Background on the Haitian Earthquake
global Capacity in the Child Protection in emergencies sector
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global Capacity in the Child Protection in emergencies sector
The CPIE sector does not have an adequate level of senior staff either in coordination or technical areas. The response in Haiti clearly showed that the sector does not have enough language diversity in its globally-deployable workforce. However, in addition to traditional deployments (standby and Emergency Response Teams), new temporary staffing opportunities (US Government IT/database consultant) were identified. Better human resources procedures are needed to temporarily re-assign national staff working in other emergency settings. Recommendations:
Many respondents noted that senior level child protection staff was lacking across most of the agencies involved in the response. In the face of a disaster of such enormity – which in the case of Haiti was clear from the outset based on the severity of the earthquake and the pre-existing challenges in protecting children - senior leadership needs to trigger massive response and scale down as needed. Furthermore, senior managers with excellent leadership and managerial skills (who need not necessarily have a technical CPIE background) must be deployed by each responding member of the CPWG to ensure an effective response. Better rapid analysis of the child protection concerns, structures and capacities that existed prior to the crisis and how the emergency might impact on them is required. Likewise, senior programmers and advisors need to identify key protection issues earlier, as was witnessed with the delay in gearing up work on interim care and trafficking. One recommendation made by several interviewees was that a senior interagency group (e.g. of global Heads of CP or failing that advisors) should be convened in country within the first 2 weeks of a massive emergency. This seemed to be the case with some other sectors, including WASH, where the heads of the water departments of several INGOs were in country for one to two months. This could be done for child protection as well. As a driving force establishing the sub-cluster, the group would work with the Coordinator and other members to clarify the scale of CP issues (e.g. ensure quality of assessment process), develop top-line sectoral strategy, assess staffing needs/structure, determine technical areas and necessary support/expertise, strengthen interagency coordination, and role-model solidarity within the CPIE community to their colleagues in response teams. Finally but importantly, the sector continued to be hampered by a lack of a clear understanding internally of the distinction between Child Protection as protection from violence, abuse and exploitation and the overall safeguarding of children’s rights (and how this ensures child survival). In Haiti, it was very difficult for CP practitioners to not get 'wrapped up' in issues of child survival, especially when other actors were perceived to be responding too slowly. It is important that the CP sector maintain its protection focus and thus, it is crucial that the CP Coordinator has the leadership skills to be able to manage this challenge and bring clarity to the group as needed. Recommendation:
Further elements of global Preparedness of the cpie sector
A number of years ago, the IAWG on UASC decided to abandon the notion of standardized kits for FTR, and thus the practice of stockpiling them regionally ended. This decision meant that it was difficult for the Haitian responders to achieve group consensus on what an FTR kit – or CFS for that matter – should contain. Discrepancies led to delays and confusion amongst affected children and communities. Recommendations:
This emergency response in Haiti exposed a lack of key programme tools for the CPIE sector, including:
It is well demonstrated that where tools exist, this does not automatically lead to their use or to faster or better quality responses. Nonetheless, the development of such tools is imperative and furthermore, the experience of other sectors in developing such tools (such as MHPSS in developing a mapping tool, or Education in developing standards) has been that this can foster a good sense of solidarity and common goals within the global group membership. The lack of a coherent, coordinated rapid assessment (RA) tool warrants a specific mention as it was a major gap in the first few weeks of the response. Respondents clearly felt that a pre-existing IA RA tool would have been enormously helpful and prevented much of the ‘back and forthing’ over whether the assessment should focus on survival issues or on CP-specific issues of violence, abuse and exploitation. Two forms were actually drafted within the first week of the emergency – one at the national level and one at the global level – but neither led to the implementation of a rapid assessment. One senior staffer stated “The primary reason there was no sub-cluster rapid assessment is because the tool that was developed [in the first 4 days by primarily UNICEF, IBERS and MINUSTAH] did not meet the needs of the CPWG members other than those specifically looking at the issue of survival of children in institutions (which was very limited).” Child Protection also struggled to have its issues properly incorporated into the inter-sectoral assessment (ACAP) and within the Protection Cluster’s tool. Ultimately and despite a significant commitment of time, those assessments did not adequately meet the needs of members of the CP sub-cluster. Respondents stressed the importance of ensuring that assessment tools meet the needs of all CP sub-cluster actors, rather than a select few. This speaks to the on-going issue of ensuring that sub-cluster coordinators understand that sub-cluster coordination processes and tools must meet the needs and represent the interests of all members, and not only or primarily the organization to which the CP Coordinator belongs. Finally, translation was a huge constraint in Haiti. Even when materials were translated, local staff of different sub cluster members identified mistakes and in some cases documents had to go through three rounds of translation. Recommendations:
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