Youth Engagement and Mobilization: Disaster Management For and By Children and Youth

Political, social, and economic fluctuations have dominated much of the discourse in 2024. There is ample uncertainty now as the world is forced to face increasing humanitarian crises with shrinking resources and tools around which the humanitarian world was built. Children and young people in South Asia face increasing exposure to humanitarian crises, yet their potential as agents of change in emergency response remains largely untapped. UNICEF ROSA has engaged the SIPA Capstone team to assess and strengthen youth engagement strategies across Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The report highlights the strengths and weaknesses that exist in youth engagement in current Disaster Risk Management (DRM) systems in four South Asian countries: Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. The team has analyzed how young people currently participate in humanitarian responses, and identified strengths, gaps, and future opportunities for meaningful involvement across DRM stakeholder partnerships, digital engagement, in-person training and outreach, and gender. 

In conjunction with UNICEF’s current strategies, as well as guiding and logistical support from UNICEF ROSA, desk and field research with interviews from respective stakeholders informs the report on focus areas and limitations of the research methods. Resilience building must begin with meaningful inclusion from affected communities themselves. Communities in urban and rural areas are the ones on the frontlines preparing for and addressing humanitarian emergencies, and they must continue to do so despite the decline in global humanitarian aid financing. National and regional policies and initiatives should serve to intake local level insight and, in turn, bolster the capacity of municipalities to deliver such innovations in DRM. The project combined rigorous desk research with extensive field interviews across multiple stakeholder groups and affected communities, including UNICEF country offices, prominent youth-led organizations, government agencies, and partner organizations. The team evaluated the effectiveness of existing approaches, analyzed in-person and digital engagement patterns among adolescents and youth during emergencies, looked at the issue of gender mainstreaming DRM and parsed out existing partnerships and coordination efforts therein. 

The final deliverable is a comprehensive report with country-specific profiles detailing contextual applications of youth engagement mechanisms and tools, and the gaps that UNICEF may be able to fill. These are accompanied by a critical analysis of the landscape in which national youth groups operate and the related challenges and opportunities in Disaster Risk Management (DRM). The recommendations focus on practical ways to scale up successful initiatives while exploring new avenues for maximizing youth participation in humanitarian response at both country and regional levels, focusing on these opportunities for UNICEF.