Children’s rights in disasters: Concerns for social work – Insights from South Asia and possible lessons for Africa

Abstract

Disasters around the world disrupt the lives of millions of people, especially pushing many children into armed conflict, prostitution, drug trafficking and other dangerous situations, resulting in violation of their rights. Approaches to disaster management continue to be largely technology-centred, top-down and isolated from human development processes in the region. The rescue–relief–rehabilitation (3R) model of interventions largely results in treating children as beneficiaries and not as actors. This article offers possible lessons for Africa, based on the South Asian experience of how children’s rights are (not) practised in the context of disasters.

Keywords

Africa child rights disaster management legislation policy South Asia

Introduction

Children’s rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to survival, development, protection and participation rights. Children are treated and nurtured differently in different communities and cultures. The human rights of children are threatened when their society and social policies discriminate against them on the basis of circumstances of birth, gender, or other characteristics.

Disasters around the world disrupt the lives of millions of people, especially children pushing many of them into prostitution, armed conflict, drug trafficking and other dangerous situations leading to violation of their rights. The United Nations estimates that 66 million children around the world are affected every year by disasters such as floods, earthquakes and drought. Approaches to disaster management often continue to be largely technology-centred, top-down and isolated from human development processes. Children’s rights are often talked about but seldom implemented fully. Children are the most photographed but least consulted while making disaster management policies and programs.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) of 1989 is a landmark document in the history of children’s rights. In some countries children’s rights have become part of the manifesto and agenda for mainstream political parties. Despite this, children are the most vulnerable during disasters and treated as mere beneficiaries. This approach restricts the building of resilient children. It is not only their survival rights but participation, protection and non-discrimination rights that need to be ensured. These rights, when realized, result in resiliency of children and they become actors in disaster management and in turn build resilient communities. The state, social workers and other participating agencies have an obligation to enable these rights of the children (Nikku and Karkara, 2006).

Social work’s historical commitment to the advancement of clients’ rights and social justice poses special challenges when the clients are minors. Social workers work with children in need and provide direct services and take up advocacy roles to ensure children’s rights. They are involved on a daily basis with the question of how children’s interests are best protected by parents, by the state or by the children themselves (Hegar, 1989). Mathbor (2007) states that ‘social workers’ active involvement in disaster management is pivotal in creating plans that link and bridge vulnerable populations to required resources before, during and after a disaster’ (p. 359). Armed with unique skills and abilities to work in disasters and with children to secure their rights, social workers play vital roles in securing children’s rights in disasters. Social workers need to work strategically as civil society appeals to ensure the protection of basic human rights during and after disaster events, especially of minorities and other disadvantaged groups, which are often ignored by governments.

Similarities across contexts: South Asia and Africa

Africa is the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. With one billion people (as of 2009) in 54 countries, Africa accounts for about 15 percent of the world’s human population. Demographically, South Asia is a diverse region of 1.64 billion people (24% of the world’s population), making the region both the most populous and most densely populated geographical region in the world (Bloom and Rosenberg, 2011). Like Africa, South Asia is a distinct culturally diverse geographical entity, comprising eight countries: Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives (situated in the Indian Ocean). Different forms of governance, language, culture and markets make both Africa and South Asia vibrant in global affairs. Both South Asia and Africa are prone to disasters and children are the most vulnerable and their rights often neglected. This article aims to raise a discourse on the need for cross-cultural and comparative studies on children and their role and rights in disaster prevention and mitigation, early warning, preparedness and response, and post-disaster recovery.

This article is divided in to five sections. Following this introductory section, section two discusses various approaches to disaster management. Section three briefly presents an analysis of various policies and legal frameworks related to disaster management and shows how they have not addressed children’s rights. Section four presents an analysis of field data and case studies to ascertain whether children’s needs and rights have been addressed by the duty bearers during various disasters in the South Asian context. The fifth section concludes with a brief discussion about African countries which are also prone to disasters (both human engineered and natural) where child rights are at stake. The insights from South Asia are used to make recommendations for children-led disaster management in Africa.

Approaches to disaster management

Historically, approaches to disaster management were technology-centred, top-down and isolated from the development process and heavily reliant on outside ‘experts’. However, over the past two decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on community-based approaches and pre-emptive approaches that focus on the root causes of vulnerability rather than isolated disaster events.

