Measuring Separation in Emergencies: Concise Summary Report Democratic Republic of Congo Population-Based Estimation Method

The project is coordinated by Save the Children in partnership with Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University, and is steered by a multi-agency Advisory Panel including members of the Inter Agency Working Group on Unaccompanied and Separated Children (IAWG UASC) and the Assessment and Measurement Task Force (A&MTF) of the Global Child Protection Working Group (CPWG). The MSiE project focuses on developing practical tools to measure separation in emergencies, with three methods currently being explored: the projection method, the population-based estimation method, and the community-based surveillance method. The population-based estimation method aims to provide a population-based estimation of the prevalence, number, and basic characteristics of UASC in a defined area, affected by the same emergency, at any given point in time. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the population-based estimation method was field-tested in North Kivu from July to August 2014. The pilot used a population-based cluster survey tool to collect data from 20 sites or clusters, with systematic random sampling used to select 25 households to be surveyed within each cluster. A total of 522 primary households were surveyed, including 414 households in villages and 108 households in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Each household also reported on the two neighboring households most proximate to their own. The data collected showed that 8.47% (n=186) of the 2,197 children living in the respondents' homes at the time of data collection were separated children who had newly arrived in the household since the M23 attack. In contrast, 5.31% (n=108) of the 2,034 children living in the respondents' homes prior to the M23 attack had since departed from the household, resulting in separation from their parents or usual caregivers. The characteristics of arriving children (arrivals) and departing children (departures) diverge in a few striking ways, with arrivals being more likely to be very young (0-4 years) and unintentional separations related to the death of parents or family members. The situation in camps may deserve special attention, but the data collected from only 108 households in four camps is limited. Additionally, there is a risk of some imprecision in capturing separation related to the specific emergency event due to the long recall period between the emergency event and the point of data collection.