Impact of pro bono: safeguarding children internationally

Keeping Children Safe (KCS) was formed in 2001 by a group of humanitarian relief and development charities.

It was set up in response to the realisation that children were being subjected to exploitation and abuse by aid and development workers in emergency camps in West Africa and within their own organisations.

Its mission is to end child abuse in all organisations and its vision is for all children to grow up safe from abuse, exploitation and neglect.

What did the work involve?

The purpose of the research was to find gaps and geographical trends to use as a basis for targeted advocacy and interventions to protect children from perpetrators of abuse.

The focus was on identifying national legislation requiring schools and childcare settings to have specific safeguarding policies preventing exploitation and abuse of children by their own staff, activities, operations or partners.

After an initial meeting between BCLP and KCS in August 2023, KCS provided a briefing paper and template spreadsheet.

BCLP recruited a team of 20 BCLP lawyers and trainees from its London, Manchester and Dubai offices.

The team researched all 201 countries in the world in a seven-week timeframe, feeding their research findings into a report which included links to relevant legislation.

KCS used this research to produce a report, setting out priority recommendations on how to better safeguard children in schools and childcare settings.

What was the impact?

The report was launched in November 2023 at KCS’ online international conference on Child Safeguarding in Education and Childcare.

The conference was attended by 1,532 people, including representatives across the world.

KCS is continuing to use the mapping to inform targeted advocacy and technical support to governments globally to help make schools safer and protect vulnerable children.

KCS has used the research to inform:

• targeted advocacy on safeguarding children in schools across Latin America
• a collaboration with the Inter-American Children’s Institute on child safeguarding
• the development of a guidance note for states on implementing child safeguarding

Sarah Blakemore, chief executive of Keeping Children Safe said: "Thank you so much for this incredibly useful piece of work. We are extremely grateful to you and all the volunteers who worked on this." 

Sam Hewitt, senior associate at BCLP said: “It was a pleasure to be involved in this large-scale research and to understand how KCS would use the output to inform a number of practical work streams, including targeted advocacy.

"This matter demonstrated the potential global scope and breadth for pro bono work and it is very rewarding to know it is actively being deployed to protect children.”