Causal pathways from violent conflict to violence against children: Evidence from multi-country secondary data

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Violence against children (VAC) is a global challenge. The prevalence of VAC is particularly acute in low-income settings, and more so in regions affected by different forms of violent conflict (VC). The picture emerging from existing evidence suggests different types of violent conflict heighten children's exposure to violence, which can be emotional, physical or mental violence. However, the specific mechanisms by which different types of violent conflict lead to different forms of violence against children are still not fully understood - and the awareness about this possible causal link from violent conflict to VAC is also not very well developed.Our research will examine, for the first time, the prevalence and the mechanisms from VC to VAC, using high quality secondary data available for ten countries, seven in sub-Saharan Africa and three countries in Latin America. We will investigate empirically different causal pathways from violent conflict to VAC looking at idiosyncrasies of different conflicts.Our aim is threefold. First, to perform an in-depth study of the prevalence of different forms of VAC across various VC settings and thereby to postulate a conceptual model identifying risk factors and social norms that create the context for VAC to occur when institutions break down. Second, to test if and how VC impacts on VAC in both the short-term and the long-term (across generations), both across various forms of VC and various types of VAC. Our strategy to identify short-term causality from VC to VACs builds on the observation that violent conflict episodes are exogenous and preceding the episodes of violence against children reported in the survey data. For the estimation of long-term effects, we exploit data on exposure to violence of children's parents to test how their childhood experience of VC may determine how they treat their own children. Third, we aim to identify which policy options may break the causal link between VC and VAC by modelling and simulating the additional 'surplus' effect of VC on VAC based on the short- and long-term estimates of VC on VAC. The simulation of different scenarios under which VC causes VAC will inform prevention and intervention policies to reduce the trigger mechanisms that exacerbate VAC in violent settings.Our research represents an example of how existing knowledge gaps on topics and contexts difficult to access can be addressed innovatively by merging existing datasets. We use the Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS), a series of population-based surveys of girls and boys aged 13-24 years which are nationally representative and designed to capture the magnitude and prevalence of violence against children in each country. We will also use conflict event data like the Armed Conflict Location Events Dataset (ACLED) which has (nearly) universal coverage of conflict event data. We will merge the two types of datasets through geo-spatially reference codes disaggregated temporally and geographically in both datasets. This will create a new international, multi-year dataset at the individual level.We will create an Impact Panel engaging with multiple stakeholders working on VAC. The Impact Panel will include senior representatives from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Together for Girls (TfG), the partnership that coordinates and publishes the Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) providing technical support to the VACS, the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), the world's largest network on research on violence against women and violence against children, the Child and Adolescent Rights and Empowerment team of the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, one of the most influential policy research hubs on violence against children and women, and the NGO Amnesty International, who advocate for children's rights.