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Emergency Managers and Humanitarian Actors need to reconsider their resourcing policies and operational frameworks to take children and child poverty into consideration. In 2015, Daoud, Halleröd & Guha Sapir studied the nexus between severe child poverty and vulnerability to disasters in 67 middle to low-income countries. They narrowed their focus to hone in on governance, hypothesizing that in countries with poor governance and poor emergency response mechanisms, resources would be quickly exhausted without meeting the needs of children in the short term. The recovery deficit would disproportionately impact children. The study had some aberrant results because of the size and availability of micro-data. In some cases, higher rates of governance seemed to make child poverty worse after a disaster. Other cases suggested access to sanitation increased after a geological event. What was not covered was the impact of international organizations’ involvement in disaster management (Guha Sapir et al., 2015). However, subsequent qualitative research showed some nexus between the two.
For nearly two decades the right to health, shelter, and nutrition has been considered part of the highest attainable standard for human dignity. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services''. Further, numerous United Nations documents state that additional measures are needed to protect the health and development of children (UNHCR | Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 2000).