Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an enormous challenge for all countries due to its public health consequences and socio-economic effects on families. In this difficult context, the Latin America and the Caribbean region is facing the largest displacement in its recent history, with approximately 4.2 million Venezuelans now living in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago. This migrant population faces various risks, whether linked to the migration process or their migratory status, or others that were aggravated by the health emergency. Their extreme vulnerability to the socioeconomic impacts of the measures adopted in response to COVID-19, given their overrepresentation in the informal sector of the economy, coupled with their low inclusion in social protection mechanisms, profoundly jeopardizes their welfare and compromises public health as well as the overall well-being of local populations. Faced with this scenario, social protection may play a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerabilities of migrants and in helping to mitigate the impact of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of international migrants under 18 is rising, accelerated by complex and fast-evolving economic, demographic, security and environmental drivers. Based on interviews carried out with 1,290 migrant children and young people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, this report helps address the evidence gap on children and young people migrating in the Horn of Africa by providing a better understanding of their protective environments; their access to services and resources; and their perceptions of safety, well-being and trust in authorities and other providers. It concludes by offering policy and programme recommendations to rethink child protection approaches for migrants in the region.

This paper is a call for empirical research, and theory development, that focuses on the peer relationships of children and adolescents who experience forced displacement. During the last decade, an escalating humanitarian crisis has developed with historic levels of involuntary migration occurring across the world. The extant research on youth who become refugees or internally displaced has primarily targeted issues related to mental health and basic survival needs. Less attention has been devoted to normative developmental processes including peer relationships. Nonetheless, peers can play a critical role in facilitating the adjustment of displaced children and adolescents. Friends can help these vulnerable youth through the transitions associated with resettlement. From a less adaptive perspective, interactions in the peer group will potentially contribute to intensification of risk and can accelerate trajectories toward negative outcomes.

Parenting is a demanding undertaking, requiring continuous vigilance to ensure children's emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. It has become even more challenging in the context of COVID-19 restrictions that have led to drastic changes in family life. Based on the results of a qualitative interpretive descriptive study that aimed to understand the experiences of immigrants living in apartment buildings in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada, this paper reports the experiences of 50 immigrant parents. During the summer and fall of 2020, semi-structured interviews were conducted by phone or virtually, audio-recorded, then translated and transcribed. The transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has rattled the world and has severely compromised not only the public health system but has decelerated the global economy. In this backdrop, the article explores the dynamics of the institutional care of the out-of-home care (OHC) children, adolescents and children who are residing in alternative care homes, childcare institutes (CCIs), foster homes and who are in conflict with law like refugees or in juvenile correctional centres. The article attempts to highlight the risk factors and systematic barriers that CCIs and associated functionaries have been confronting in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. It would also catalogue the remedial, preventive and protective initiatives undertaken as best practices. 

The United Nations Network on Migration is committed to supporting all partners in pursuit of the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration, recognizing that this cooperative framework provides an invaluable tool for ensuring all in society can contribute to a collective response to COVID-19 and are protected equally against its impact. To that end this briefing is part of a series by the Network looking at different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they relate to migrants and their communities. The present document aims to provide practical guidance to States and other stakeholders in preventing and responding to COVID-19 in the context of immigration detention, highlighting instances of promising practices as useful models to draw from.

At a pivotal moment for immigration detention policies and practices, with many States making decisions that will determine whether or not the COVID-19 pandemic is a watershed moment in the use of detention for migration-related reasons, this online workshop brought together government peers from all regions to discuss how to build on the momentum created by the ongoing health crisis to sustain and expand the use of alternatives to immigration detention (ATDs).

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 Initiative for Child Rights in the Global Compacts is a multi-stakeholder partnership bringing together over 30 UN, civil society and philanthropic organizations around a shared agenda: to ensure that children’s rights are at the heart of the two global compacts on migration and on refugees in practice and to create a continuum of care, protection and support for all migrant and refugee children.

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.

This article examines the socioeconomic challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses for children on the move across four dimensions: poverty, survival and health, learning and protection and safety.  It also considers how new laws and regulations enacted in response to the pandemic are impacting these children. It then suggests the necessary policies and actions to protect this intensely vulnerable population. 
Many displaced children will see their family’s income shrink or disappear and, globally, poverty levels are expected to worsen. Vulnerable populations are predicted to disproportionately bear the brunt of this economic contraction. Poor health systems and disrupted health services – a reality for many migrant and displaced children – are likely to further weaken, placing children at risk of intensified hardship, both physical and psychological. The crowded conditions and poor access to proper water and sanitation common among families living in displacement pose obvious risks at a time when social distancing and hygiene are so critical.  
Migrant and displaced learners regularly encounter obstacles in accessing education, and the online materials and remote classrooms functioning around the world today may be far from their reach. They are at risk of falling further behind in school. And given that economic downturns typically lead to more children working, getting pregnant or married, and being trafficked or sexually exploited, migrant and displaced children – who already face great risks to their safety — stand to see their situation worsen. Domestic violence is on the rise globally, and accounts of stigma and discrimination against the displaced are also increasing. The increasing global death toll means some migrant and displaced children will be orphaned and become vulnerable to child protection abuses.