In Azerbaijan, internally displaced persons, refugee children, and asylum seekers are forced to bear the consequences of traumatic exposure to an armed conflict.
This report is a first analytical draft of the emerging protection problems for children in Azerbaijan, as seen from the perspectives of both service providers and service beneficiaries. The objectives of this report are to draft a map of the institutional system related to child welfare, and to identify the priority protection needs of children in Azerbaijan.
The first part of the report lists the levels of governance and the structures/services relevant to child protection, and tries to describe the system coverage and the decision-making and reporting mechanisms. The description is condensed in visual maps reported in Annex II (State Powers and Child Protection Institutional System), which give an immediate representation of the complexity of the system.
The second part of the report sketches the situation of specific groups of children in need of protection, through the screening of available secondary sources. This analysis includes sections dedicated to the situation of children deprived of parental care, children with disabilities and challenging behaviours, and street children. There are also sections examining child abuse, child trafficking, labour exploitation, and children in conflict with the law. In all sections attention is focused on the referral procedures (the steps through which children enter into contact with the welfare services) and on the quality of the services offered.
This analysis intends to identify gaps in the protective environment, and the emergencies and priorities to be addressed in a child rights perspective. In several cases, the referral system itself constitutes ‘the emergency,’ due to mere inefficiency or lack of a protection dimension. Recommendations (accounting for available resources and feasibility variables) are made for the short and medium-term planning.
©UNICEF
