Protecting Children in Emergencies
UNICEF is assisting the Government of Iran to strengthen its response capacity in emergency situations in ways that uphold and protect the rights of children in disaster-affected communities.
- فارسي، فارسي
- English
The issue faced
Humanitarian emergencies are growing in frequency, scale, and complexity, with children and vulnerable families disproportionally affected by their impact – often suffering from multifaceted forms of violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Iran is prone to multiple types of extreme natural disasters, several of which have occurred in recent years. Iran also currently hosts over almost 4.5 million documented and undocumented refugees and migrants, a large proportion of whom are children.
Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPHA) is a powerful tool to protect children and caregivers, helping them to recover from the effects of displacement, armed conflict, and natural disasters. In areas with large numbers of refugees, CPHA interventions are critical to protect children in both refugee families and host communities.
The actions taken
UNICEF is working with a wide range of stakeholders, including government, children, families, and communities, to prevent and address child protection issues in humanitarian settings. The overall objective of these efforts is to strengthen institutional emergency responses and increase community resilience and disaster preparedness.
UNICEF Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action include:
- Providing leadership and coordination of relevant national organizations involved in child protection, including via the establishment of a Child Protection Working Group.
- Operating across sectors to develop integrated programming to address the root causes of violence and exploitation and strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of interventions.
- Equipping community-based groups to monitor child protection indicators and strengthen the capacity of staff managing individual case services, including through the digitalization of case management systems.
Promoting mental health and psychosocial support at a community level.
The partners engaged
UNICEF partners involved in implementation of the programme in this focus area include the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, the State Welfare Organization, the Iranian Red Crescent Society, INTERSOS, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Relief International.
The impact sought
UNICEF expects its actions in this focus area to increase the shock-responsiveness and preparedness of national child protection systems in place, promote inclusive services by empowering key national actors, including civil society, and increase community resilience, leading to the realization of long-term societal well-being built upon optimal levels of safety and security for children in Iran.
Monitoring and Accountability
In adherence to principles of accountability, UNICEF enriches its programme designs and adaptations through systematic assessment and monitoring of the child’s rights deprivations, operating environment, partnerships, and progress towards planned results. The implementation of Harmonised Approach to Cash Transfers (HACT) ensures both financial and programmatic compliance through a combination of micro and macro assessments, spot checks, audits, and programmatic visits. Leveraging sophisticated and integrated enterprise platforms and tools, UNICEF maintains a consistent monitoring of its programme implementation assessing quality and coverage, identifying risks and challenges, highlighting best practices and lessons learned, fostering stakeholder participation and engagement, and conducting end user monitoring of supplies. Additionally, UNICEF remains committed to its costed evaluation plan which includes external evaluations of its projects, partnerships, and/or strategies primarily aiming to enhance relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of its programmes.