Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

World

The Path of Most Resilience: Early Childhood Care and Development in Emergencies - Principles and Practice

Attachments

While the progress toward standardisation of child protection and well-being principles has been remarkable, more needs to be done. Despite the plethora of guidelines and standards, no single
document specifically and holistically targets parameters of assistance for young children and their caegivers, families, and communities in emergencies.

Emergencies can be considered a 'window of opportunity' to introduce ECCD provision and concepts where none existed before. Therefore it is crucial that quality programming, adherence to good practice, and development of minimum standards are a major priority for emergency ECCD response.

What is required goes beyond ensuring that humanitarian aid efforts include ECCD programming. Policy makers must rethink the way the emergency response is carried out so that the rights and needs of young children and their families are fully recognised and centred in humanitarian relief.

Continued coordinated efforts must be made to make interventions effective and accountable, strengthen collective advocacy, and develop concrete policy and programmatic frameworks to prioritise
ECCD as a core intervention in crisis settings.