Children in the Context of War: Deprivation among Internally Displaced, Returnee, Host and Stayee Children in East Mosul

Abstract

The double burden of material deprivation and the psychological consequences of violent conflict has long-lasting effects on children’s wellbeing. Assessing child needs is therefore crucial to inform policies and move from humanitarian assistance towards reconstruction and development. We provide an analysis of the situation of children in east Mosul, Iraq, using unique data from a rapid humanitarian assessment administered on the ground immediately following the city’s liberation from ISIL in 2017. We develop a counting measure of multidimensional deprivation using nine dimensions. This measure shows the similarities and dissimilarities in the incidence of each deprivation across children with different displacement statuses: Internally Displaced Person (IDP), IDP returnee, host, and stayee. IDP and returnee children are the two most deprived groups in multiple dimensions, and food security remains a pressing issue for IDP children in particular. We explore with econometric analysis the relationship between deprivation and vulnerability on the one hand and humanitarian aid on the other. While immediate assistance is correlated with fewer deprivations, many deprived children were still missed by assistance. Aid efforts during any humanitarian emergency should consider children’s distinct deprivations in a deliberate and targeted manner rather than treating them simply as members of vulnerable households.

Keywords:

• Children
• Multidimensional Deprivation
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Conflict
• Mosul
• Iraq

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The views expressed in this article are those solely of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of UNICEF, the World Bank or their Board of Directors.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Materials are available for this article which can be accessed via the online version of this journal available at https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2021.2008363

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. UNICEF Data, updated April 2021 (Accessed May 3^rd, 2021): https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-migration-and-displacement/displacement/

2. Our categorisation of each displacement population group follows UNHCR’s official definitions, also reflected in their own categories in the Mosul database used in this analysis, a rapid assessment conducted by UNICEF together with UN-OHCHR across all households in three liberated neighbourhoods and their surroundings: Al Khadra, Al Zahra, and Al Tahrir (United Nations International Children’s Fund, UNICEF, 2018).

3. For example, girls affected by conflict in Tajikistan were 13 percentage points less likely to be enrolled in school (Shemyakina, 2011).

4. This report is not publicly available.

5. A discussion of alternative approaches can be found in the Appendix.

6. Unfortunately, we lack information on the nutritional status of children and on access to information used in the conventional application of MODA.

7. We do not use reported incomes or expenditures, as their precision and reliability became an issue. This is due to the obstacles to accurate recall and memory during a period of intense conflict, and the limited number of expenses considered in the questionnaire. Other issues like inflation, the poor functioning of markets, and the highly outdated official poverty line (defined in 2012) also severely compromise the quality of the data. This high level of dependency on basic needs implies that any shock, large or relatively small, can affect the economic viability of the household.

8. In a situation of conflict or post-conflict, standard rules suggested in the literature such as the Engel Curve or those put forward by Michael Lipton (1983)are of limited relevance. We used spending on food, shelter (rent and utilities), and healthcare exceeding 75 per cent of total reported expenses as a benchmark to determine economic vulnerability (access to food and shelter are two of the main problems reported by participants in the rapid response survey).

9. Part of the aim of the data collection was to identify beneficiaries for subsequent assistance. To this aim, a proxy means testing score was elaborated. This information could be exploited for future analysis through RDD if data post-April 2017 became available.