State of the World's Children 2013 - Unicef

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of 43 studies on the impact of
economic strengthening programmes
in crisis contexts in
low-income countries found
that some of these efforts had,
paradoxically, increased the risk
that children would be pulled
out of school and put to work
or that girls would be subject
to violence. The programmes
studied featured such initiatives
as microcredit, skills training,
and agricultural interventions.
The review called on economic
strengthening practitioners to
“build children’s protection
and well-being into the assessment,
design, implementation,
monitoring and evaluation of
economic strengthening programs.”
In addition, livelihood
and income generation opportunities
for children and adolescents
must take into account
not only their age but also their
sex and the cultural context
in which they live. Because
children with disabilities are
among those most vulnerable
to deprivation, violence, abuse
and exploitation, there is an
urgent need to ensure that
victim assistance programmes
take the specific needs of child
survivors into consideration.
Meanwhile, children who are
victims of landmines and other
ERW as a result of the death or
injury of caregivers and family
members, including family
breadwinners, also have needs
that differ from those of adults.
Like child survivors, they too
may be more vulnerable to the
loss of education opportunities,
separation from their families,
child labour and other forms of
exploitation or neglect.
Despite the particular victim
assistance needs of children,
few victim assistance
programmes take age- and
gender-specific considerations
into account. While research
has been conducted on victim
assistance in general, and guidance
has been developed on
what such programmes should
look like, to date there has been
little if any focus on children
and adolescents. Meanwhile,
while States parties to the Mine
Ban Treaty, Protocols II and V
of the Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons, and
the Convention on Cluster
Munitions must regularly report
on national-level implementation
of these international
instruments, they do not report
on their efforts to address the
specific needs of survivors
according to their age. It is not
surprising then that in a 2009
survey of more than 1,600 survivors
from 25 affected countries
conducted by Handicap
International, almost two thirds
of respondents reported that
services for children were
“never” or “almost never”
adapted to address their specific
needs or ensure that services
were age appropriate.
Child victims, including those
directly and indirectly affected,
have specific and additional
needs in all aspects of assistance.
However, the information
available about efforts to
address these needs is limited.
Most children involved in mine
or ERW incidents are injured.
Yet most data collection systems
do not record their needs.
As children account for an
increasing percentage of the
total civilian casualties from
ERW and landmines, it is
essential to implement specific
policy and programmatic recommendations
on victim assistance
that meets the needs of
child survivors. These recommendations
include:
• Supporting and promoting
the establishment of
national injury surveillance
systems able to provide
systematic and continuous
information on the magnitude
and nature of ERW and
landmine injuries (and other
types of injuries if appropriate),
including age- and
gender-disaggregated data
about child casualties.
• Integrating a victim assistance
component into the
International Mine Action
Standards, including through
technical notes and bestpractices
guidelines, with
specific guidance and considerations
on child-specific survivor
and victim assistance.
• Developing and promoting
the establishment of victim
assistance databases able
to provide systematic data
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THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 2013: Children with Disabilities