In the current global context of child displacement, when governments seek strategies to advocate for child-return solutions rather than alternatives of resettlement or local integration, this report aims at supporting stakeholders with the much-needed knowledge and reliable data in order to improve the state of vulnerable returnee children and their safe and stable reintegration in the places of origin.
According to this study, the latest statistics show that in 2017 more than 68 million people were forcibly displaced, with more than half being children. At the same time, about 670,000 refugees, and 4.2 million internally displaced people (IDPs), returned to their places of origin.
The Migration and Displacement Initiative (MDI) by Save the Children International (SCI) created a series of child-sensitive durable solutions indicators that are used as measuring tools for the reintegration process of returnee children. In addition to the data produced by the implementation of this set of indicators, the report analyses the return circumstances and the challenges that children face in four areas encompassed in the child-sensitive durable solutions framework. This includes physical, material and legal safety, and psychosocial well-being. Moreover, the study presents four relevant country cases (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria) and a comparative analysis of the returning conditions available in each country.
With regard to the provision of a sustainable return and the development of national and international policies in the child displacement field, the report puts forward three sets of recommendations that cover the "embedding of child-sensitive principles in all returnee contexts," the establishment of minimum standards, and guarantee the rights of children from the return preparation to integration, and "the knowledge increase, and the close of data gaps in terms of mobilization and accountability."