email : Webview : CPC October 2017 Updates: Uganda in focus, a webinar on Central American youth, and much more

Newsletter | October 2017

Dear CPC friends and colleagues:

The AfriChild Centre of Exellence for the Study of the African Child, an affiliate research and policy institute of the CPC Learning Network housed at Makerere University in Uganda, is a relatively new institution, but as you'll see from their update below, they are well on their way to becoming a major hub for policy-focused learning in East Africa. We are proud to collaborate with Executive Director Joyce Wanican and team and to support their work to use evidence in building effective and sustainable systems to support children and families in adversity. You will find a complete update from the AfriChild Centre below.

We also want to highlight a timely webinar we will be hosting this very Thursday, November 2, 2017 at 3 pm EDT in collaboration with a number of policy and practice experts: "The Central American Youth Refugee Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Challenges in the Trump Era." Find more details below; you can register for the webinar here.

There are many other reports and accouncements below. As always, please feel free to be in touch with ideas, resources, or learning to share.

Peace,

Mark Canavera, Associate Director

CPC Learning Network Feature: the AfriChild Centre in Uganda

Updates from Uganda: AfriChild Insight

The AfriChild Centre of Excellence for the Study of the African Child is a multidisciplinary research and training center seeking to improving children's lives in Uganda and the East African region by building the evidence base through rigorous research on children's protection and well-being. Although the Centre is relatively young, it has made significant strides since its first step of serving as the implementing research partner for the country's national Violence Against Children study, whose final reports are forthcoming.

This past summer, AfriChild completed a series of events to push forward their agenda in influencing policy and practice. They produced a documentary, "Violence Against Street-Connected Children," highlighting the plight of street-connected children in Kampala. The documentary, available to view at this link, grew out of a participatory qualitative study focusing on children living and working in the street that was complementary to the national violence against children survey; the documentary will help to share the learning on national, regional and international platforms. In July, AfriChild also came together with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to review the draft national child policy. The policy aims to replace the National Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children Policy, which has existed for 12 years. The objective of the draft national child policy is to harmonize national efforts to realize children's rights and to improve child well-being. Additionally, AfriChild has launched an inter-university training program to address the knowledge, skills, and competency gaps in research, grant writing, and publication; this training program will works with faculty and staff conducting child-focused research in six universities. Over the next few years, the training will cover four modules: research methods, grant writing, data analysis, and scholarly writing and knowledge translation.

For more updates, access AfriChild Insight newsletter here. Our partners in supporting the AfriChild Centre have been Makerere University, ChildFund International Uganda, TPO Uganda, the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, and UNICEF. We're excited to see what the AfriChild Centre does next!

Webinars

The Central American Youth Refugee Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Challenges in the Trump Era

The CPC Learning Network will host a webinar to discuss the mass exodus of unaccompanied children and families from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Topics will include country conditions driving continued migration, the dangers encountered while journeying through Mexico, detention practices on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges to securing protection in the U.S. The webinar will feature four speakers: Eric Hersherg and Dennis Stinchcomb, of American University's Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS) and authors of Unaccompanied Migrant Children from Central America: Context, Causes, and Advocacy Responses; law professor Jayesh Rathod, director of the American University Washington College of Law's Immigrant Justice Clinic; and Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas Law School and board member of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights. The webinar will be of particular interest for advocates and others working on behalf of these new arrivals but will also be illuminating for those advocating for children in areas around the world. The webinar will take place on Thursday, November 2nd, 2017 at 3pm EDT.

Publications from CPC Learning Network faculty affiliates

Local Narratives of Sexual and other Violence against Children and Young People in Zanzibar

Concepts of violence, and especially sexual violence against children, must be situated within the local context. The 2009 Violence against Children Survey in Zanzibar indicated that 6% of girls and 9% of boys reported having experienced sexual violence before the age of 18 years. CPC faculty affiliate Karen Devries and colleague Shelley Lees of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine undertook an in-depth qualitative study in Zanzibar to provide further insights to these findings by examining the contextual circumstances around sexual and other violence against children in Zanzibar. The findings of the study, published in Culture, Health, and Sexuality, revealed that religious and cultural practices, which form the foundation of Swahili culture in Zanzibar, provide a moral frame for childhood development, but structural factors make children vulnerable to sexual violence. As religion and culture are strong influences on childhood, preventing sexual violence at religious schools could draw upon the positive aspects of religious teachings to ensure a safe childhood.

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here.