Blaikie et al. (1994) note that some groups in society are much more vulnerable to disaster losses and suffer differently; variations of impact from disasters evolve from class, caste, ethnicity, gender (Enarson and Morrow, 1997), religion, disability, or age (Bolin and Bolton, 1986).

There is growing evidence that the top-down approaches to disaster management results in inequitable, unsustainable and inappropriate results. There is a paradigm shift with humanitarian agencies moving away from the traditional relief and response focus disaster preparedness to a developmental approach incorporating hazard mitigation and vulnerability reduction in their strategies. Particular stress has been put on local capacity-building as a means of increasing resilience to natural hazard events, preventing disaster and adapting to environmental and climatic change (Alexander, 1997; Benson et al., 2001).

Many development practitioners now support the Community Based Disaster Management (CBDM) approach. This approach has been discussed, debated and adopted in the World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction held in 1994 at Yokohama, Japan. Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) is another approach that some development organizations are promoting by seeking to bridge the gap between disaster and development. It refers to a process of reducing disaster risks in which communities actively engage in identifying, analysing, addressing, monitoring and evaluating their disaster risks to reduce their vulnerabilities and to enhance their capacities to overcome a disaster situation (Allen, 2006). The CMDRR approach warrants facilitation from development practitioners and hence there is a significant capacity gap that constrains the application of CMDRR in day-to-day practice.

Rights based humanitarian approaches to Disaster Management are based on the belief that the humanitarian imperative comes first and that people affected by conflict and calamity have a right to protection and assistance. They seek to alleviate human suffering without offending the affected people’s dignity or undermining local capacities. Generally, they apply a rescue–relief–rehabilitation model of interventions. In practice, except in a few cases, they fail to pay attention to children’s particular needs, women’s personal hygiene and care of people with special needs (The Sphere Project, 2004). The findings of several studies suggest that ‘disaster interventions rarely consider children holistically as the UNCRC indicates they should’ (Penrose and Takaki, 2006).

Furthermore, every new disaster brings renewed demands for a swifter response. However, the danger is that such requests strengthen and centralize the power and authority of the technical and sectoral agencies, which in turn strengthen fast-moving, non-participatory practices that undermine the ability of communities to respond. Studies on children, women and minorities in disaster shed light on the role of class, race, gender and age in different societies. There is a serious need to find a place for children and youths on the disaster research agenda.

Rights and disasters

The history of the children’s rights movement dates back to the 17th century in countries like the USA. For example, ‘The Bodies of Liberties’ (1640) established the first code in the world to offer legal protection to children. On the one hand, children under this law could be ‘put to death’ for insubordination against their parents. On the other hand, under this law, children could voice to the state authorities whether or not they were subjected to abuse by their parents (Jones, 1992). Against this backdrop of legal histories, the Children’s Rights movement came of age when the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was ratified by as many as 192 state parties in 1989. The convention draws attention to four sets of rights, namely: the right to survival; the right to protection; the right to participation; and the right to development.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is intended to guarantee children their inalienable rights in all circumstances. As indicated in the preamble, during natural disasters, when children are at their most vulnerable, these rights need to be enforced by the state and other parties dealing with the emergency in question. According to the World Disasters Report (IFRC, 2001) about 66.5 million children were affected by natural disasters in every year of the previous decade, considerably more than in the decade before, while 10 million children were affected by conﬂicts. An estimated 77 million children under 15, on average, had their lives severely disrupted by a natural disaster or an armed conflict, each year, between 1991 and 2000. Millions of children were made homeless, lost loved ones, sustained injuries, witnessed or experienced violence and suffered scarring psychological traumas. We can conclude that children are better off as a result of years of child advocacy, yet there are events like disasters in which children are largely treated as passive beneficiaries.

In addition to the conventions and laws, various academic disciplines like social work, psychology and law have been influencing the Children’s Rights movement in different countries. Anderson (2005) argues that ‘significant progress has been made in the social science disaster research held since its inception several decades ago. Despite the advances in knowledge, important areas of research have been seriously understudied, including the impact of hazards and disasters on children and youths’ (p. 159). Anderson (2005) highlights that the knowledge base on children and disasters is so thin that studies related to children are needed across the entire mitigation, preparedness, and response and recovery spectrum.

