Case Study: Child-responsive Loss and Damage policies, finance and action
Insight from case studies
Highlights
This report, published by UNICEF in December 2025, details a multi-year project (2020–2024) aimed at providing psychosocial support and child-responsive social services in the Sanamxay District of Lao PDR. The intervention was a response to the devastating 2018 flash floods and the collapse of the Xe Pien-Xe Nam Noy dam, which caused significant economic and non-economic loss and damage to children and their families. Funded by a $1.8 million grant from KOICA, the program focused on strengthening the social service workforce and addressing critical risks exacerbated by the disaster, such as child marriage, trafficking, and deep-seated trauma.
The report highlights several key initiatives, including the establishment of Child Protection Network (CPN) and the Savings for Change (SfC) initiative, which helped families build financial resilience to prevent negative coping strategies like child labor. By the end of the project, the program reached over 2,700 children and 160,000 community members, emphasizing the importance of embedding recovery efforts within existing government structures to ensure long-term sustainability. While the program successfully integrated child-responsive considerations into disaster management, the report concludes that additional, sustained funding is necessary to scale these protections across all 18 provinces of Lao PDR.
