Child Protection Blueprint

A Fair Deal for Refugee Children

“Inclusion” is when refugee children’s rights all children in their territory. UNHCR and UNICEF’s
are respected, without discrimination, in law partnership prioritizes human rights and community-
and practice, including their ability to access based approaches to programming and accountability
national services. Due to their unique status to affected populations. All stakeholders’ efforts to
as refugees, child refugees often have implement the Blueprint also fulfill the Sustainable
specific legal, child protection or social Development Goals’ commitment “to leave no one
welfare needs. Both UNHCR and UNICEF behind”.
strongly support the long-standing
consensus that States are obligated to The commitment of the child protection
protect the rights of all children, including sector
asylum-seeking and refugee children.
Working in partnership with governments is The 10 Blueprint countries are home to 2.24 million
key to this approach. refugee children – over 20 per cent of the global total.
In the Blueprint, UNICEF and UNHCR identified four
priority areas for joint action that can significantly
What is the Blueprint for Joint Action? improve access to quality child protection for both
refugees and host communities:
The Blueprint for Joint Action focuses on streamlining
the approach to serving refugee children. It also 1.National child protection systems have increased
reaffirms UNICEF and UNHCR’s long-standing capacity to respond to the needs of refugees and host
commitment to work with governments of refugee- communities.
hosting countries—and with each other and our partners
—to increase inclusion, strengthen national child 2.Countries have increased access to birth registration
protection systems, and support States to provide for for refugee and returnee children.

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3.Humanitarian and national actors are better able to Do data collection and monitoring systems
provide interventions for gender-based violence in include refugee children? Is this information
emergencies (GBViE). disaggregated?

4.Family and community support systems are better able Are there mechanisms for active child
to provide mental health and psychosocial support participation & community engagement of refugees
(MHPSS) activities and child protection with meaningful in the asylum/refugee system? At the community
participation of children and caregivers. level? Are there simple, accessible ways for children,
their families & communities to input into these
mechanisms?
Strengthening inclusion in national child
Are a full range of services available to asylum
protection systems
seeking and refugee children where they live?

For the past year, UNHCR and UNICEF have been

Are there any barriers to access the services?
developing a toolkit to assess and strengthen the
(i.e. example procedural, physical, language,
inclusion of refugee children in national child protection
discrimination)
systems – called the Mapping Toolkit on Inclusion of
Refugee Children in National Child Protection Systems.
Are the services affordable? (Are there any
The Mapping Toolkit will allow UNHCR, UNICEF, and
hidden costs that act as a barrier for access to key
government partners to assess the extent to which
CP services?)
asylum-seeking and refugee children are currently
included in national child protection systems and the
Do refugee families and communities know about
capacity of these systems to respond to their needs and
the CP services? Are the CP services acceptable and
identify opportunities to strengthen inclusion. As part
do families agree to access these services (i.e.
of these assessments, countries will build on existing
language, attitudes, etc.)?
entry points such as World Bank refugee protection
assessments, national annual budget processes, or the
Are the appropriate services available for asylum
development of national child protection guidelines,
seeking and refugee children?
etc.

Why focus on inclusion? Strengthening inclusion has What are key barriers to inclusion and how can these
the dual benefit of enhancing the protection of refugee be addressed? Refugee children may not be included in
children, while also contributing to strengthening policy and legislation (they may not be eligible to access
national child protection systems that benefit all national services). Sometimes the national child
children. protection system is not well developed and has limited
capacity. The national child protection system may
What does inclusion mean concretely? Inclusion means already be overstretched and lack the capacity to serve
refugee children have access to child protection refugee children, or even national children.
services, and that national laws and policies do not
discriminate against refugee children. Key questions to Depending on how developed the national child
measure inclusion include: protection system is, and the capacity of the system we
can then assess questions of access and
Are laws and policies inclusive and non- discriminatory
appropriateness of the system (language, proximity of
towards refugee children?
services, etc.). The interconnectedness of different
sectors/domains can hinder inclusion. For example,
Is governance and coordination active and sufficient
between the national and refugee systems, including at refugee children may be unable to access available
the local level? services because they do not have freedom of
movement, access to identity documents, etc.
For minimum standards and oversight, do data
collection and monitoring systems include refugee How to scale up inclusion? All over the world,
children? Is this information age, gender, and (dis)ability governments, civil society and UN organisations have
disaggregated? been working to include refugees in national systems
and strengthen the capacity of these systems. UNHCR
Are there sufficient human, financial & infrastructure and UNICEF have worked over the last year to
resources available for quality, appropriate services for document these existing good practices, share
refugee children? For the national children?

