Module 7: Child Rights in Crisis and Risk-prone Situations

2. Module 7: Child Rights in Crisis and Risk-prone Situations

3. What is your focus?

4. Introduction • Emergencies can happen anywhere, any time • It doesn’t matter how developed a country is, or wealthy or prepared. • Impact on communities • Disruption of community and state protection mechanisms • Disruption/loss of access to basic services • Increase in vulnerability (girls pushed into early marriage, sons sent to work…)

5. Resilience • Yet, there is recognition that the impact of crisis can be mitigated, prevented and prepared for • Building resilience • The heart of development cooperation’s efforts in humanitarian and development contexts. • Development programs need to tackle the root causes of recurrent crisis rather than just their consequences in order to ensure development gains are genuinely sustainable. • Working with vulnerable populations to build their resilience is also a fundamental part of poverty reduction –the ultimate goal of EU development policy

6. What is resilience? Resilience: The ability of an individual, a household, a community, a country or a region to withstand, adapt and quickly recover from stresses and shocks such as drought, violence, conflict or natural disaster. Enhancing capacities Alleviating underlying causes

7. Resilience in different contexts • High vulnerability/low national capacity to prevent and manage shocks • Localized support to service delivery, explicit capacity development strategies targeting the roots of fragility through humanitarian and development interventions • High vulnerability/limited, but growing, national capacity • Strengthening systems while filling critical gaps, gradually transferring leadership to national institutions • High vulnerability/high national systems capacity • Advocacy, disaster risk reduction, and policy advice • Challenged governance/civil unrest & previously strong national systems suffer a challenges • Particularly challenging in regards to promoting child rights

8. Challenges • Multiple overlapping contexts • One agency may therefore be required to take several different approaches to working in the same country • Institutional silos • Differing timelines for response, priorities, resource allocation, staffing expertise and institutional mandates • Duty bearers as violators • In armed conflict, often intentionally perpetrate gross violations of child rights as a part of deliberate plan • Diminished national capacity • Crises can result in destruction of assets and create demands that cannot be met with existing capacities

9. Key strategies • Anticipate crises by assessing risks • Which significant hazards and threats pose the biggest risk to children and women? Where will these hazards happen? Who are the most vulnerable and therefore the most affected? • Build national capacities for preparedness and response • Whose and what capacities need to be built? • Invest in early warning systems • The process of providing timely information through systematic information gathering and risks analysis about potential emergencies

10. Concrete actions • Support national capacities for disaster risk reduction (DRR) • Checklist on integration of child rights concerns into DRR programming • Support participation of children in local planning, risk assessments, and monitoring • Supporting their positive engagement is an important aspect in fostering more inclusive societies • There are many concrete ways in which they can contribute

11. Concrete actions (cont.) 3. Ensure integrated program approaches and strategies • Work differently and more effectively together • More flexible policies and funding mechanisms • More effective coordination and sequencing between humanitarian and development work 4. Engage in joint needs assessments • 2011 EU methodology for JHDF for transition situations

12. Group Activity