Monitoring and Reporting Attacks on Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia

The United Nations' Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism is charged with documenting six grave violations against children during conflict, including attacks on schools. Many of these incidents, however, remain unreported across the globe. In this article published in Disasters, Neil Boothby, founding director of the CPC Learning Network, Les Roberts, CPC faculty affiliate, Cyril Bennouna, CPC senior research associate, and colleagues explore whether or not a local knowledge base of education and child protection actors in North and South Kivu Provinces, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Mogadishu, Somalia, could contribute to a more complete record of attacks on educations in those areas. Hundreds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants across the three settings, and in a total 432 attacks on education were documented. The study concludes that attack surveillance and response were largely insufficient, and recommends investing in mechanisms that leverage local knowledge to address these shortcomings.

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here.

Latent class analysis of violence against adolescents and psychosocial outcomes in refugee settings in Uganda and Rwanda

Little is known about violence against adolescents in refugee camps and settlements, and the evidence-base concerning mental health outcomes of youth in refugee settings in low and middle-income countries is similarly small. Lindsay Stark, director of the CPC Learning Network, faculty affiliate Sarah Meyer, and colleagues recently published an article in Global Mental Health about patterns of violence against adolescents in refugee camps and the associations between violence and adverse mental health outcomes. The article reports findings from surveys with adolescents refugees in two refugee contexts, Uganda and Rwanda. Latent class analysis was utilized to identify classes of violence exposure, including exposure to witnessing household violence, verbal abuse, physicial violence, and sexual violence. Results from the study supports the existing evidence base concerning the association between violence and adverse mental health outcomes while identifying differences in patterns and associations between refugee youth in the two different settings.

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here.

Blog Post: When over 500 minds converge to prevent Gender-Based Violence

Late last month, over 500 researchers, policymakers, donors, and activists converged in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the 5th bi-annual Sexual Violence Research Initiative Forum, the largest global gathering focusing on gender-based violence (GBV) in low- and middle-income countries. The forum has become the venue to connect with others working to prevent and respond to GBV, hear the newest research and evidence, network, and collaborate. The theme of this year's forum was "Partnerships for Policy Action." The forum highlighted the fact that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for the first time, include targets to eliminate violence along with tracking and accountability mechanisms for national governments. In a recent UNICEF blog post, Alina Potts, a research expert at UNICEF who has been supporting the THRIVE project, and her colleague at UNICEF Office of Research Innocenti share an excellent summary of where we stand. We're also glad that CPC Learning Network associate director Mark Canavera could contribute to the event by sharing some recent learning from Senegal about measuring social norms.

Read the blog post here.

Other Resources

WHO Clinical Guidelines for Responding to Children and Adolescents Who Have Been Sexually Abused

The World Health Organization (WHO) has published new clinical guidelines aimed at helping front-line health care providers, primarily from low-resource settings, in providing evidence-based, quality, trauma-informed care to survivors. The guidelines emphasize the importance of promoting safety, offering choice, and respecting the wishes and autonomy of children and adolescents. They cover recommendations for post-rape care and mental health and discuss approaches to minimizing distress in the process of taking medical history, conducting examinations, and documenting findings.

Access the guidelines here.

New Podcast on the Cash Plus Approach to Protecting Adolescents in Tanzania

Adolescents in Tanzania face significant social, health, and economic risks. In the latest edition of Innocenti Podcasts, three UNICEF experts talk about the program and research nexus in delivering a "cash plus" social protection program aimed at protecting youth at risk in Tanzania. Find out what a role a hybrid of cash transfers, economic empowerment and reproductive health education plays in supporting a healthy and productive passage to adulthood. For program managers and policy makers considering a cash plus approach, this podcast is a must-listen.

Access the podcast here.

New Expert Report Uncovers the Massive Global Burden of Childhood Violence, A Major Obstacle to Sustainable Human Development in Countries Rich and Poor

Violence in childhood is ubiquitous, but not inevitable. Proven strategies exist which can keep children safe. Know Violence in Childhood recently published a report, Ending Violence in Childhood: Global Report 2017, which documents the scale of violence experienced by millions of the world's children in their everyday lives and relationships, in their homes, schools, and communities. The report presents the latest evidence on the causes and consequences of violence in children and demonstrates how such violence can be prevented.

Read the report here.

Opportunities to Learn and Share

Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being

The Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being are offered by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago through the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. These fellowships are designed to identify and develop a new generation of leaders interested in and capable of creating practice and policy initiatives that will enhance child development and improve the nation's ability to prevent all forms of child maltreatment. Fellows are selected from an open, competitive national application process each year; 15 fellowships are awarded annually. Each fellow receives an annual stipend of $30,000 for up to two years to support the completion of their dissertation and related research at their academic institution. Deadline to apply is December 1, 2017.