Child Protection encompasses a broad array of measures and structures designed to prevent and address violence, exploitation, and abuse against children. This field addresses critical issues such as commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking, child labor, and harmful traditional practices like female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage. The primary aim is to safeguard children from harm, including violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect, while promoting their rights to safety and well-being.
Child Protection is inherently multidisciplinary, integrating insights from law, psychology, anthropology, and social sciences to create a holistic approach to child welfare. It extends beyond traditional social work by incorporating the broader societal, legal, and psychological contexts impacting child protection.
UNICEF’s Child Protection Strategy
UNICEF is the leading global agency established by the United Nations to protect children’s rights and oversee the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
UNICEF’s Child Protection Strategy aims to ensure children’s protection from abuse, violence, and exploitation while achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MTSP) for 2006-2009. Developed through extensive consultations, practical experience, and prior research, the strategy was adopted in June 2008. It addresses child protection through a global agenda and national interventions, focusing on five main approaches:
- Strengthening National Protection Systems
- Supporting Social Change
- Promoting Child Protection in Conflict and Natural Disasters
- Evidence-Building and Knowledge Management
- Convening and Catalyzing Agents of Change
These strategies have been implemented in 90 countries, reflecting a global commitment to improving child protection measures.
The Protective Environment Framework
The Protective Environment Framework is central to UNICEF's Child Protection Strategy, reflecting UNICEF's holistic approach to child protection. This framework emphasizes the need to protect all children through both prevention and response to harm. While child protection may differ at the country and national levels, UNICEF views it from a global, structural, systemic, and behavioral change perspective.
The Protective Environment Framework defines eight broad elements critical to effective protection. These elements are interconnected and work individually and collectively to strengthen protection and reduce vulnerability. They include:
- Governmental Commitment: Strong policies and budgets dedicated to protection rights.
- Legislation and Enforcement: Effective laws and their implementation.
- Attitudes and Practices: Addressing harmful traditions and behaviors.
- Open Discussion: Engaging media and civil society.
- Children’s Participation: Promoting life skills, knowledge, and involvement.
- Capacity Building: Enhancing the skills of those in contact with children.
- Services: Providing basic and targeted support.
- Monitoring and Oversight: Ensuring accountability and effectiveness.
Global Goals and Child Protection
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes several goals directly relevant to child protection:
- End Poverty in All Its Forms Everywhere:
- Eradicate extreme poverty
- Reduce poverty by at least 50%
- Implement social protection systems
- Create pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy frameworks
- Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Well-Being for All at All Ages:
- End all forms of malnutrition
- End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition, and Promote Sustainable Agriculture
- Reduce maternal mortality
- End all preventable deaths under 5 years of age
- Fight communicable diseases
- Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive care, family planning, and education
- Achieve universal health coverage
- Reduce illnesses and deaths from hazardous chemicals and pollution
- Quality Education:
- Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education
- Provide free primary and secondary education
- Ensure equal access to quality pre-primary education
- Build and upgrade inclusive and safe schools
- Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls:
- End all violence against and exploitation of women and girls
- Eliminate forced marriages and genital mutilation
- Ensure Availability and Sustainable Management of Water and Sanitation for All:
- Provide safe and affordable drinking water
- End open defecation and provide access to sanitation and hygiene
- Ensure Access to Affordable, Reliable, Sustainable, and Modern Energy for All:
- Ensure universal access to modern energy
- Promote Sustained, Inclusive, and Sustainable Economic Growth, Full and Productive Employment, and Decent Work for All:
- End modern slavery, trafficking, and child labor
- Reduce Inequality Within and Among Countries:
- Ensure equal opportunities and end discrimination
- Take Urgent Action to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts:
- Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related disasters
- Promote Peaceful and Inclusive Societies for Sustainable Development, Provide Access to Justice for All, and Build Effective, Accountable, and Inclusive Institutions at All Levels:
- Reduce violence everywhere
- Protect children from abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and violence
- Provide universal legal identity
- Strengthen the Means of Implementation and Revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development:
- Strengthen science, technology, and innovation capacity for least developed countries
- Further develop measurements of progress
Through these goals, the international community strives to create a safer, more equitable world for all children.
