Forced Migration Study Environment

This site has been constructed for students and professionals in the fields of humanitarian relief, aid and protection. In the header above you will see seven "Sessions" corresponding to the course "Child Protection in Disaster and War" in the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Various content is publicly accessible. Our goal is to keep the site and its materials as open as possible. Due to copyright issues and student privacy, there are sections of this site (and certain pieces of content) that require a user account to access.

Course objectives  

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to analyze child protection concerns in complex emergencies, and design appropriate interventions to address a sub-set of these concerns, including for separated children, child soldiers and victims of violence.   

Course description

This seven-week course explores operational ways of addressing child protection concerns in natural disaster and war.  It examines child protection from both a reduction of physical risk and a promotion of developmental well-being perspectives.  Students will develop a practical understanding of effective interventions for preventing and responding to specific child protection concrns, incuding child-family separations; child recruitment and use as armed combatants; and sexual violence, abuse and psychosocial survival.  Students will explore systemic  approaches to promoting a “protective environment” for children in emergencies and post conflict-reintegration transistions.  Students will review strategies for incorporating critical elements of child protection into broader humanitarian response operations; coordination among humanitarian agencies; evidence-based programming; community participation in child protection; and advocacy and policy change. 

This Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University course will be linked to a similar course being offered simulatenously in Gulu, Northern Uganda.  The Gulu course will be taught by Marie de la Soudière, MSW, Ph.D. and include 15-20 Ugandan practitioners currently working on relief and development programs there.  Students in each course will persue the same learning agenda, interact with one another on a weekly basis, and share the results of their respective group projects with an eye towards promoting South-to-North—and North-to South learning. 

Students from Gulu who are already practioners will be expected to provide examples from their own practice to illustrate or critique some of the theoretical framework proposed.  

This is the first in a series of global classroom courses to be offered through the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health.  In this sense, this fall 2009 course will serve as a pilot initiative to help shape subsequent global calssroom programs in Liberia, Palestine, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.  Students will therefore be asked to critique the gloal learning component  to help strengthen  subsequent multi-country efforts in the fall of 2010

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Global classrooms in New York and Gulu will persue similar formats and course materials. Course concepts and field lessons will be taught through interactive case studies of complex emergencies, including on Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, Mozambique, Cambodia and the Asian tsunami.  Case study materials—readings, videos, interviews with key practitioners and members of affected population—engage students in “real time” analysis and decision-making.  Students access all course materials—case studies, required and supplemental readings, documentary videos, films and other materials—electronically.  Students are exected to come to their respective classes fully prepared to discuss case study analyses each and every week.   

Assignments and Criteria for Evaluation 

Students' conceptual understandings and knowledge will be assessed through their participation in class, completion of case study exercises, participation in global exchanges, and a final group exercise as follows:

1. Preparation, Participation and Exercises (40%)

40% of a student’s grade is based on thorough case study preparation, active participation in classroom discussions, blog questions and careful completion of case study assignments.  Class attendance and contributions to discussion and group exercises are mandatory.  

2.  Global Exchanges (20%)

Students in Gulu and New York will be matched with one another and exchange ideas and thoughts on a weekly basis.  This may take place through email exchanges, Skype exchanges and answering blog questions together. 

Technology permitting, the two global classrooms will be visually linked together on a live basis three times this semester.   These exchanges will promote a realistic analysis of the relationship between global standards and guidelines, on the one hand, and local, cultural and social-economic adaptations, on the other.  

3. Group Projects (40%)
The final group project will ask students in their respective locations to implement a child protection and well-being assessment to determine local definitions of a given concept or problem.  A specific question—such as “what does it mean to be a girl in this setting”—will be selected, and a structured ethnographic methodology employed to answer the question based on a statistically relevant and random sample of locally obtained responses.  The Gulu group will focus on formerly displaced persons who recently returned to their home village.  The New York group will focus on recent refugees and immigrants from West Africa.  The global classroom exchange will enable both groups to share their results with one another and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this methodology.