Drabek’s (1986) systematic survey of disaster research findings mainly refers to children in a mental health context, reflecting a dearth of information on the topic of children and disaster. Thus there is a serious need to find a place for children and youths on the disaster research agenda and to advance knowledge about this segment of the population. Such knowledge would provide a more complete understanding of the impact of hazards and disasters on society across the board and result in a firmer basis for policy and practice (Chowdhury et al., 1993).

Research methods

This article is based on regional research, conducted during 2005–6 and supported by the Save the Children Sweden Regional Office for South and Central Asia based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The study, which was led by the author, was conducted in four out of the eight South Asian countries (Nikku et al., 2006). The study focused on the practice of children’s rights during the earthquakes of 2005 in Pakistan and India and Kuchch (India) in 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 (India and Sri Lanka), and the floods of 2004 in Tarai Nepal. An initial desk research was conducted to collect secondary information on the subject matter. A large amount of web-based literature on the theme was also analysed. In addition, a brief analysis of policy literature was conducted. Further, to supplement the secondary research, using an exploratory and descriptive research design, primary data were collected by administering a questionnaire. No fewer than four key informant interviews (KI) were conducted with policy-makers, bureaucrats, and NGO and media representatives in each of the study sites. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with children and members of children’s clubs, involved and affected by disasters in each study site. In addition, brief case studies were prepared that gave further evidence to the situation of children’s rights and to suggest interventions as best practices and learning for the future. Purposive and snowball sampling methods were used. Since multiple researchers (having multiple roles) were involved in this study, a collaborative environment was created and investigator triangulation was used that increased the credibility and validity of the results (Denzin, 1970).

Analysis and results

A brief analysis of legal frameworks and policies in the South Asian countries reflects that there are gaps in the policies and in their implementation. The disaster policies are mostly relief-centred. As more than one government agency is responsible for disaster management, better co-ordination strategies are essential. None of the legal frameworks recognized children as the actors; neither did they provide scope for their participation and consultation in decision-making. Reporting on the research of Plan International with more than 300 children aged 7–17 years in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand that were affected by the tsunami (of 2004) to find out how they were involved in the disaster response, Penrose and Takaki (2006) asserted that:

Many children played a part in the rescue and emergency stages of the aftermath that has hardly been acknowledged. Nevertheless, a year on, young people are frustrated and disempowered by the long delays in rebuilding homes, schools, and family livelihoods; they long for opportunities to play an active part in reconstruction rather than becoming frustrated and dependent during the protracted period of displacement. (pp. 698–9, italics added)

The results of our study in the different countries in the main support the finding of the lack of inclusion of children, as discussed below.

Child rights and floods: Nepal

Nepal’s Terai (plains) region is prone to flood, due to accelerated deforestation and the construction of dams on the rivers on the Indian side. As a result, a large number of people are exposed to seasonal floods. The floods and landslides in 2004 affected the lives of approximately 360,243 persons from 62,357 families in 25 districts of the Nepal.

It was evident from the field interviews, that the government approaches/activities were focused only on disaster relief and often directed by the Chief District Officer (CDO), who heads the District Administration Office. The district administration follows the Natural Disaster (Relief) Act (NDRA), 1982 to implement disaster-related activities. The Act has provisions for the formation of the disaster relief committees at the central, district and local levels. At the district level, a district Natural Disaster Relief Committee functions under the Chairmanship of the CDO and the Local Development Officer (LDO) as its member secretary. The committee is responsible for policy-making and implementation of disaster activities. The Act does not mention children and their rights and hence there was no special focus on children while delivering the government relief activities. The central approach of the government related to flood/disaster management was restricted to using the army and police for emergency operations and sending packages of relief material along with the rescue teams. After the situation was normalized, there were no clear follow-up actions. There were at least six government departments that were involved in disaster-related activities. None of them had child-centric plans and coordination among them was often missing (Nikku et al., 2006).

Due to the lack of co-operation and coordination among the government departments and other line agencies involved in the Tarai flood disaster management in 2004, most of the disaster victims and families did not receive the necessary help in time. In cases of delayed relief assistance and co-ordination, the children and elderly citizens were the most affected.

In contrast to the government approach, some non-governmental and relief organizations, such as the Nepal Red Cross Society, Dhanusha Branch, mentioned that their Junior Red Cross Circle members not only received relief benefits but also participated in data collection, distribution of food and other materials. The organization’s staff consulted children to determine the actual victims (and to avoid political influences) from flood affected villages. Partner NGOs of Save the Children (such as ASMAN Nepal, a local NGO) have implemented child-related projects with a focus on child rights of varying degrees and understanding.

