Protect my future: The links between child protection and equity

This paper, commissioned by Family for Every Child and written by Andy West and Emily Delap is part of an inter-agency series on the links between child protection and major development goals. This series is contributing to a global inter-agency campaign to raise the profile of child protection and care in development and humanitarian goals, including the framework that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) when they come to an end in 2015.  

The lack of care and protection facing children is a global crisis with billions of children experiencing abuse, neglect or exploitation, and many millions growing up outside of families, on the streets or in harmful institutional care. This lack of adequate care and protection is commonly the result of inequalities.

This paper will look at the relationship between this lack of care and protection and inequality. It will explore how inadequate care and protection produces and contributes to inequalities and how inequality is itself a cause of inadequate care and protection. The paper will also examine the long-lasting impact of inadequate care and protection which greatly affects children’s life chances into adulthood, suggesting that inadequate care and protection is in itself a form of inequity. Thus, a new focus on the care and protection of children is required if global development goals are to stand a chance of being met.

Other papers in the series address subjects including governance, growth, health, emergencies and population dynamics.