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experiences across countries and regions, and undertake In Honduras, the government trained migration
capacity building with regional and country level officials at border points to strengthen the protection
colleagues in the Americas, Asia, and a global reference of refugee and migrant children and is now scaling this
group. The inclusion toolkit is now being rolled out in across the civil service. The Kenyan government has
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia (a Blueprint country), long-since embraced their responsibility towards all
Romania, South Africa and Uganda. The Mapping Toolkit children. Department of Children’s Services (DCS) staff
will be finalized by the end of the 2021. are based in refugee camps, and DCS staff from the
capital carry out joint missions with UNICEF and
UNICEF and UNHCR have identified opportunities for UNHCR to assess needs and the services being
better integration of refugee children into national child provided.
protection and social welfare systems including:

Ensuring that national legal frameworks are Increasing access to birth registration
addressing child friendly refugee procedures;
One of the goals of the Joint Action Plans developed
Tapping into national development plans; in Blueprint countries was to ensure all refugee
children’s access to birth registration services.
Catering for refugee children in national child Towards that goal, UNHCR and UNICEF hoped to
protection policies and standards; secure birth registration for 36,000 newborn refugees
by 2021. To date, over 16,000 births of refugee
Ensuring that the child protection workforce is children were registered in 3 countries: Indonesia, Iraq
capacitated to address the needs of refugees; and Ethiopia. Despite these advances, globally the
percentage of refugee children whose births are
Considering refugee communities in national surveys registered has decreased – in 2015, 44% of UNHCR
and research; and operations working on birth registration reported a
satisfactory number of children below the age of 12
Strengthening the capacity of birth registration months having access to birth certificates while in
systems to facilitate access for refugee children; 2020 this had dropped to 25%. National birth
registration systems need support in refugee hosting
areas to scale up services including mobile or outreach
Many countries have shown it is possible. In Finland, the services, to simplify procedures to remove barriers for
Asylum system is generally child-friendly and follows refugee children to have their births registered and to
detailed guidelines on the best interest of the children provide refugee families with information and where
that were developed by Finnish Immigration Services. needed, legal advice on how to register births.

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Providing child protection and GBV services Development and implementation of an
international accreditation programme for para-
Strengthening child protection systems takes time, professional training of community-based child
commitment and long-term investments. While working protection officers (nationally accredited child
towards inclusion, UNHCR and UNICEF are also protection training programme with standardized
committed to supporting supplementary services for curricula, international accreditation, and
refugee children. The Blueprint set a goal of reaching mentoring to reinforce government-led and
an additional 100,000 children with community-based community-based child protection; strengthening
child protection and services by 2021. So far, over the social service workforce in each country);
172,000 children, adolescents and caregivers received
community-based mental health and psychosocial Provide technical and financial support to
support (MHPSS) and child protection services in Iraq, assessing and strengthening inclusion of refugee
Bangladesh and Lebanon alone. Another success of the children in national child protection system; and
Blueprint was that 100% of the targeted refugee
children at risk and unaccompanied and separated Increase investment in birth registration systems,
children (UASC) in Ethiopia, Honduras and Indonesia including outreach and reform to address barriers
accessed safe and dignified Best Interests Procedures for refugee children and other vulnerable children
(BIP). to birth registration.

What can we learn from the Blueprint?

The Blueprint’s harmonized approach to programming

shows the benefits of coordinated, streamlined ways of Contact:
working where each organization capitalizes on its

comparative advantage building on recommendations Amanda Melville, UNHCR, at

from the 2018 UNICEF evaluation of child protection
[email protected]
systems, and the 2021 UNHCR child protection
and Tasha Gill, UNICEF at
evaluation. UNHCR leads on BIP assessments, and
UNICEF leads on community-based MHPSS services. [email protected]
UNHCR has long-standing expertise on asylum and

refugee standards and child friendly procedures.

UNICEF has a comparative advantage advocating for

increased public financing for children (as part of

national budget processes). By working in partnership,
and strategic leveraging of these comparative
advantages stakeholders are able to see a greater
impact on child protection systems for refugee children,
indeed for all children in a country.

What more can be done to further the

Blueprint’s goals?

There are many opportunities to support joint child

protection initiatives. Donors, advocates, legislators,
and others can work together to advocate for, finance,
and implement the following types of activities:

Multi-year joint programming in select countries

that focuses on the inclusion of asylum-seeking and
refugee children in national child protection systems
and addresses issues of equity, diversity, gender,
and assistance for the most vulnerable; Photo credit header photo © UNHCR/Santiago
Escobar-Jaramillo

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