Documenting Cross-Border Case Management for Migrant Children in Southern Africa

1. Background: Cross Border Coordination Mechanisms in East and Southern Africa

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the global mobility of people. In 2019 a total of 272 million persons resided outside their country of origin.^[1] Even as international instruments, such as the Global Compact for Migration, strengthen commitments to ensuring right-based approaches to migration management, some groups of migrants, such as children on the move, remain of particular concern due to their specific vulnerabilities.

It is, by now, widely acknowledged that the comprehensive protection of unaccompanied and separated migrant children (USMC) requires the coordination and cooperation of a large range of stakeholders, often across national borders. Even though the complexity of protecting children on the move is understood, approaches to cross-border coordination in particular are not well documented.

In Southern Africa, over the last 12 years, Save the Children has established bilateral cross-border coordination mechanisms between five governments, growing over the years into a significant improvement in the protection of USMC by harmonising case management, standard operating procedures, and facilitating communication. In the last two years, the coordination meetings, their functioning and their role in coordinating efforts to protect migrant children in Southern Africa has been documented in the form of a Quick Reference Guide for the Protection of Migrant Children in East and Southern Africa.

Save the Children’s East and Southern Africa Regional Office’s Regional Programming Unit (RPU) continues to work towards expanding the cross-border coordination. The challenge of cross-border case management and information sharing has emerged as critical in this effort, especially as a lesson learnt from the various border closures and lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. During this period, especially informal coordination processes to work on cases of USMC have highlighted the need to better understand the current status of case management systems, their inclusion of migrant children, any formal or informal information sharing and coordination, and any cross-border procedures.

2. Objective and Scope of Work

The RPU is looking to conduct an assessment of the impact of current cross-border coordination practices for the protection of migrant children in Southern Africa, including coordination on case management. Save the Children is currently acting as the secretariat for bilateral coordination meetings and the assessment will focus on the implementing Southern African countries (Eswatini, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe).

This assessment is meant to show how the decade of coordination has had tangible impact of children on the move in the region, with an emphasis on whether documented changes, such as harmonized Standard Operating Procedures, have resulted in actual improvements for children themselves, their continuity of care, level of service provision and participation in case management.

The evidence generated as part of this assessment will be used by the successful consultant to add guidance on case management in cross-border coordination to the already published Cross-Border Protection of Children on the Move in East and Southern Africa: A quick reference guide for bilateral coordination (available online here). It will also feed into an update of the On the Move Alone (OMA): A practical tool for case management of unaccompanied migrant children in southern Africa (available online here) to be conducted as part of the exercise.

This, in summary, means that the consultancy includes three distinct outputs:

1. Assessment of the impact of cross-border coordination on child migrant protection in Southern Africa in the form of a self-contained report;

2. Addition of guidance on case management to the Cross-Border Protection of Children on the Move in East and Southern Africa: A quick reference guide for bilateral coordination in the form a small section informed by impact report;

3. Revision of the On the Move Alone (OMA): A practical tool for case management of unaccompanied migrant children in southern Africa to align it with findings of coordination so far and prepare it for republication alongside the Quick Reference Guide.

3. Proposed Methodology

The Assessment (Output 1) will be the main activity requiring evidence generation. The methodology should be able to capture both the scale and type of impact that the cross-border coordination efforts have had across a wide range of processes. One specific need is to show whether or not the experiences of children on the move have been impacted positively and if so, how. Ideally, this would be achieved through direct engagement with children, through support from Save the Children Offices at country level.

Specific methods of data collection and analysis should be outlined as part of the submitted proposal.

4. Outputs/Deliverables

1. Inception Report for planned work;

2. Assessment Report of the impact of cross-border coordination on child migrant protection in Southern Africa

3. Case Management Section to the Cross-Border Protection of Children on the Move in East and Southern Africa: A quick reference guide for bilateral coordination in the form a small section informed by impact report;

4. Revision of the On the Move Alone (OMA): A practical tool for case management of unaccompanied migrant children in southern Africa

[1] UN DESA Migrant Stock Data - 2019

How to apply:

Interested candidates are requested to submit:

1. Short proposal (incl. proposed methods and support needs)

2. Time line for planned work (no more than 20 days)

3. Budget

4. Examples of previous work

5. Send application to sara.granath@rb.se, name the e-mail Consultancy.