Interviews with NGO leaders confirmed that the majority of them did not implement their relief activities from a child-centred point of view, but from the perspective of the family as a unit. One respondent from an NGO based in Mahattari District stated that ‘helping a family means reaching not only adult men, women but also children and old age members’. Few other NGO representatives interviewed from Mahattari District shared that they had to implement the relief activities as designed by their donors. In this case, the NGOs acted only as delivery agents by signing contracts with their respective donors and tried to fulfil the targets. However, the NGO leaders expressed the view that though they did not want to function as contractors or delivery agents, ultimately they had to implement the program as they wanted to help communities in some ways and it was important for survival of the NGOs.

In addition to the above, we found that the NGO activities were mainly focused on school-going children, leaving a large section of non-school-going children in the villages. In many cases the NGO activities were also time bound and funding based. Few local NGOs implemented activities during the floods that were child focused. An overall understanding and implementation from a child rights perspective was missing. There was no evidence that the NGOs had long-term plans for the incorporation of children’s rights in their activities.

Focus group discussions with Bal Committee (Child Committee) members at Shree Rashtriya Prayhamik Vidhyalaya Dholbaja, Kiratpur, and other students suggest that children were involved in enquiring about other children and families who were severely affected and needed support. According to the students the flood level was above their neck levels. Some of them were protected by the Nepalese Army. Some of them lost their homes and stayed for about a month in the relief camp located in the same school. Some of them mentioned that children received clothes and school bags with books and other materials.

The Nepal case confirms that disaster management policies are still based on the emergency–relief–rescue approach. Children affected by the floods were not consulted; neither did they participate in the program planning of implementing agencies. The survival needs of children received some attention.

Child rights and earthquakes: India and Pakistan

On 26 January 2001, a massive earthquake (known as the Bhuj earthquake) measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale struck the western state of Gujarat, India. The result was catastrophic; four towns, including the district’s largest – Bhuj – and more than 400 villages were severely hit, destroying lives, infrastructure, buildings, the economy and livelihoods. The death toll was nearly 14,000, and 167,000 were injured. More than 1.2 million homes were damaged or destroyed. More than 2000 people died in Bhuj, or about 1.72 percent of the town’s population. In the eastern part of the district, meanwhile, 184 of the school children parading in Anjar were killed, along with 3708 other people. The official death toll for nearby Bhachau reached 7054 people (Simpson and Corbridge, 2006).

On 8 October 2005 another powerful earthquake caused widespread damage in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan (known as the Kashmir earthquake). According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of 20 November the death toll was 73,320 and the number of injured 69,392, while more than 2.5 million people had become homeless (OCHA, 2005). The Kashmir earthquake hit the region in the early morning, when many children were at school; it will be remembered as the disaster that wiped out a generation of children. According to UNICEF, the earthquake destroyed around 10,000 schools, killing an estimated 17,000 pupils. Although many of them were killed, some survived, with severe injuries and are ‘grievously traumatized’. Many children need to cope with the trauma caused by their experience of the earthquake, loss of a limb or of some family members (Walsh, 2005).

In the Indian and Pakistani cases, responses came from various sources. In addition to government efforts, many international organizations and local NGOs were involved in rescue, relief and rehabilitation activities. The presence of the International Save the Children Alliance, Red Cross and other organizations were visible in both the cases.

In the case of the Bhuj earthquake (2001), child-based emergency response programs were implemented. Save the Children and Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan (known as Abhiyan), a network of NGOs, jointly implemented a Semi Permanent Shelter (SPS) programme. The objective of the programme was to help substantial numbers of families to build interim shelters while they continued to rebuild their lives and homes. This was designed to enable families to protect themselves and their children against severe weather before the onset of the monsoon in the western part of India. The SPS programme was conceived as an alternative to temporary and permanent shelter programmes. In addition, Child to Child (CtC) groups have been formed by NGOs. Each child group has the support of a teacher and comprises boys and girls in about the same proportion as their school enrolment rates. With support from Save the Children and the NGOs, these groups have developed an identity, momentum and an agenda of their own and have been able to undertake several difficult tasks such as the cancellation of a transfer order of their school teacher (Fathegarh village). Exposure visits to Ahmedabad and other NGOs working with children have had a significant impact on CtC members as many of them had never travelled outside their Taluka (administrative division and an entity of local government). Children were encouraged to take initiatives to address social issues such as abolition of chewing tobacco (gutka), access to improved solid waste management in their villages.

