The guide summarizes an assessment of War Child Canada’s three-pronged legal protection model was implemented with South Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda and uses it to identify the most important lessons for ensuring legal protection mechanisms are in place at the onset of an emergency. It is meant to help build the evidence base on what may be a replicable model, or set of practices, for survivor-centered SGBV legal protection services in emergency settings; expand understanding of positive practices and lessons learned; and help humanitarian actors gain the competencies needed to uphold their SGBV responsibilities.

Marriage under the age of 18 is widely considered a human rights violation, though it is legal with parental consent in many countries. It falls within the definition of genderbased violence.Married girls are at risk of intimate partner violence and exposure to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Marriage often means the end of a girl’s education and limits her vocational opportunities. Ninety percent of early first births happen within the context of child marriage and complications during pregnancy and delivery are the second leading cause of death among 15- to 19-year-olds. Nine of the top 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are considered fragile states. Similarly, many countries particularly vulnerable to natural disasters have the highest child marriage prevalence. Fragility and conflict impact child-marriage decisions. However, the role they play is complex and not fully understood. The need to protect girls from rape, as well as the stigma of surviving rape; from pregnancy outside marriage; and from the influence of other communities are factors that lead to child marriage. Poverty, exacerbated in displacement, is a driver of early marriage as parents hope to secure a daughter’s future or to meet basic needs. Child marriage is both exacerbated by barriers to education and an impediment to school for the girls. Additionally, marriage isolates adolescent girls from friends and programs that would help them overcome the challenges of marriage.

The manual developed by CRISIS and ACTRAV puts the emphasis on the importance of the role of trade unions in prevention and early warning and proposes measures and initiatives to be implemented by trade unions in cooperation with governments, employers and other players in civil society with a view to achieving peace, building upon it and undertaking reconstruction.

Since its foundation, the ILO has contributed to state building through social reform, by promoting democratic participation, social dialogue and fundamental rights. In more recent years, it has also highlighted the role of socio-economic programmes and policies in peace building and the recovery of countries involved in conflicts, violent social unrest, natural disasters and other types of crises, such as abrupt financial and economic downturns. Post-conflict, fragile and disaster-affected countries are characterized by instability, insecurity, poverty and inequality. The lack of employment opportunities and livelihoods, unemployment and underemployment, inequalities and lack of participation can in turn be catalysts for conflict, crises and fragility-aggravated poverty, unemployment and informality, creating a vicious circle leading to even greater fragility. Also, state fragility and the related instability may create “spill-over effects” and thus contribute to the destabilization of neighbouring states and regions. Nevertheless, ILO experience to date demonstrates that the promotion of employment and decent work in situations of fragility plays a key role in pulling individuals and societies out of crisis, and setting them on a sustainable development path.

Provides technical and operational information to promote effective response in four types of crisis situations: natural disasters, financial and economic downturns, armed conflicts and social and political transitions. Outlines the characteristics, causes and societal impact of each type of crisis and describes the ILO response in relation to pre-crisis preparedness and mitigation and response at the time of crisis and in the short and long-term. Focuses on the employment and decent work dimensions of crisis response.

The approach of states to managing immigration and asylum relies to a significant extent on the assignment of categories to people entering from abroad and residing in the country. Among these categories are regular migrant, labour migrant, irregular migrant, asylum seeker, refugee, unaccompanied child, smuggled migrant and trafficked person. Each of these categories has a specific definition in national law, and so every person migrating into a country fits into one of these categories – or at least that is how we understand migration and migration policies. There are indeed many reasons why this categorisation is necessary – each category has specific rights attached to it, and describes the situation that each person is in. Those of us working on migration policy also apply these categories in order to guide the scope of our work. However, in responding to mixed migration flows to Europe during the past few years, this has been a challenge. Some people are experts on human trafficking, while others are experts on asylum and refugees. Other people are experts on irregular migration or migrant smuggling, while still others are experts on children in a migration context. Yet to comprehend these migratory movements, it is necessary to understand legislation, policy and practice in all of these areas, because the adults and children who travelled along the Balkan and Mediterranean routes to European Union (EU) countries during the past three years did not fit neatly into just one of these categories. In fact most of them fell under a number of categories at once. What has been referred to as the “politics of labelling” in the area of mixed migration – the politically loaded use of certain terms to elicit particular responses to groups of people – is usually discussed in relation to the choice as to whether to use the term “migrant” or “refugee” (Whitham, 2017). This highlights the sometimes artificial distinctions embedded within the language of migration and the use of “language, definitions and categorisations” to determine the rights and treatment afforded to different people (Dolan, 2017). Acknowledging that multiple categories can be applied to individual people in this context is problematic, because states and service providers, as well as researchers and policy advisors, depend on the application of these categories in order to make sense of their work. This paper examines the challenges, and some possible ways forward, in dealing with the nexus between asylum, migration management and combatting human trafficking in mixed migration contexts in general.

Violence in Syria has been driving children, women and men from their homes for almost five years. ICMPD’s new research study looks at the vulnerability of displaced Syrian people to trafficking in persons. The research found that people are often trafficked or exploited because they are not able to meet their basic needs. This is exacerbated by complications in relation to legal residence status in host countries and legal authorisation to work. While some trafficking is committed by highly organised criminal networks, the most common type of exploitation is at a lower level, involving fathers, mothers, husbands, extended family, acquaintances and neighbours. The context of general vulnerability means that there are often factors that leave families with no viable alternative for survival other than situations that could be defined as exploitation and trafficking in national and international law. We therefore need a paradigm shift in how trafficking, refugee, migration and child protection policy are viewed in terms of access to protection. While policy-makers and practitioners might see themselves as working in distinct fields, on specific topics, the human beings in need of protection do not always fall under one single, clear-cut category. We must concentrate efforts to provide access to basic needs and safety for people displaced from and within Syria.

Human trafficking occurs in almost every country in the world, but it takes on particularly abhorrent dimensions during and after conflict. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of people through the threat or use of abduction, abuse of power or vulnerability, deception, coercion, fraud, force, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim for the purpose of exploitation. While many trafficking victims are exploited within their countries of residence, other victims are trafficked across regions More than 72 percent of detected victims are women and girls; Western and Central Europe and North America, Central America, and the Caribbean have particularly high rates of detected women and girls. Some forms of trafficking are particularly prevalent in the context of armed conflict, such as sexual exploitation, enslavement, and forced marriage; forced labor to support military operations; recruitment and exploitation of child soldiers; and removal of organs to treat injured fighters or finance operations.Traffickers also target forcibly displaced populations. On migration routes, human traffickers deceive people into fraudulent travel arrangements and job opportunities. Migrants face unique danger as they go through holding points and informal settlements or accept unsafe employment opportunities. Refugee women and girls are at particular risk of sex trafficking and forced marriage.

This report, Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Global Overview and Implications for the Security Sector, demonstrates the horrifying scope and magnitude of sexual violence in armed conflict. The first part of the report, the Global Overview, profiles documented conflict-related sexual violence in 51 countries – in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East- that have experienced armed conflict over the past twenty years. The second part of the report, entitled Implications for the Security Sector, explores strategies for security and justice actors to prevent and respond to sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations. The Global Overview highlights both similarities and differences in the forms and settings of sexual violence in conflict, in the profiles of the perpetrators and their victims, and in the motives for and the consequences of such violence, between and within conflict-affected countries and regions. Conflict-related sexual violence occurs in homes, fields, places of detention, military sites, and camps for refugees and displaced persons. It occurs at the height of armed conflict, during population displacement, and continues after conflict. Although the majority of victims of sexual violence are women and girls, men and boys are also targeted in armed conflict. In many conflicts, indigenous people or people from specific population groups are targeted for sexual violence based upon their ethnicity. Perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict include members of official armed and security forces, paramilitary groups, non-state armed groups, humanitarian and peacekeeping personnel, and civilians. Sexual violence during conflict is an act of domination, grounded in a complex web of cultural preconceptions, in particular as regards gender roles. It is used to torture and humiliate people, and to punish or humiliate an enemy group or community. Sexual violence may be encouraged or tolerated within armed groups. In some conflicts, it has been used strategically to advance military objectives, such as the clearing of a civilian population from an area.

This Aide-Memoire serves to generate adequate awareness on sexual exploitation and abuse and the many UN measures against the scourge. Therefore, the objective of this Aide-Memoire is to provide you, the commander, with a quick reference to the UN measures against sexual exploitation and abuse, including clearly defined command responsibilities. The Aide-Memoire complements relevant training guidance prior to and during deployment to UN peacekeeping operations. It is intended for all UN military commanders. Moreover, the document may also be a useful resource to UN military observers as well as other entities committed to service under the UN.