Bank of Key Advocacy Messages for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

Children have the right to be protected from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence, enabling them to develop to their full potential and thrive. This is true regardless of where children live, including in humanitarian crises contexts. Children, in all their diversity, have the right to participate in decisions that concern them and exercise their agency without discrimination. Advocacy grounded in child protection expertise can have a powerful impact in ensuring greater protection of children in humanitarian action.

Collective advocacy to engage decision makers at all levels can be especially effective. However, in contexts where advocacy capacity is stretched, child protection advocacy often lags behind. To address this, three overarching key advocacy messages have been developed to provide accessible, general messaging that supports effective advocacy for child protection in humanitarian action more broadly. They are intended as a foundation for creating context-specific messages, helping to enhance efficiency and serve as a strong advocacy tool for child protection advocates. They are accompanied by two annexes: one presenting key statistics on the impact of humanitarian crises on children and their protection, and another providing simplified messaging to highlight the essential, life-saving nature of child protection in humanitarian action.

• Key Message 1: In humanitarian crises, children suffer first and most from widespread and severe violence, with profound impacts on their immediate safety and long-term well-being.
• Key Message 2: Child protection, prevention, and response interventions in humanitarian settings are critical to save children’s lives and prevent long-term, irreversible harm.
• Key Message 3: Addressing harm to children in crises requires a coordinated approach across humanitarian sectors that places children and their protection at the heart of h manitarian responses.
• Annex 1: Key statistics on the impact of crises and conflict on children and their protection
• Annex 2: Key messages on the essential and life-saving nature of child protection in humanitarian action

“It’s the youngest in our societies - the people that we are meant to be protecting and nurturing - who are among the worst hit” - Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator