Children in Humanitarian Crisis: Meeting their Needs and Minimizing Consequences

This research paper focuses on the challenges faced by children in humanitarian crises and aims to find ways to meet their needs and minimize the consequences of childhood exposure to conflict and displacement. It explores the factors leading to a crisis among children and evaluates the framework for integrating social protection mechanisms. The paper draws on previous research and field experiences to inform future research and institutionalization.

Research Topic
In the field of Humanitarian research, there has been a challenge in building evidence and
knowledge for meeting the needs of children during the time of emergencies and disaster.
Children are most vulnerable to the threats of famine, climate change and environmental
degradation. Reports from the previous researches suggest that annually there is an increase
in the crisis faced by children and are studied under more fragile contexts (Dickinson, Pyone
& van den Broek, 2015). There are very limited researches which study the consequences of
childhood exposure which mostly results in shocks and long-running uncertainty of their
mental health. Acknowledging this gap in research, the present research topic will be based
upon the critical question that remains unexplored. This research will be based on finding
today's crisis for children in the humanitarian field and how to respond to such a critical
situation. Here the research topic will be revolving around the dynamics of humanitarian and
how developing a solid foundation can address the complex emergencies among children.
Also, the research will be attempted by positioning a balance between humanitarian and
development action. The component of the research will explore the key lessons and case
scenarios from the field experience while tackling the challenges. There is an urgent need for
stronger evidence and knowledge to inform the challenges for meeting the needs of the
children in a humanitarian crisis (Weissbecker, Hanna, El Shazly, Gao & Ventevogel, 2019).
By analysing the knowledge from the experience will help in better institutionalization and
also establish critical questions for future research. The research paper will further expand the
topic to understand and evaluate the framework that can be integrated within social protection
mechanisms for children so as to better understand the cash flow during a fragile and
emergency situation. The research paper will be based upon past experience over children
and armed conflict which will be further utilized for exploring linkages with ongoing
development in the humanitarian field and transcend the identified gap. By combining
different approaches to the previous researches and responses the paper aims at fulfilling the
gap of meeting the needs of children that are influenced under various drivers of violence,
child migration, long term impacts of malnutrition, traumatic incidents and also different
situation including poverty, demography and climate for children.

Research Question(s)
 What are the factors that are leading to a crisis among children in the field of
humanitarian development?
 What are the needs of children during the time of a humanitarian crisis?
 How can be the consequences of childhood exposure towards conflict and
displacement can be minimized?

References
Dickinson, F. M., Pyone, T., & van den Broek, N. (2015). Experiences from the field:
maternal, reproductive and child health data collection in humanitarian and
emergency situations. International health, 8(2), 83-88.
Weissbecker, I., Hanna, F., El Shazly, M., Gao, J., & Ventevogel, P. (2019). Integrative
mental health and psychosocial support interventions for refugees in humanitarian
crisis settings. In An Uncertain Safety (pp. 117-153). Springer, Cham.