Prevention Framework: Desk Review Synthesis

Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPHA) refers to “the prevention of and response to abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence against children (VAC) in humanitarian action.” Over the past decades, great efforts have been made to improve the capacity of the Child Protection sector to respond when harm occurs. Less has been done on the systematic prevention of harm to children in humanitarian settings. Preventing harm before it occurs not only preserves child rights, but is also potentially cost effective.

This desk review was undertaken to understand what has been done to date to prevention harm to children in both humanitarian and development settings. The report maps and analyzes primary prevention approaches as well as good practices from the Child Protection sector and other relevant sectors, such as Education and Gender-Based Violence.  A total of 436 documents were analyzed, which included academic resources and grey literature.   Interventions are categorized as effective, promising and suggested to prevent particular child protection risks and good practice examples described.