Adolescents In Humanitarian Crisis

Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis investigates the experiences of adolescents displaced by humanitarian crisis. The world is currently seeing unprecedented levels of mass displacement, and almost half of the world’s 70 million displaced people are children and adolescents under the age of 18. Displacement for adolescents comes with huge disruption to their education and employment prospects, as well as increased risks of poor psychosocial outcomes and sexual and gender-based violence for girls. Considering these intersectional vulnerabilities throughout, this book explores the experiences of adolescents from refugee, internally displaced persons and stateless communities in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Rwanda. Drawing on innovative mixed-methods research, the book investigates adolescent capabilities, including education, health and nutrition, freedom from violence and bodily integrity, psychosocial wellbeing, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Centring the diverse voices and experiences of young people and focusing on how policy and programming can be meaningfully improved, this book will be a vital guide for humanitarian students and researchers, and for practitioners seeking to build effective, evidence-based policy. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003167013, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

A comprehensive, best practices resource for public health and healthcare practitioners and students interested in humanitarian emergencies.

Every year, thousands of young people on the run from war and persecution, or escaping poverty and chronic instability, make their way to Europe without their parents. Embarking on long and often dangerous journeys, they have either become separated from their families on the way or set out on their own. In recent years, the number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Europe has risen drastically. It has led to a major shift in perception in European countries, initiating a wealth of policies and infrastructures targeted specifically at unaccompanied child refugees. This book investigates the emergence of the unaccompanied child refugee as a ‘crisis figure’. It shows how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. By bringing together ethnographically driven research on unaccompanied minors in some of the core arrival and transit countries in or into Europe, it shows the divergent ways ideas on childhood, deservingness and vulnerability are interpreted, lived, and grappled with on the ground. By laying the focus on young people’s own experiences and perspectives, it establishes a deeper understanding of the ways unaccompanied asylum seekers live and make sense of shifting social terrains. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

More than half of the 25.9 million refugees in the world are under the age of 18 and the mental health of these children and adolescents constitutes a growing global public health priority. Refugee children and their families are at increased risk to develop mental health problems, but they often face major challenges in accessing adequate treatment and mental health professionals frequently feel ill-equipped to assist this group. Refugees are faced with a plethora of issues including the ambiguous loss of loved ones, psychological trauma related to past experiences of violence and atrocities, the complexities of daily life as a refugee, and the challenges to adapt to new systems of care and support. Refugees’ life circumstances all too often undermine their agency, asthey face discrimination, stigma, and social isolation or exclusion. Refugees are frequently disconnected from the usual family and community supports that they once had, which creates additional mental distress. As parents struggle with these changes, their children often find it even more difficult to adapt and connect with them. This all leads to increased prevalence of mental health conditions among refugees. Humanitarian policies recommend family-centered interventions that are multi-sectoral,multi-disciplinary, and focus on optimizing resource utilization. Over the last decade, a considerable body of research has emerged around socio-ecological models of mental health, family and community approaches, and resilience and strengths-based theories, but these insights are insufficiently incorporated in the practice of mental health care for refugee children. Clinicians often struggle to grasp the common unique stressors that families face and are not familiar with working with families as units for intervention. Using culturally and contextually informed assessment methods and family-oriented management approaches not only help individual children or adolescents, but also their families. This book aims to provide an overview of the latest theoretical insights from research on sociocultural aspects of mental health and connect these with clinical insights from practical mental health care provision. Using strengths-based, resiliency-oriented and family-centered approaches can enrich clinical practice in refugee mental health, but clinicians need to translate the emerging evidence into concrete steps and interventions. This requires additional skills for the assessment and management of mental health conditions in refugee children and families. The chapters in this book are written by a diverse group of authors using global, multi-disciplinary approaches. The chapters provide examples from various contexts including refugees who are displaced to neighboring countries, refugees ‘on the move’, and refugees and asylum seekers in resettlement settings. This book is therefore a unique resource for clinicians, researchers and policy makers working on mental health issues of refugee children and adolescents around the world.

The second edition of the AA-HA! guidance is a collaborative effort spearheaded by the World Health Organization in collaboration with UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UN WOMEN, World Bank, the World Food Program and PMNCH. Building on the solid foundation of the first edition and voices of adolescents and young adults around the world, this multi-agency product has evolved to incorporate valuable learnings from the past five years, including of the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts. Latest estimates of mortality and disease burden, updated evidence, and a broader focus on wellbeing make our second edition a cutting-edge resource for policy makers in the area of adolescent health and well-being. AA-HA! 2.0 offers insights into the current health and well-being landscape of the world’s over 1.2 billion adolescents, underlining evidence-based solutions and presenting strategies for priority setting, planning, implementing, and evaluating health and well-being programmes. The inclusion of key implementation strategies and real-world case studies make this guide a practical tool for governments in designing and implementing a new generation of adolescent health and well-being programmes.

On 20 November 2009, the global community celebrates the 20th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the unique document that sets international standards for the care, treatment and protection of all individuals below age 18. To celebrate this landmark, the United Nations Children's Fund is dedicating a special edition of its flagship report The State of the World's Children to examining the Convention's evolution, progress achieved on child rights, challenges remaining, and actions to be taken to ensure that its promise becomes a reality for all children.

The Syrian refugee crisis has galvanized attention to one of the world’s foremost challenges: forced displacement. The total number of refugees and internally displaced persons, now at over 65 million, continues to grow as violent conflict spikes.This report, Forcibly Displaced: Toward a Development Approach Supporting Refugees, the Internally Displaced, and Their Hosts, produced in close partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), attempts to sort fact from fiction to better understand the scope of the challenge and encourage new thinking from a socioeconomic perspective. The report depicts the reality of forced displacement as a developing world crisis with implications for sustainable growth: 95 percent of the displaced live in developing countries and over half are in displacement for more than four years. To help the displaced, the report suggests ways to rebuild their lives with dignity through development support, focusing on their vulnerabilities such as loss of assets and lack of legal rights and opportunities. It also examines how to help host communities that need to manage the sudden arrival of large numbers of displaced people and that are under pressure to expand services, create jobs, and address long-standing development issues. Critical to this response is collective action. As work on a new Global Compact on Responsibility Sharing for Refugees progresses, the report underscores the importance of humanitarian and development communities working together in complementary ways to support countries throughout the crisis†•from strengthening resilience and preparedness at the onset to creating lasting solutions.