Panel discussion followed (20min) by an interactive session with children and young people (35min) and closing remarks (5min) The acute food insecurity situation in East Africa continues to deteriorate significantly, especially in Somalia, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, where hundreds of thousands of people are facing ‘catastrophic’ levels of food insecurity (IPC 5). Children are the most affected by this devastating crisis. Around 7.1 million children are acutely malnourished in drought-affected areas in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, including 2 million children who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Hunger crisis is a child protection crisis particularly for girls and has to be dealt with as such. Food insecurity erodes families’ health, livelihoods and resilience.

This humanitarian talk will allow inclusive, meaningful, safe and active participation of children and young people as key players, actively contributing to the shaping of humanitarian and resilience-based responses and solutions. Our organisations will shed an important light on the impact of East Africa food crises on children and different protection issues. We will explore some of the solutions using concrete, country-based examples from integrated programming and mainstreaming child protection mechanisms, grounded in children’s needs and aspirations. Finally, we will provide recommendations for donors and humanitarian decision makers on protection issues including, long-term health concerns, gender-based violence, child marriage, child labour, domestic violence, school drop-out, child-family separation and forced displacement.

Organisers: World Vision, SOS Children Villages International, Childfund Alliance, Save the Children, Plan International, Terre des Hommes