Online Classes Through HarvardX

The FXB Center launched a free online course: “Child Protection: Children’s Rights in Theory and Practice” in cooperation with Harvard’s online initiative, HarvardX. This eleven-week, self-paced course is open for rolling enrollment. The course invites learners with interest in deepening their knowledge about protecting child rights. Those seeking technical training in child protection or engaged in work with and for children are especially encouraged to enroll. A certificate is available after completion of course work for a small fee.

Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB’s Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, leads the course, with assistance from several other experts. The course draws on case studies from over 15 countries and offers an opportunity for students to interact with a global community of learners. Together, participants will master a child-centered approach to preventing and responding to violence, exploitation, and abuse against children.

We invite you to join us to for this important course.

Former FXB Center Director (and current FXB Senior Fellow), Dr. Jennifer Leaning, with Dr. Michael Van Rooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, are co-instructors in this EdX course focused on the principles guiding humanitarian response to modern emergencies and the challenges faced in the current global climate.

At its first offering, the course enrolled more than 16,000, with students representing 188 countries. Now in its third iteration, this course from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and HarvardX seeks to prepare learners to recognize and analyze emerging challenges in the humanitarian field. The course explores the ethical and professional principles that guide humanitarian response to conflict and disaster. Participants will learn the legal and historical frameworks that shaped these principles, test their applicability to the challenges faced by humanitarian actors today.

Through four case studies covering the responses to crises in Goma (Zaire), Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Pakistan, participants will engage with Harvard faculty, current practitioners, and one another. These cases introduce major trends affecting the current landscape of humanitarian response – including rapid population displacement, violence against aid workers, and civil-military engagement. Thoughtfully engaging with this course will prepare participants to be informed and aware humanitarian practitioners, scholars, policy-makers, and global citizens.

Go to the course for enrollment and further details.