identified and selected. Discussion of the ethical issues that were considered will as well take place, followed by illustrating the qualitative research methods which followed in this study. Following that, will be discussed against studies done on similar issues, the researcher will provide some recommendations and conclusions for further studies.

This article examines education policy for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, drawing on 44 stakeholder interviews conducted in March 2016. Findings indicate that the idea of children’s rights, enshrined in international conventions, combined with foreign aid, encouraged the creation of a national refugee education framework that expanded refugees’ access to schooling. However, in local communities and classrooms, where the government’s stated commitment to education must be realized, we find that policies are not fully implemented and that many unofficial educational programmes are operating in contradiction to government policy. We argue that, while such gaps between policy and practice in education are common, refugee contexts present distinct challenges for policy implementation due to the role of international actors in setting policy, weak state authority and refugees’ lack of legal status. We suggest that a better starting place for understanding education policy implementation is to understand the often competing sources of state and non-state authority that affect decision-making at the local level.

At the core of social protection is a concern for addressing vulnerability and risk. It is increasingly understood that social protection policy frameworks and programmes must be informed by a recognition of the diversity of vulnerability and risks, and the way they evolve across the life cycle (Holzman et al, 2003)

In this report, the fifth in a series of regional thematic reports produced for a study on social protection and children in West and Central Africa, we focus on children’s vulnerabilities and risks related to an absence of protection from violence, abuse and neglect, and the ways in which measures to address such vulnerabilities and risks can be more effectively integrated into social protection policy frameworks. Many of the vulnerabilities identified stem from social factors such as family violence, break-up or illness, and death (e.g. owning to HIV and AIDS); extra-family violence and conflict; social exclusion and discrimination; and harmful traditional practices.

Children most affected include: children deprived of parental care, children affected by HIV/AIDS; children living in institutions and in conflict with the law; children associated with armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAG); survivors of school violence, sexual and physical abuse; and children affected by female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/FGC) and early marriage. However, other child protection concerns are closely intertwined with economic vulnerabilities, manifest in forms such as child labour, commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. Still others are related to broader issues of social equity and exclusion to be addressed through what Devereux and Sabates Wheeler (2004) term transformative social protection. These include the absence of protective legislation and policies such as birth registration systems, or child-friendly legal systems and their effective implementation.

Contemporary discussions on strengthening national child protection systems agree that community-based child protection mechanisms (CBCPMs) are fundamental elements of child protection systems.1 Because they are relatively easy to access, or perhaps are the only alternative that is available in responding to harms, CBCPMs have become frontline mechanisms for protecting children from exploitation, abuse, violence, and neglect and to promote children’s well-being.

Defined broadly, CBCPMs include all groups or networks at grassroots level that respond to and prevent child protection issues and harms to vulnerable children. These may include family supports, peer group supports, and community groups such as women’s groups, religious groups, and youth groups, as well as traditional or endogenous community processes, government mechanisms, and mechanisms such as Child Welfare Committees or Child Protection Committees initiated by national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Some of these supports–family and peer group supports, for example–are non-formal since they are not part of the Government led system of child protection. Other supports, such as Chiefs and village elders in the Kenyan context, are arms of the formal, Government led system.

Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the effectiveness and use of CBCPMs and their alignment and linkage with formal aspects of wider child protection systems. In 2009, a global, interagency review of the effectiveness of CBCPMs, primarily ones such as Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) that had been facilitated by international NGOs, found a paucity of quality evidence. It also reported that CWCs were frequently set up in parallel with existing mechanisms, without appropriate efforts to learn about and build upon what was already there. As a result, CWCs tended to be unsustainable. Preliminary evidence suggested that where CWCs were effective and sustainable, they were ‘owned’ by the community and linked with government led mechanisms such as district level Child Protection Networks that received referrals of difficult cases and helped to build the capacities of the CWCs.

This gap in knowledge about CBCPMs is problematic since an understanding of the use, effectiveness, and sustainability of CBCPMs is essential for improving practice and policy in regard to strengthening child protection systems. It is widely agreed that CBCPMs should complement, link and collaborate with, and align with formal parts of a national child protection system. Yet the question remains: do they in fact do these things? A crucial step in systems strengthening is to learn about the views and practices of local people–not what they ought to do but what they actually do in regard to child protection. In other words, there is a need to focus more on function, that is, on how people perceive childhood and harms to children, and what actually happens when particular harms occur. In addition to indicating whether the child protection system is working in the intended manner, such learning could help to identify obstacles to and limits on the effective functioning of the child protection system, and help to guide efforts at strengthening the child protection system in ways that yield tangible improvements in children’s well-being.

