Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The IOM project “Supporting Brighter Futures: Young Women and Girls and Labour Migration in South-East Asia and the Pacific” resulted in a 2019 publication of the same name. Six experts contributed papers exploring issues that ranged from the role of adolescent and young girls as household income providers and the nexus between migration and education, to human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Collectively the papers paint a complex picture, raising challenging policy questions and highlighting gaps that need to be filled by further research. Since Brighter Futures was published, COVID-19 and the measures taken in response to it have shifted the world in ways yet to be fully fathomed. Migration policy and programmatic responses are in rapid flux, and our understanding of the implications is constantly evolving. However, the disproportionate toll on female migrants is already clear, as is their leading role at the frontline of efforts to confront the pandemic. Against this shifting background, this paper offers speculative reflections on some policy implications that these shifts may have on the overarching and interrelated economic, social, cultural and structural findings of the report, and the gender dimensions at play in South-East Asia and the Pacific.

Although children are less at risk of COVID-19 infection, millions of children – including migrant children – are nevertheless at heightened risk from the pandemic because of their precarious status. Authored by Jacqueline Bhabha, this paper uses available data sources, including crowd-sourced mobility data, media reports and anecdotal accounts, to conduct an initial assessment of the pandemic’s impact on vulnerable migrant children and outline a number of policies that have been enacted to attenuate this vulnerability.

The joint WFP-IOM report highlights the close interconnection between hunger, conflict, migration and displacement, which has been further aggravated by COVID-19. The study explores the impact of the pandemic on the livelihoods, food security and protection of migrant workers households dependent on remittances and the forcibly displaced, including unaccompanied and separated children. Using the latest available data, the report highlights food security trends in some of the major migration and hunger hotspots across the world. The key findings have informed joint recommendations put forward by both agencies to mitigate the immediate negative effects on mobile and displaced populations, while preparing the pathway to recovery.

In recent years, global frameworks such as UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and the Global Compact on Refugees, have helped develop a more supportive legal and policy environment for protecting children on the move. At the same time, evidence on what works and what does not work in protecting children on the move, and why, has not been synthesized across a range of groups (refugees, internally displaced children, migrant children, returnees, children moving with and without families, and in different settings). This report provides an assessment of the reviewed literature and its key findings, and identifies gaps.