Child Protection

As my school heavily emphasizes child protection (CP), it comes to my attention that CP is neither just a slogan nor a pure educational policy, but it is an integrated system which combines the silos of different sectors into a comprehensive protection system for children. Before we begin our journey of exploring CP, the priority we need to tackle is the definition of the child.

What is the definition of the child?  According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a child is everyone under 18 unless, “under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”.

What is Child Protection? UNICEF uses the term ‘child protection’ to refer to preventing and responding to violence, exploitation and abuse against children – including commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking, child labor and harmful traditional practices, such as female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage.

Looking from children-centered, there are different layers. Individual is a child himself/herself. Relationships such as family, friends, and peers. Community contexts in which social relationships occur, such as schools, neiborghhoods, and workplaces. Society is referred to the larger scale of the social setting that the individuals live in.

What types of violence that children face?

  • Violence against children: The World Health Organization defines violence as:

“The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”

  • Physical violence: Physical violence includes the use of physical force and can include corporeal punishment, sexual violence, domestic violence, and violent discipline
  • Maltreatment (including violent punishment): Involves physical, sexual and psychological/emotional violence; and neglect of infants, children and adolescents by parents, caregivers and other authority figures, most often in the home but also in settings such as schools and orphanages
  • Sexual violence: Any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic that are directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion. Sexual violence can occur in any setting, including at home and at work
  • Intimate partner violence (or domestic violence): Intimate partner violence (or domestic violence) involves violence by an intimate partner or ex-partner. Although males can also be victims, intimate partner violence disproportionately affects females. It commonly occurs against girls within child and early/forced marriages. Among romantically involved but unmarried adolescents, it is sometimes called “dating violence”.
  • Emotional violence: Emotional or psychological violence and witnessing violence includes restricting a child’s movements, denigration, ridicule, threats and intimidation, discrimination, rejection and other non-physical forms of hostile treatment. Witnessing violence can involve forcing a child to observe an act of violence, or the incidental witnessing of violence between two or more other persons.
  • Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

What type of stress do children encounter? The more children encounter early adverse experiences, the more behavior problems they have.

What is Social Ecological Model? The Social Ecological Model is used to show how the factors that cause violence occur across multiple levels. Each level in the Social Ecological Model can be thought of as a level of influence and also as a key point for prevention.

What are violence against children? 

  • Romani Children and Intersectional Discrimination

  • Changing the Male Guardianship System in Saudi Arabia

  • Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage in Ghana

Why Children Come into Alternative Care? 

  • The death of one or both parents and no caregivers able to look after the child. Or, parents are unable to look after the child (e.g. due to incarceration, unemployment, disability, migration for employment)
  • The separation from parents and community either through war, migration, or trafficking
  • Abandonment by the parents
  • A court decision by the state ruling that parental care and the family environment is not safe for children (e.g. due to child abuse, violence, neglect, or exploitation)
  • Voluntary placement by parents for a temporary or long-term basis (e.g. parents migrate for employment, or do not have housing, or are unwell, or are unable to cope)
  • Ensuring the child’s access to education, food and other basic needs (e.g. a child is sent to a boarding house to complete school)

What are types of alternative care?

1. Family-based care: The child lives in a family home. This includes foster care, living with a named guardian, and living with relatives

2. Residential care: The child lives in a residential institution. This includes small group homes, orphanages, and residential institutions. These can be run by the state, non-profits, or private providers

3. Institutional care: Large-scale residential facilities involving children being cared for collectively in large groups.

4. Supervised independent living: Settings where children and young persons, in a small group, are encouraged and enabled to acquire the necessary competencies for autonomy in society through appropriate contact with, and access to, support workers.

Who are children on the move:? “Children moving for a variety of reasons, voluntarily or involuntarily, within or between countries, with or without their parents or other primary caregivers, and whose movement, while it may open up opportunities, might also place them at risk (or at an increased risk) of economic or sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect and violence”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW9KSEPwOM]

  • Child Statelessness in the Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Statelessness among Rohingya children on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border
  • Children on the move in Europe: Greece, France

  • Children on the Move at the U.S. Mexico Border

What has child protection system been changed?

  • From silos to departmental cooperation: integration of the field of studies
  • Coordination across the sectors
  • The new version of definition of child protection
  • Child protection system: establish a comprehensive system by connecting a set of components
  • Sustainable Development Goals Click here to learn more details

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEaNwDtQRwI]

References:

  1. Lombardi, Joan (2021). Lecture: Defining a Child Protection System (Joan Lombardi). [MOOC lecture]. In Jacqueline Bhabha and the course team, Child Protection: Children’s Rights in Theory and Practice. edX. https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:HarvardX+FXB001+2T2020/block-v1:HarvardX+FXB001+2T2020+type@sequential+block@f3622fc49c274f16b736e0ad810e4143/block-v1:HarvardX+FXB001+2T2020+type@vertical+block@22f0d0319df0496dbef1b7c1455d2160