A child helpline was established and the telephone-based service was supplemented by a set of trained volunteers from partner agencies. They were able to establish contact with vulnerable children (orphans, children of single parents, physically and mentally disabled children) and established linkages with other agencies, which could provide other necessary support.

Like the Bhuj earthquake, the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 also focused on bringing normalcy back into the lives of children affected by the earthquake and mobilizing families and community support help children. The other focus areas have been the reconstruction and restarting of government schools, reconstruction of integrated child development service (ICDS) centres, establishing Adolescent Girls Drop-in Centres, creating Safe Play Areas, formation of cricket clubs, and capacitating the teachers and ICDS workers on child rights and child protection issues. The evidence suggests that children can play an active role in disaster management. It was clear that the local communities, if mobilized, are the best judges of protection needs of children and vulnerable families.

Child rights and tsunami: India and Sri Lanka

The tsunami of 26 December 2004 in the Indian Ocean is by far the most destructive tsunami ever in historical time and indeed one of the worst natural disasters in human history (Nirupama et al., 2006). The massive underwater earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean near Sumatra triggered a series of lethal tsunamis that spread throughout the Indian Ocean, killing large numbers of people and devastating coastal communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives. More than 283,000 people were killed or reported missing and approximately 1.7 million people lost their homes, while another 2 million were probably displaced by the disaster. Children were particularly vulnerable to the surging waters and hence constitute one-third of the total deaths. Women were killed at a higher rate than men as they were often looking after children near the coast (Levy and Gopalakrishnan, 2005).

In India, the state government provided immediate relief very quickly. The government’s support was mainly focused on food and non-food items, clearing of debris, setting up temporary shelters and providing assistance to those who lost their family members. International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) also provided support to meet the gap. The focus of the INGOs’ relief (for example, Save the Children) was to meet the survival, development and protection needs and requirements of children along with their family members. It provided high energy foods for infants, pregnant and lactating mothers; cooking utensils; clothes for women, men and children; sleeping mats; medical and hygiene kits; notebooks and pencils; toys and play areas.

In Sri Lanka, the government and NGOs were involved in relief, rehabilitation and a preparedness program for the Tsunami-affected population. Since some of the regions were severely affected by the government– Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) war, many organizations were already involved in relief and rehabilitation programs. Further, few organizations had already integrated the issues related to child rights and child protection in their long-term development plans. The field material suggested that rescue, relief and rehabilitation were the major responses to the tsunami affected communities. But in the later period, many of the organizations also paid attention to disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction. Organizations (such as SCiSL, World Vision Sri Lanka) also integrated a long-term plan on disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction (DRR) especially focusing on community-based awareness – raising and preparedness, as well as influencing policy.

Sri Lanka banned adoption of children orphaned by the tsunami, which is a firm step to protect children from sexual exploitation and trafficking. There was a separate department of rehabilitation, relief and disaster management that had been recently formed. The staff members in the department were yet to be equipped with knowledge and skills on child rights and child participation.

Conclusions and possible lessons for Africa

This article examined issues about the rights of children in the context of disasters. The Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the South Asian earthquake of October 2005 are reminders of how prone Asia is to natural and man-made disasters that are responsible for a wide array of physiological, psychological, social and economic distress. While children are extremely vulnerable during and after disasters, approaches to disaster intervention have failed to include children’s voices. This research confirms that often children’s voices were unheard and their right to have a say in decisions that affect them was ignored. The participation of trained social workers was not evident in all the cases. This is partly due to the different stages of social work education and low recognition for the social work profession in the South Asia.

The South Asian evidence showed that only few non-governmental organizations that practise child rights-based approaches were able to implement post-disaster recovery activities from the view point of children’s needs and rights. Activities such as the Semi Permanent Shelter (SPS) programme; Child to Child (CtC) groups; exposure visits; child helpline; reconstruction of schools; establishing of adolescent girls drop-in centres; creation of safe play areas; formation of cricket clubs; capacity building of teachers and Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) workers on child rights and child protection issues; community-based awareness on disaster preparedness; and the ban on child adoptions, were some of the child-centred activities implemented by different agencies. These initiatives are useful; they attracted the interest and participation of children and enabled them to cope and bounce back to day-to-day life activities. We do not have enough evidence about any activities planned to address the possible long-term and chronic consequences that disasters might have for children.

