“We are seeing that vulnerable, unaccompanied, and separated minors are facing many of the same protection challenges across the board,” observes Linda Besharaty, Coordinator of the ICMC-UNHCR Deployment Scheme “The recommendations proposed in our report draw attention to the importance of engaging the necessary resources in addressing the plight of these children.”

When identifying durable solutions for these children, many of whom have been living in refugee camps for a long time, ICMC’s child protection experts make sure that the best interest of the child is always the primary consideration. Conducting best interest determinations (BID) where the need is the most acute, seven child protection experts were deployed by ICMC in 2011 to UNHCR operations in Africa and Asia and emergency operations in Tunisia. The findings published are drawn from the first-hand experience of ICMC’s child protection experts.

The challenges identified in this report are broad and include the need for strengthening the capacity of local partners, improving the identification of unaccompanied minors, deploying child protection experts at the beginning of an emergency operation, prioritizing children for refugee status interviews, establishing a BID panel, clearing backlogs, and prioritizing the cases of these children for resettlement consideration. The recommendations are targeted to UNHCR and other partners working in the field with refugee children.

ICMC’s child protection experts work in the framework of the ICMC-UNHCR Deployment Scheme which was created in 1998 to enhance UNHCR’s capacity to refer refugees for resettlement to third countries.

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For more information, please contact:

Linda BESHARATY
E: besharaty@icmc.net<

Please see the pdf below to download a copy of "Addressing Gaps in Child Protection: 10 Recommendations from the Field.”

Report: Addressing Gaps in Child Protection. 10 Recommendations from the Field. (565.17 KB)