To address this knowledge gap and to help strengthen policy and practice around child protection, the Interagency Learning Initiative is implementing action research in Kenya and Sierra Leone (see Annex 1). The first stage of the research, which is the focus of this report, involves systematic learning about existing CBCPMs and their linkage with formal, government led aspects of the wider child protection system. Subsequently, randomly selected communities will choose a child protection issue to address and will design and lead the implementation of an intervention that includes an appropriate link with the formal system. Before the intervention has begun, and following two years of implementation, children’s well-being and risk outcomes will be measured using a survey instrument that provides quantitative data. Following a quasi-experimental design, matched communities that do not engage immediately in a community driven implementation process will be tracked over the same period of time using the survey instrument. A unique feature of this process, is the use of population-based measures of children’s risk and well-being that are based in part on local views of harms to children and children’s well-being. This public health approach to child protection measurement could be instrumental in ensuring that steps to strengthen the child protection system produce measurable improvements in children’s protection and well-being.

Worldwide, the field of child protection in humanitarian settings is undergoing an historic shift toward strengthening child protection systems on a national scale (African Child Policy Forum et al., 2013; Davis, McCaffrey, & Conticini, 2012; UNICEF, UNHCR, & World Vision, 2013; Wulczyn et al., 2010). This approach aims to provide comprehensive child protection supports and promises to invigorate efforts to prevent problems of abuse, violence, exploitation, and neglect regarding children. This systemic approach is important and encouraging, but many challenges have arisen in implementing it. Many efforts at mapping and strengthening child protection systems have been top-down and failed to listen deeply to families and communities or to recognize adequately their contributions to children’s protection and well-being.

A more comprehensive approach to child protection system strengthening is to intermix and balance top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out approaches. Top-down approaches help to ensure that governments have the laws, policies, and capacities that are essential in protecting vulnerable children. Bottom-up approaches work from grassroots level upward, feature community action, build on existing community strengths, and stimulate community-government collaboration. Middle-out approaches, which emanate from actors such as city councils that are situated between the national and grassroots levels, embed the child protection agenda in regional centers of power. These three approaches are complementary.

Many of our readers already know that Lebanon, a country of fewer than 6 million people, has reached a breaking point in its capacity to host the almost 1.2 million Syrian refugees that have streamed into Lebanon as a result of the horrifying civil war in Syria these past three and a half years. What many of us may not know is that Mustafa al-Haj, a Syrian graduate of the University of Damascus (BA, 2010) and refugee, is the co-founder and principal of Tuyour al-Amal (lit. “Birds of Hope,”) an elementary, junior high, and high school desperately reaching out to US, European, Lebanese, and other Arab media, individuals, and NGOs to cobble together funding to keep the school afloat. Their Syrian curriculum and their innovative art therapy program are pioneering in the informal education system for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and their classes are showing positive changes in the children who enroll and continue to attend.

Street children are a marginalized group with limited access to education, health care and other services (Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2004). They are also frequently subjected to different forms of abuse, neglect, deprivation, hazards of living on the streets and an increased risk of psychoactive substance use (Aderinto, 2000; Carlini-Cotrim & Carlini, 1988; Gutierrez, Vega, & Perez, 1992; Ojanuga, 1989; Smart et al., 1981; WHO, 1993).

It is estimated that there are about 100 million street children worldwide, especially in developing countries (WHO, 1993, 1996). There are regional estimates of 40 million in Latin America, 25–30 million in Asia, and over 10 million in Africa. However, street children are not a homogenous group but vary significantly according to their different sociocultural backgrounds and geographical locations (Ennew, 2003).

Nigeria is a culturally diverse nation with over 250 different languages. It has an estimated population of 140 million people with 48% less than 15 years old (Federal Ministry of Health, 1996). Similar to worldwide observations, street children in Nigeria are best understood in terms of the diversity of culture in the various communities.

Street children in southern Nigeria are more likely to be found roaming the streets as ‘‘area boys,’’ bus conductors, hawkers, vendors or engaged in other menial jobs, usually to augment low family incomes or to fend for themselves (Aderinto, 2000; Ebigbo, 2003; Mbakogu, 2004; UNICEF, 1996). In the northern parts of the country, they are usually found as Almajiris; seated in clusters on the streets for lessons on the Qur’an, begging for alms, roaming the streets, or engaged in menial jobs in exchange for food (Ebigbo, 2003; Mbakogu, 2004; Ojanuga, 1989).

Resource Topics

OUR VISION, GOALS, AND APPROACH

Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms in Refugee Camps in Rwanda

Learning About Children In Urban Slums: A Rapid Ethnographic Study In Two Urban Slums In Mombasa Of Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms And Their Linkage With The Kenyan National Child Protection System

On the Brink of a Lost Generation: Challenges to the Education of Syrian Refugee Children and Youth in Turkey

Challenges hindering youth from acquiring knowledge about HIV/AIDS in the internally displaced camps: A case study of Dar el Salaam camp in Omdurman-Sudan

Between Policy and Practice: The Education of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

Promoting Synergies between Child Protection and Social Protection

A Grounded View of Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms and Their Linkages with The Wider Child Protection System In Three Rural And Urban Areas In Kenya

Bottom-up approaches to strengthening child protection systems: Placing children, families, and communities at the center

Tuyour al-Amal and Informal Education for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon

Psychoactive Substance Use among Children in Informal Religious Schools (Almajiris) in Northern Nigeria

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