Different duty bearers were involved during disaster relief and rehabilitation, but lack of coordination among them led to duplication and neglect of children’s interests. Irrespective of the type of disaster, children are the least consulted in program planning and implementation and only led by the adult perspectives.

While making disaster management policies and programs children’s needs and rights were not mentioned, though these countries are signatories of the UNCRC. Children’s rights were often talked about but seldom implemented. However, in some cases (the Save the Children work in Pakistan Earthquake, for example) there is evidence of ensuring children’s right to participation in decision-making. Child rights concepts have been incorporated to some extent in the program designs, but are largely donor-driven.

Bureaucratic systems and polices are not inclusive of children’s rights in disaster management and hence the rescue-relief-rehabilitation model of interventions resulted in treating children as passive beneficiaries. Literature review results also indicated that the research on children rights and disasters is relatively young and yet to emerge. Academics, policy-makers, social work practitioners and donors should give the subject the attention it deserves, so that much can be learned about the outcomes of these disasters for children and how children can become actors in the management of the disasters rather being treated as passive beneficiaries.

Children have a right to information and education about disaster planning. This right is non-negotiable and hence policy-makers should create structures that ensure children’s participation in rescue, relief and rehabilitation, and preparedness phases of disaster, including the situation assessment, program planning and decision-making. Discussions with children have shown that their participation is possible in all stages and that it will enrich the quality of response and support, resulting in enhanced ownership and sustainability of the program. To achieve tangible results the Children’s Charter for Disaster Risk Reduction should be implemented by all the governments immediately (Plan International et al., 2011). The Charter highlights five key priorities that children throughout the world have identified as critical to efforts to reduce the effects of disasters and climate change on their communities:

Schools must be safe – education must be uninterrupted when a disaster strikes.

Child protection must be a priority, before, during and after a disaster.

Children and young people have the right to participate in decisions that affect them and to access the information they need.

Community infrastructure must be safe, and relief and reconstruction must help reduce future disaster risk.

Disaster risk reduction must reach the most vulnerable.

Possible lessons for protecting child rights in disasters in Africa

Disasters, albeit on a small scale, are an everyday event in Africa. They contribute to depriving millions of Africans access to basic services, often considered rights in more affluent societies. The massive amounts of aid donated during disasters could be limited by strengthening systems of disaster preparedness beforehand (Goosen et al., 2005). Many countries in Africa have framed specific disaster management acts that are being implemented. There are many NGOs and international donors working to reduce the risk and enhance resilience of communities to disasters.

Learning from South Asia, the disaster policies in Africa should be craft from a child rights perspectives and the Children’s Charter for Disaster Risk Reduction should be included. In addition, the following are recommended: 1) All children should be provided with learning opportunities about their communities and possible disasters that may occur. Children also should participate in the decision-making and mitigation efforts making them actors rather than passive beneficiaries. 2) Trained social workers should be encouraged to work with children who are affected by the disasters to ensure physical and psycho social services. 3) Best practices should be taken from indigenous disaster management programs (for example, livelihood diversification, use of drought-resistant seed varieties) from other countries and regions, and modified where necessary. 4) The public should be educated about simple precautions so that they can act in the event of a disaster. 5) Environmental regulations should be enforced.

Based on the results of this study, this article strongly advocates for an increased focus on child-centred disaster preparedness and risk reduction policies: the inclusion of children in policy-making and in decision-making around disaster intervention; and co-ordination between the governments, donors, social workers, media and NGOs to provide the best possible services in the event of disasters.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Bala Raju Nikku is currently visiting lecturer at School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia and the Founding Director of Nepal School of Social Work (NSSW). NSSW is a joint initiative of Department of Social Work, Kadambari Memorial College (Purbanchal University affiliate) and Nepal College of Development Studies (Tribhuwan University affiliate). Dr Nikku currently serves as the member of the Editorial Advisory Board for International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment. Dr Nikku serves on the Board of Asian and Pacific Association of Social Work Education (APASWE) in the capacity of convener of the Small Grants Program and Member at Large of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). Dr Nikku’s current research interests include leadership in social work education, social protection and politics of policy process.

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