Twelve years ago, UNICEF was just beginning to develop its division of child protection and NGOs had to “beg, borrow or steal” humanitarian funds to address gender based violence (GBV) or children associated with fighting forces. Today, dedicated child protection staff and child care and protection programs are standard features of humanitarian operations, peace-keeping missions and human rights initiatives.
Graca Machel, with her enormous energy and talent for linking people with concerns, was the catalyst for this momentous shift. Since her landmark “UN Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children,”1 attention to child protection in humanitarian crises has been virtually unstoppable. The establishment of child protection units within major non-governmental organizations (NGOs); donor earmarks for vulnerable children; the Security Council’s engagement in children and armed conflict; the inclusion of the use of child soldiers and rape in the definition of international war crimes are but a few of the significant outcomes of this “conspiracy of goodness.”
To be sure, the child protection landscape has shifted—and thus our roles and responsibilities within it must also evolve. The reliance on anecdotal reports to “raise awareness,” for example, is giving way to the need for methodologies and mechanisms capable of establishing the prevalence of a range of child protection concerns. Mobilizing funds for child soldiers or victims of GBV is no longer the sole concern; rather, focus has shifted to ensuring the inclusion of female adolescents by means of return and reintegration initiatives and to scale-up education and economic opportunities for broader war-affected child and youth populations. With increased agency engagement in child protection programming, policymakers and donors are increasingly in need of solid evidence to identify and support the most efficacious programs and practices. In short, the systemization of this field of practice has emerged as a key imperative.
Commitment to the professionalization of child protection practice and policy was the driving force behind the creation of the CPC Initiative. Over the past three years, the CPC team has piloted new assessment, design and evaluation methodologies; contributed to an evidence base on effective programming; and worked with partners to mainstream these findings into practice and policy agendas.
Each CPC discovery and achievement has occurred with and through our friends in United Nations (UN) and NGO agencies. Indeed, enhancing agency competence and performance is the major focus of this work. We are therefore pleased to announce the formal launching of the CPC Network: an inter-agency membership association dedicated to professionalizing the field of child care
and protection through the collaborative action of humanitarian organizations, local institutions and academic partners.
Building on the success of the CPC initiative, we believe the CPC Learning Network will serve as a significant new force in supporting the care and protection of children. What will be different? We believe children affected by crises will receive more timely and better quality care and protection because there will be:
- A vital membership association of 50 operational agencies, local groups, and concerned academics working together to promote common standards, guidelines and practices in an organized, knowledge-based manner;
- A cadre of CPC Learning Network agencies consistently employing assessment methodologies capable of identifying, quantifying and understanding the causes and consequences central to child care and protection concerns in emergencies;
- A body of evidence-based good practice about community-based approaches to addressing gender-based violence, children used by fighting forces and armed groups, separated children, psychosocial support, education in emergencies including non-formal education, and livelihoods support for children and youth; and
- A more favorable and informed policy environment for children in crisis settings, and a higher percentage of donor contributions allocated to proven good practice initiatives. We hope that this report on our work of the last three years encourages you to join us in building upon Graca Machel’s ‘conspiracy of goodness’.
Neil Boothby
Principal Investigator, CPC Initiative and
Director, Program on Forced Migration & Health
