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April 5, 2018

Children aren’t liabilities in disasters – they can help, if we let them

Our world is becoming increasingly vulnerable to fire, flood and other natural hazards. While our instinct as adults may be to shield children from these possibilities, this does them a real disservice.

Lessons from show that when children are given accurate, clear information in accessible and age-appropriate language, they are highly motivated to help reduce disaster risks, both at home and in their communities.

Indeed, there is growing evidence that children can play an active and positive role in making their communities more resilient to , and , and in improving .

Planning for disaster

Children understand and experience the world , but they can be highly resourceful.

shows that an adult鈥檚 social characteristics, such as age, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and disability, are central to understanding their coping capacity during disasters.

Yet during disaster planning, children 鈥� including teenagers 鈥� are rarely given descriptors other than 鈥渃hild鈥� or 鈥測outh鈥�. They are treated as blank pages, with no defining features other than their age.

This goes against the recommended by the United Nations鈥� Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. It recognises that children are disproportionately affected by disasters, and they should be given the opportunity to to disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Omitting children鈥檚 voices reveals a blanket assumption that the young are all equally vulnerable. It silences children鈥檚 own sense of identity and undermines their capacity for resilience.

It also limits opportunities for children to contribute to the development of disaster response policy and practice. The enduring negative in many countries results in children with disabilities being even .

Talking to children

Our collective experience as disaster researchers and practitioners has taught us that children鈥檚 individual identities matter in disasters.

Following the devastation of and the , local children received training in storytelling, photography, radio and video-making to record issues affecting their lives.

Rather than having adults interpret and communicate their experiences of the disaster, the children were empowered to tell their own stories. In the process, they were able to actively participate in community recovery processes.

In examples such as the 2015 Nepal earthquake, children were able to identify good practice for for themselves.

Research in bushfire-prone areas of Australia highlights the issues and challenges for families with children in preparing a bushfire survival plan. The significant benefits of providing children with genuine opportunities to participate, and practical advice on how to include children in the planning process, are .

While household emergency plans are vital, it is quite possible that disaster will strike while children are at school. The inter-agency is an example of child-centred policies that focus on safe learning facilities, school disaster management, DRR and resilience education. The framework advocates elevating the role of children in community risk reduction, and outlines strategies for student engagement and participation.

Such a child-centred approach guides the delivery of the , a program designed for school children in Australia to promote disaster resilience education and coping capacity for a range of hazards.

Research into the disaster experiences of specifically suggests a range of ways to simultaneously acknowledge diverse social characteristics and develop inclusive DRR resilience-building initiatives. These vital steps are applicable to all child-centred activities, not just children with disabilities, and include:

• The routine inclusion of children in DRR initiatives that run in their communities, including those run through schools using the School Safety Framework;

• The inclusion of children in the development of participatory tools, methods and strategies that not only enable children to access and use DRR resources, but also facilitate ownership and excitement over the power they have in increasing their own resilience and managing their own recovery;

• The involvement of children in DRR research and planning using participatory tools and approaches that capture the perspectives and unique capabilities of children;

• Engaging parents, teachers, and local leaders to support children鈥檚 participation, including communicating the importance of children鈥檚 views and roles, and to include children in the decision making process, based on their interests and capacities; and

• Exploring ways to increase opportunities for children to voice their own needs and opinions at multi-stakeholder forums.

Rather than labelling children as uniformly vulnerable, we should give them the space to identify their own capacities and agency.

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Thank you to the at the 榴莲视频app of 榴莲视频app, which enabled the authors to spend a day together focusing on the theme of Children in Disasters as part of the 2017 .

, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research, ; , PhD Candidate, ; , Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, ; , Sydney Research Fellow in Sustainability Science, ; , Honorary Fellow, Beyond Bushfires Research Team, ; , Snr Research Fellow, Department of Geography and Planning, , and , Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow,

This article was originally published on . Read the .

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