BIC conducted an analysis of how 55 World Bank COVID-19 social protection projects have considered child protection, highlights a snapshot of some promising practices, and offers recommendations to inform future project design to strengthen child protection components.
Projects were assessed on the basis of the project’s inclusion of specific elements that contribute to child protection and/or child protection systems strengthening, directly and indirectly. Our assessment focused on five broad categories of child protection: (1) Service delivery; (2) Multisectoral collaboration; (3) Child friendliness; (4) Stakeholder engagement; and (5) Data collection and disaggregation.
The main takeaway from comparing the data across the five different categories is that the Bank’s current approach to child protection in social protection programs lacks a coordinated strategy. While about half of all projects included child protection as a component, the remainder did little to identify and address the needs of children in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a few positive aspects to COVID-19 social protection projects that, when implemented effectively, could help strengthen child protection in project-affected communities.
We urge the Bank to step up and help change the trajectory of COVID-19’s impact on the world’s most marginalized children.