Publications

Vulnerability to violence evolves in complex socio-economic and cultural contexts. This locally driven research analyses how institutional, community, interpersonal and individual factors interact to affect violence in children’s lives. It also begins to identify pathways to better inform national prevention strategies. The study places age and gender at its center, focusing on girls and boys at different stages of the life course, from the very young to older adolescents. A cornerstone of the study is to link quality research, translating it into evidence, and turning evidence into effective and meaningful interventions. This snapshot provides insights to the complexities that surround violence. Understanding and responding to the political as well as community contexts in which violence occurs builds more meaningful responses. Country teams are now preparing to move to the field and test best approaches to violence prevention based on evidence and using data to drive change.

Being bullied has been found to have a significant impact on children’s physical and mental health, psychosocial well-being and educational performance, with lasting effects into adulthood on health, well-being and lifetime earnings. Little is known about bullying in low- and middle-income countries, however. This study uses a mixed methods approach combining survey analysis of the predictors and associations with being bullied, with qualitative data to explore the context in which bullying occurs and the social processes that underpin it. Findings show that better data collection and increased resource allocation to bullying prevention are needed. The development and evaluation of different types of effective, sustainable and scalable bullying prevention models in low- and middle-income country contexts are priorities for programming and research.