Haiti Child Protection Assessment

Overview

The FXB Center Child Protection Assessment Team was in Haiti from January 24 through January 31 to begin to assess the impact of the recent earthquake on Haitian children, with particular emphasis of inquiry on issues of child protection, child welfare and psycho-social as well as medical well-being for Haitian children. The Assessment Team met with key stakeholders in Haiti,including government officials, local staff members, humanitarian aid workers, and representatives of domestic and international nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies. These interviews developed an understanding of how child-related concerns are currently being addressed in Haiti and what options there might be regarding future plans and future needs. The FXB Center will work with UNICEF and USAID to use this early assessment to inform strategy in support of local efforts to protect and promote the basic rights and needs of earthquake-affected Haitian children during the recovery phase.

The Child Protection Assessment Team was composed of four individuals:

Haiti Team

• Satchit Balsari, MD, MPH
• Jay Lemery, MD, FACEP
• Timothy Williams, MSW, MSc
• Brett Nelson, MD, MPH, DTM&H

Boston Team

• Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH
• Patricia Spellman, MBA
• Arlan Fuller, JD
• Theresa Betancourt, ScD, MA
• Jackie Bhabha, JD

Notes from the Field

The Child Protection Assessment Team was stationed in Port-au-Prince, within the UN logistics base which was contiguous with the MINUSTAH compound. This choice of location permitted ready access to key international stakeholders from the humanitarian response community and provided a convenient central location for the team to conduct site visits to other parts of Port-au-Prince and surrounding communities.

In total, the team met with over 25 key stakeholders who could speak to the issues facing children and families in Haiti. This included government officials, local staff members, humanitarian aid workers, and representatives of domestic and international nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies. The Assessment Team made site visits to hospitals, community-based clinics, and settlement camps and traveled as far as Kenskoff in Haiti, and Jimani in the Dominican Republic. Additionally, they became welcome members of the UN the Haiti Child Protection Sub-cluster, giving team members opportunities to receive timely situational reports on health, child protection and psychosocial needs. These meetings also granted the team access to meet several aid workers who were otherwise spread across the earthquake-affected region. Read the full field report here.
 

Partner Efforts

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

In response to the Haiti earthquake disaster, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is playing a lead role in supporting the coordination of the Harvard-wide response including that of the Harvard-affiliated hospitals within Partners Health Care System. By leveraging HHI’s unique position as an academic and research center with long-standing ties to leading medical and public health personnel, HHI has been able to facilitate the deployment of more than 70 surgeons, emergency physicians, anesthesiologists and nurses to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. To read more about HHI’s response to the Haiti earthquake, please visit their website: http://www.hhi.harvard.edu/.

Haiti Voices

HaitiVOICES is a voluntary project administered by public health practitioners, physicians and humanitarian responders to facilitate the collection and dissemination of information pertinent to humanitarian response and logistics in Haiti from January 18th onwards.

All response agencies in Haiti, whether local or international, are encouraged to post their current activities and needs, and anticipated projects and needs on this site. All collected data are reported on the site in real time. Reflecting the UN's cluster approach and 3W format, data is categorized by geographic location, cluster and description of current and proposed activities and gaps. To learn more, visit http://www.haitivoices.com/.

 

Useful Maps of Haiti

The International Network of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net) was launched by 100 Crisis Mappers at the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2009) in October 2009. As the world's premier crisis mapping hub, CM*Net catalyzes communication and collaboration between and among crisis mappers with the purpose of advancing the study and application of crisis mapping worldwide.

Since the earthquake in Haiti, Crisis Mappers has been active in tracking the needs in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas, as well as the foreign aid response. To learn more, visit http://www.crisismappers.net/.
 

Read More

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp1001820v1

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/NEJMp1001820v1.pdf

 

Links to Partners

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

http://www.hhi.harvard.edu/

UNICEF

http://www.unicef.org/index.php

The International Committee of the Red Cross

http://www.icrc.org/

Partners In Health

http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

The International Rescue Committee

http://www.theirc.org/

Save the Children

http://www.savethechildren.org/

CARE

http://www.care.org/

Mercy Corps

http://www.mercycorps.org/

Plan International

http://plan-international.org/
 

Additional Maps of the Haiti Earthquake and Recovery

http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/asp/prod_free.asp?id=52

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc104?OpenForm&rc=2&cc=HTI

http://spatial.telespazio.it/gmosaic_haiti/

http://epmaps.wfp.org/allmaps

/03704_20100128_HTI_A3_ODEP_Haiti_Earthquake__Some_WFP_logistics,_26_Janaury_2010_-_LOW_RESOLUTION.jpg

http://haiti.openstreetmap.nl/

http://3w.unocha.org/WhoWhatWhere/projectMatrixReportFwt.php?uSite=ocha_na_ht&repId=1