Communicating with Disaster-Affected Children: A Case Study from the 2015 Nepal Earthquake Response

In disasters and conflicts around half of those affected are children. Despite this, in humanitarian settings children are rarely asked to share their views, provided with adequate information or consulted on what they need and prioritise in emergency preparedness, response and recovery.

Our experience shows that engaging children in humanitarian responses helps us to respond better and in more relevant ways. Girls and boys who are well informed and have opportunities to communicate about decisions affecting their lives are able to make better contributions to safer communities in which their rights are respected.

This report, released by Plan International and supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, looks at communication with disaster-affected children in the preparedness and response after the earthquake that hit Nepal on 25 April 2015.

Our findings show that humanitarian actors should invest in better and more effective ways to provide information to children, communicate with girls and boys of different ages and invest in children’s abilities to contribute to communication and information provision. This report is designed to inspire the reflection and action of all humanitarian actors to increase and improve the meaningful communication with children and young people in humanitarian work. The report also provides concrete recommendations on how this can be done