Protective Environment: Development Support for Child Protection (The)

Introduction

"There are many obstacles to improving children’s protection from violence, exploitation, and abuse. Traditional practices are one; others range from a
lack of national capacity to the absence of the rule of law. Through much closer, protection focused cooperation, development agencies and human
rights actors should develop strategies to address these gaps in general measures of implementation. This article proposes the Protective Environment
Framework as a conceptual model for such analysis and programmatic support.

This article first will summarize the current state of children’s protection from violence, exploitation, and abuse. Noting that activities by donors and
agencies in support of child protection have focused on legal reform and on service delivery, the article suggests the need to adopt an approach that
considers a range of systemic factors, stressing prevention alongside palliation. Only such broader, systemic child protection strategies will have
lasting impact.

The Protective Environment Framework, outlined in section III identifies eight factors that are instrumental in keeping children safe from harmful
situations. These factors can all be strengthened, and changes measured, through the targeted support of international and national actors. They are
not the only factors that explain or inhibit violence, exploitation, and abuse against children. They do, however, lend themselves readily to programmatic
action, through the engagement of many actors at different levels (including national and local government, communities, families, children
themselves, and the media).

This Framework encompasses a range of activities routinely supported by development agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and
others more commonly addressed by human rights agencies and advocates; as such it aims to provide a platform for closer cooperation between the
human rights and development communities.

In section IV, the article draws attention to significant challenges in child protection work. These include governments’ and the public’s,
sensitivity on the subject of most child protection abuses, leading to a reluctance to collect data, among other things; donor expectations of
rapidly visible results, notwithstanding the longer term change on which some aspects of child protection depend; the perception that children’s
protection against violence and exploitation is marginal to critical development processes; and the limited engagement of the private sector. Supporting
the systems that underpin child protection, including social sector policies and capacity, is costly. Helping bring about the requisite changes
not only to laws and policies but also to attitudes, customs, and beliefs that permit continued harm to children is a difficult and long term endeavor.
Of note, therefore, are a number of positive developments, including initiatives for increased United Nations cooperation at the country level in
support of human rights; the formulation of protection related indicators and their inclusion in standard surveys; and public awareness of child protection,
which has encouraged the corporate sector to adopting codes of conduct.

This article provides little discussion of violence, exploitation, and abuse in developed countries, as it focuses on a conceptual framework for
communicating the underpinnings of child protection to the development community. The Protective Environment Framework is, however, equally
applicable at any stage of a country’s development."