Expanded Protection and Gender Based Violence Prevention for 65,000 Children and Adolescents

ANKARA, 22 January 2023 – The most vulnerable and hard-to-reach children and adolescents in refugee, migrant, and host communities in Türkiye will benefit from expanded child protection and gender-based violence prevention services. This includes those living in rural areas, survivors of gender-based violence, seasonal agricultural workers, children living in the streets, victims of child labour, and unaccompanied and separated children.

Türkiye remains home to the largest refugee population in the world. As of December 2022, the country hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees under temporary protection and 320,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers from other countries. Almost half of them are children.

UNICEF will partner with the Turkish Red Crescent (TRC), Support to Life (STL) and the Development Foundation of Türkiye (DFT) to expand community-based services for child protection and gender-based violence prevention and response in twelve provinces.

Mobile teams will identify vulnerable children and families, provide them with information and refer them to services that can support them.

“Every child should grow up safely and free of fear. The EU works together with humanitarian partners like UNICEF to ensure that children are protected from violence and exploitation, with a focus on those in particularly vulnerable and critical situations.” said Devrig Velly, head of EU humanitarian aid Türkiye.

“The European Union is one of our strongest partners and together we believe that for every child to enjoy a safe childhood we must all join hands and create an environment free from violence, exploitation and abuse. Thanks to this contribution from the European Union we will be able to expand the collaboration with the Government of Türkiye, Non-Governmental Organizations and communities to strengthen protection mechanisms for the most vulnerable children, adolescents and their families.” said UNICEF Representative to Türkiye, Regina De Dominicis.

UNICEF works with partners to support programmes and develop strategies that help end violence against children. These strategies include empowering children and adolescents with critical life skills and strengthening attitudes that support violence free child development, creating safe environments for children, increasing access to, and strengthening quality of child protection and gender-based violence prevention and response services through support to national systems.