Course Description


P8620   Protection of Children in Disaster and War. A Global Classroom Linked to Practitioners in Northern Uganda - Pilot Project, 1.5 points

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 concerns, including 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 transitions. 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 simultaneously in Gulu, Northern Uganda. The Gulu course will be taught by Marie De La Soudiere, MSW, Ph.D. and include 15-20 Ugandan practitioners currently working on relief and development programs there. Students in each course will pursue 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.

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 classroom programs in Liberia, Palestine, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Students will therefore be asked to critique the global learning component with eye towards strengthening subsequent multi-country efforts in the fall of 2010.