Guidance on how to treat sensitive issues

In conflict-affected contexts, the Situation Analysis will have to explore issues that raise sensitivities with governments – for example the denial of children’s rights to WASH including through conflict parties’ attacks on WASH infrastructure. When analysing sensitive or potentially sensitive issues, the following strategies could be adopted:

• Engage the government and a broad range of stakeholders when framing the analysis. The development process should be consultative and the report should reflect the views of the various groups consulted;
• The analysis should draw from both official sources and alternative sources of information, such as shadow reports by civil society;
• The analysis should specifically mention differences in statistics (e.g., government figures on the number of conflict-displaced children, children lacking access to WASH due to conflict); and
• At a minimum, the analysis should point out the existence of the issue and highlight the need to examine it closely and fill data and information gaps.
• There will be instances when the country office will have to decide on whether extremely sensitive issues, while analyzed under the situation analysis, will have to be kept separate from the document that is nationally owned. In these cases, the country office can choose to keep the analysis in question internal to UNICEF or share it with selected partners on a confidential basis.
• The country office may also employ other strategies on how to treat sensitive analyses as appropriate to their context.