The Biden administration is considering reintroducing one of the most infamous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration – the practice of detaining migrant families, including young children, seeking protection in the US even though they are not charged with any criminal wrong doing. There was a reason why this policy, among the many egregious Trump measures targeting migrants at the Southern border – a border wall, the so-called “Remain in…
January 13, 2020 For Immediate Release A new FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University report underscores the need for innovative community strategies to prevent serious violations of children’s rights. The report, “Before, Not After: An Evaluation of CINI’s Preventative Approach to Child Protection in India,” authored by Elizabeth Donger and Jacqueline Bhabha, documents and evaluates the harm prevention work carried out by the children’s rights nonprofit…
Junita Upadhyay, MC/MPA candidate, 2019 Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government Ms. Upadhyay will share key findings of the ECPAT International’s three research studies, “Through the Eyes of the Child: Barriers to Access to Justice and Remedies for Child Victims of Sexual Exploitation, “Access to Recovery and Reintegration,” and “Barrier to Compensation for Victims of Sexual Exploitation” conducted between 2014-2016 through secondary data analysis and field research in the…
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Lynne Jones, OBE, FRCPsych, PhD Humanitarian psychiatrist Dr Lynne Jones will reflect on 25 years of establishing mental health programs in humanitarian emergencies. Dr. Lynne Jones is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researcher, and relief worker. Jones has been engaged in assessing mental health needs and establishing and running mental health services in disaster, conflict, and post-conflict settings since 1990 around the world. Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of…
Join Jacqueline Bhabha and Elizabeth Donger for a discussion about prevention science in child protection, with a focus on India. This seminar, with support from the Harvard University Asia Center, will explore the early findings of a research project that examines community-level strategies to prevent violence, abuse, and exploitation of children in India. The project involves three separate evaluations of harm prevention programs run by innovative Indian nonprofits in Uttar…
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By Rebecca Shin This past year the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University (Harvard FXB) has broadened its child protection pedagogy through three focused initiatives. At the end of June, we completed our first week-long Child Protection Executive Education Course, with leaders from UNICEF and their national partners. Participants from 13 countries across Africa, South America, South and East Asia, Central Europe and the Middle…
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Separation at the border On June 27, our colleague Chris Sweeney in the Harvard Chan Office of Communications interviewed Harvard FXB’s director of research, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, on family separation for their feature Three Questions. Below is an excerpt from the piece, with one question and answer: In all of your years working on migrant issues around the world, have you ever seen a similar policy enacted? I can’t think…
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President Trump introduced a “zero tolerance” immigration policy on April 6, 2018, as a seemingly fail-safe measure to prevent what he calls undesirables from seeking to enter the US across the border with Mexico. He launched the policy to elevate his stature as the defender of an American populace under threat. His account is eerily reminiscent of pronouncements by genocidal regimes dehumanizing targeted groups. Rwandan Hutus described their Tutsi targets…
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By Susan Lloyd McGarry From Australia to Venezuela, from Azerbaijan to Vietnam, and many places in between, more than 60 news outlets and websites in at least 15 countries and 10 languages have published information about the recent Harvard FXB report Emergency Within An Emergency: The Growing Epidemic of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Children in Greece. Excerpts and links from some of that coverage is below. Our greatest…
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By Krista Oehlke On Tuesday, May 2 at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights celebrated and honored its Child Protection Certificate recipients in an award ceremony. The celebration marked a milestone at the Center. Now in its third year, the program has grown exponentially and across disciplines. This spring, 20 graduate students from across the University – from the…
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For Immediate Release Monday, April 17, 2017 Boston Emergency within an Emergency: The Growing Epidemic of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Children in Greece Much public attention and heartache have been focused on the severe impact of the refugee and migration crisis on children. Images of toddlers drowned and washed up ashore, babies rescued from terrifying journeys, teenagers camping in bitter cold have been widely disseminated. An equally grave…
Congratulations to FXB fellow, Dr. Jumana Odeh, for her selection as one of four 2017 World of Children awardees. The award recognizes her for her long-standing work at the Palestinian Happy Child Centre in Ramallah with children who have developmental and learning disabilities or neurological disorders. This award is particularly prestigious as it is the alumni award–given to former awardees for their substantial further contributions. Dr. Odeh had previously been…
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By Vasileia Digidiki and Jacqueline Bhabha Struggling to manage Europe’s worst humanitarian crisis in recent history, with hundreds of thousands of migrants in legal limbo in all of Europe as anti-immigration sentiments gain ground, countries in Europe and the European Union (EU) in particular now face a new set of challenges: devastating weather conditions necessitating an immediate humanitarian response to end further loss of human life among the most vulnerable.…
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By Vasileia Digidiki Nine months after the historic agreement between the European Union and Turkey,[1] approximately 60,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece, waiting and hoping for another chance at resettlement in a safe country, away from the violence, war, and persecution they faced at home. Among these are an estimated 2,300 unaccompanied minors.[2] Continued daily arrivals further increase the number of vulnerable people stranded in Greece, as European…
Center research director Jacqueline Bhabha has co-drafted the newly released Recommended Principles for Children on the Move and Other Children Affected by Migration. The Principles were developed via a consultative process with a large number of experts from the United Nations, academia, donor agencies, and civil society organizations. The Principles are written with clarity and concision and agreed on by all major stakeholders. As such, they are the first of…
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The Harvard FXB Center has today released a new report detailing the effect of the European refugee and migration crisis on the small Greek island of Lesbos. Here, Jacqueline Bhabha and report author visiting scholar Vasileia Digidiki discuss the urgent and growing child protection challenges and violations on the ground in Lesbos and consider the policy implications of the crisis as a whole on the international child protection system.
by Krista Oehlke October 21, 2015. Jacqueline Bhabha yesterday launched this year’s child protection curriculum with a brown bag lunchtime talk entitled “Child Protection and Migration: From Crisis to Crisis.” Bhabha focused on some of the chief protection issues child migrants are facing in today’s world and demanded an overhaul of the way we address them. “Child migration needs to be a central aspect of how we think about in-country…
