Child Protection: Building A Brighter Future for Uprooted Children

“I am 16 years old; I am from Honduras. I migrated to the US to join my uncle in New York,” said Earnes.

At first glance this sounds like a common story. In fact it hides a whole series of tragic events that have progressively thrown a minor’s life into disarray.

“If you dig deeper, with proper screening and assessment you can learn that this 16-year-old Honduran is escaping violent gang recruitment, was abused and abandoned by his family, was kidnapped in Mexico, and forced to smuggle drugs across the border”, explained Nathalie Lummert at the June 2013 UNHCR Annual Consultations with NGOs... Read more +<

Protecting Children and Encouraging them to Keep Dreaming

“I want to be the President of Congo if I go back to Congo; the President of Uganda if I have to stay in Uganda. And if I go to the United States I want to be the President of the United States. Now I want to have access to education, to good services and I want to feel safe,” a ten-year-old Congolese refugee in Uganda once told Suwedi Yunus Abdallah ICMC’s child protection expert.

During his interview, Mr. Abdallah encourages this boy to keep his dreams alive – no matter what. That is what ICMC strives and stands for.

Continuing a long and successful partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to deploy resettlement specialists in field operations, ICMC recruits and trains legal experts, senior social workers, and child psychology specialists to UNHCR field locations from Chad to Nepal... Read more +<

ICMC child protection experts give refugee children a chance to rebuild their lives

Suwedi Yunus Abdallah is a child protection expert in Uganda

Suwedi, a Tanzanian educated in India and Britain, is ICMC's child protection specialist working today for UNHCR in Kampala, Uganda.

Inspired by his father’s international career as a diplomat, Suwedi’s ambition, ever since he was in his twenties, has been to work for the United Nations. To realize it, Suwedi intends to learn as much as possible by working daily in direct contact with people in need. Himself a father of three children, he is particularly keen on protecting the rights of refugee children and helping them to find a solution to their plight.... Read more +<