Results for Children

Child Protection

The Child Protection programme works in partnership with Ministries of Women, Youth and Children’s Affairs, Ministries of Social Welfare and Justice, Civil Registry Departments, Judiciaries, Police and NGOs/INGOs (such as ILO, UNFPA, Save the Children Fiji and Save the Children Australia) to build a protective environment for children free from violence, abuse and exploitation.
The work of the programme is mainly in Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The programme aims to:
1. Ensure that children are increasingly protected by legislation and are better served by justice systems that protect them as victims, offenders and witnesses;
2. Ensure that children are better served by well-informed and coordinated child protection social services that ensure greater protection against and response to violence, abuse and exploitation; and
3. Support families and communities in establishing home and community environments for children that are free from violence, abuse and exploitation.

Looking Back

(1) Ensuring that children are increasingly protected by legislation and are better served by justice systems that protect them as victims, offenders and witnesses

The Child Protection Programme assisted Governments in aligning national laws and regulations with child protection principles and good practices. Using the baseline recommendations for legislative reform, arrangements were made in Vanuatu, Kiribati and Solomon Islands to carry out legal reform, draft new laws and amend existing ones where children and young people are consulted.

Strong partnership with the Police forces in Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, resulted in improved understanding of children’s rights, and better practices in relation to diversion, alternative sentencing and community restorative justice. As a result of new police diversion operational procedures and training workshops in Kiribati, all police stations in South Tarawa (the main island) practice diversion. In the past, while informal diversion was often practiced by Police officers through “sending the child home”, the new procedures and training conducted by UNICEF helped to formalize some of the good practices and bring about greater clarity amongst police officers on how to best provide support to young people in conflict with the law. Also noteworthy is that social workers now accompany the child throughout the process of police diversion. This was previously not the case. Formalizing diversion good practices are also underway in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu where Police, Social Welfare and community groups are jointly identifying appropriate community-based diversion programmes for social reintegration of young offenders.

(2) Ensuring that children are better served by well-informed and coordinated child protection social services that ensure greater protection against and response to violence, abuse and exploitation

The Programme supported the Governments in Kiribati, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji to keep its current budget allocations to social welfare and maintain its current capacities in responding to and preventing child protection abuses.

Child Protection social services are still new in many Pacific Island Countries. When comparing what would be considered an ‘ideal’ social welfare system for Child Protection with the reality in the Pacific, most (if not the majority) aspects are considered to be “non-compliant” (see graph). Over the year there was much progress in addressing these issues. Amongst the countries researched, Vanuatu – the country with potentially the weakest social welfare system for child protection, will next year implement a child protection system later this year. There is a also a plan to establish guidelines for social workers and conduct a training to
take on such tasks at the different levels.

UNICEF continues to support the birth registration systems in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. For the first time in the Pacific, Vanuatu trialed a mobile birth registration system which resulted in registration of close to 17,000 children in Tafea Province, or 87 percent of all children 0-18 years. The national average rate of children 0-5 years registered is 25.6 percent with Tafea Province at 12.5 percent (according to 2008 MICS). The birth registration system uses mobile phones through the software “iCount”. This innovative system simplifies the process of birth registration by entering information about a newborn baby into an already programmed mobile phone which sends the data into a specific Civil Registry data base. Although the “iCount” initiative has been piloted in one province, based on assessment of its success it may be expanded to other parts of the country.

(3) Supporting families and communities in establishing home and community environments for children that are free from violence, abuse and exploitation

The child protection baseline research reports for Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu were launched at the Annual Pacific Regional Child Protection Meeting, in November in Nadi, Fiji. The baseline findings provide a useful ‘roadmap’ for the work ahead under the Child Protection Programme and the recommendations were carefully considered in developing multi-year plans in different areas. The baseline will continue to provide a benchmark against which results and changes will be measured in the years to come. National level launches are scheduled to follow before the end of the year and in the beginning of 2010.

Based on the research findings in relation to community behaviour and social change, UNICEF facilitated an in-country process for the development of ‘Communication for Social Change Plans’ in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The implementation of activities outlined in these Plans have begun with first results expected in 2010.

With the aim of enhancing the Programme’s capacity to document and report on real results and changes, the Programme has introduced “Most Significant Change” (MSC) technique to be used to measure changes experiences by stakeholders. The use of MSC will provide a systematic, qualitative measure to capture data on changes and impact in domains that are difficult to measure in the short-term, including social mobilization, awareness raising and capacity building. The first ‘stories of change’ will be collected at the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Moving Forward

The Programme will maintain its approach to: strengthen the legal and regulatory system; strengthen the social welfare system; and address community/individual behaviour for social change. The findings and recommendations by the Baseline research will continue to provide a roadmap for action and a benchmark against which progress will be measured.

2010 will see much implementation of community-based activities for social behavioural change, addressing violence, abuse and exploitation of children under the “Communication for Social Change Plans”. The introduction and use of a monitoring tool - “Most Significant Change” - to gain evidence of real behavioural and social changes happening as a result of the work of the Programme.

Under the legislative reform initiative, several new child protection-related laws will be drafted and amendments will be made to existing laws.

The Programme will continue to improve capacity of the social welfare system and child protection services. A ‘panel of experts’ from Universities will be established to review lessons learnt, baseline recommendations and develop the most suitable model for the future ‘social welfare’ and ‘child protection service’ model for the Pacific.

In collaboration with the Policy, Advocacy, Planning and Evaluation (PAPE) Programme, the Child Protection Programme has finalised the ‘child abuse costing analysis’. This analysis establishes the cost of child abuse in at least one country and weighs such costs against the cost of investing in better child protection systems for prevention, early intervention and response. The results of the analysis will also assist Child Protection partners in undertaking more effective advocacy and gain support for the investments needed to create a protective environment for children in the Pacific.

The Child Protection Programme will also move its focus from the five countries to include the Northern Pacific island countries of Palau, FSM and RMI. The Child Protection baseline research will be undertaken in these countries with the aim of completing the research by mid-2010.

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