An estimated 34 million children around the world have been forcibly displaced from their home 3 – and this number is growing year on year. Digital technologies have the potential to transform programming with migrant and displaced children by making it easier to reach and assist mobile populations, increasing efficiencies and driving improvements in programme quality, enabling Save the Children and other agencies to deliver greater impact for some of the world’s most vulnerable children.
Yet the rapid pace of digital change poses challenges for a sector with limited capacity and resources, as well as risks and threats to the safety and wellbeing of displaced children. Children who are vulnerable offline are also likely to be vulnerable online, particularly girls, LGBTQI youth, and migrant and displaced children. The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the challenges of a wholly digital approach. Despite increased digital connectivity, some displaced populations still lack access to devices and many do not trust agencies to collect and use their data, which can lead to the exclusion – or self-exclusion – of children who would benefit most from digital programmes.
If we want to harness the positive benefits of digital technologies while protecting the displaced children that we serve from potential harm, Save the Children and other agencies urgently need to build greater digital capacity, knowledge and skills, so that we can fully assess the child safeguarding risks of emerging technologies and implement policies and practices to mitigate them. These must be agile and flexible enough to keep up with the pace of change in areas that do not yet have clear legal frameworks.
In this study, we build on our 2019 report ‘Displaced Children and Emerging Technologies’ and set out how the sector is responding to child safeguarding risks posed by digital technology, and our recommendations for immediate and practical next steps to ensure that every migrant or displaced child can benefit from digital innovation and stay safe.
Our research involved interviews with Save the Children employees across the US, the UK, Kenya, Denmark, Switzerland, Lebanon, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Afghanistan and the Balkans as well as external technology and innovation experts within the aid sector. These interviews were supplemented by a comprehensive literature review of academic, organisation and sector reports and documents. Learning from this research will support Save the Children’s internal capacity building and provide useful recommendations for the sector as a whole, helping us to ensure that digital technology is used responsibly and where appropriate in programming aimed at migrating and displaced children and young people.