Child Rights in Humanitarian Crisis: Improving Action and Response

This book demonstrates how a focus on children’s rights can help practitioners to safeguard children during humanitarian crisis.

Child Rights in Humanitarian Crisis focuses on understanding and advancing child rights through practical applications of a child rights perspective in crisis response. The book establishes that with accessible, child-friendly participatory means, crisis response can improve from a child rights perspective and even advance children’s rights whilst also supporting and furthering the development of a child’s agency. The volume presents the reader with a clear focus on children from a range of backgrounds, including those most marginalised, such as children with disabilities. Drawing on expertise from the field as well as academia, and providing practical examples which link case studies to legal policies in recent and protracted humanitarian responses, such as in Turkey and at the Lithuania–Belarus border, this book is a treasure trove of advice from some of the humanitarian and development sector’s most experienced professionals.

Combining insights from both research and practice, this book will be an essential read for humanitarian students and practitioners.

Rigmor Argren is a senior lecturer at Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a PhD and an LLM from Essex University, UK, and a MA in media and communications from Örebro University as well as a diploma in humanitarian leadership from the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership at Deakin University, Australia. She has formerly worked as Head of Surge Capacity Unit, Save the Children, Sweden. Her research focus is in the area of international humanitarian law and human rights law, often on topics such as freedom of information, right to information and gender issues.

Jessica Jonsson is senior lecturer at Örebro University, Sweden. She holds an LLD (PhD Law) from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and an LLM (Master of Laws) from the European Academy of Legal Theory in Brussels, Belgium. She is the former Director of the Child Rights Academy, Sweden and prior to that was Head of Mission War Child Canada in Uganda. She has been part of the international humanitarian community for well over a decade, working mainly with the UN in Africa. Her research focus includes topics such as child rights in international criminal justice and refugees' and asylum seekers’ access to justice.