Protecting Children

For more than a decade, Save the Children has been protecting children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence in all regions of the world. Our programs focus on the most vulnerable children while aiming for the safety and well-being of all children. Working with governments, international organizations, and local community partners, we strive to create lasting change with improvements in policy and services that protect children whether in a natural disaster, conflict, or development setting.

What We Do

Some examples of our child protection program activities include creating Child Friendly Spaces in emergencies, reunifying separated and unaccompanied children with their families in emergencies, developing public awareness campaigns against child trafficking, piloting training programs for social workers to provide supportive care to families and children and advocating for more effective national protection policies and child welfare reform. An important part of all of Save the Children’s child protection work, however, is the participation and leadership of the children themselves. To this end, we actively support child clubs and other child-led activities that educate children on how to protect themselves, and empower them to call for action in their communities.

Protecting Children in Emergencies: In addition to responding to children’s most basic needs during emergencies, Save the Children recognizes that all children are particularly vulnerable to a range of risks like separation from family, recruitment into armed forces, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, physical harm, and psychosocial distress. Read more

Protecting Children from Exploitation: Because child trafficking is lucrative and often linked with criminal activity and corruption, it is hard to estimate how many children suffer from it. However, trafficking and exploitation is an increasing risk to children around the world. Often they are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, such as prostitution, or for labor such as domestic servitude, agricultural work, factory work, mining or child soldiering. There are 215 million children engaged in child labor, with 115 million of those children in hazardous work. Read more

Ensuring Children Have Quality Care: Over the years, Save the Children has found that the best possible way to protect children from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence is to keep them with their families and to help caregivers take care of them. In many of the countries we work in, families are under high stress from a variety of reasons such as poverty, disability, or illness, which often means children do not receive the love and care they deserve. Sometimes these vulnerable children are sent to orphanages or state institutions. Read more