Save the Children’s Regional Situational Analysis of child protection in the Pacific was carried out in 2023 in five countries: Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji. The aim of the research was to better understand the nature and prevalence of violence against children in the region, how the drivers of violence and risk and protective factors have changed since before the COVID-19 outbreak, and in response, what changes are needed to child protection systems to keep children safe from harm.
Children are at the forefront of this research, with their personal experiences of violence in their home, school, community, and online a major contribution to the analysis, along with child protection stakeholders, caregivers and adolescents.
Equally, children must also be at the forefront of shaping the solutions required to better protect them from violence that has detrimental impact on their development and growth, and their sense of safety and protection in the world.
The objectives of the research were to understand:
1. The nature and extent of violence that children are at risk of or affected
by in their home, school, community, and online;
2. The changes to these risks brought about by climate change, digitisation
and COVID-19;
3. The extent to which formal child protection systems have been
strengthened through funding, staffing and training to adapt to these
changes;
4. The opportunity to strengthen child protection systems, with a focus
on the community level, and how Save the Children may pursue these
priorities in its programming and advocacy; and
5. The extent to which gender, age and disability and other factors serve as
risk and protective factors and how this can be taken into account in the
above.
Read the FULL report here!
