Today, the Arab Network for Early Childhood (ANECD), the ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ (̽»¨¾«Ñ¡), Save the Children (SC), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new report titled ‘.’ The report shares learnings from a series of workshops held by partners in 2021 to advance commitment to Early Childhood Development (ECD) in the region, and highlights efforts by Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria to ensure nurturing care for children living in crisis settings 

The early years of life are critical for a child’s development. However, millions of infants and young children in the region continue to face huge challenges to survive and thrive. 

Children affected by crisis, particularly those under the age of 5 years, face multi-dimensional risks to their development, in large part because they are deprived of stable and nurturing environments. Many are exposed to elevated levels of insecurity, violence, and stress due to war and conflict, forced displacement, migration, and resettlement. These experiences are likely to result in infants, young children and their caregivers lacking access to preventive and curative health services, high risk for malnutrition, and other potential risks arising from socioeconomic adversity, extreme poverty and climate change. 

In late 2020, the five organizations developed an advocacy brief entitled ‘,’ to better ensure children in crisis settings receive the care they need. The organizations came together again in 2021 to foster country-level action by supporting National Task Teams in Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria to organize multisectoral and multistakeholder workshops.  

These workshops resulted in partners from government and non-government stakeholders across health, education, and protection sectors agreeing on priority actions to provide children with nurturing care within each context. These actions focused on policy implementation, data collection and its use, multisectoral collaboration, governance mechanisms and increased sustainable investments.   

The initiative laid a foundation for mobilizing national and international partners across different sectors to: 

1. Explore opportunities and identify the potential that various sectors have in providing services and programmes that will meet the needs of young children, families and communities 

2. Encourage dialogue across different sectors 

3. Enable learning and exchange between the different stakeholders 

These workshops have produced concrete outcomes in the countries. For example: 

While the report provides a unique resource for the global community to use as a template to be replicated for the advancement of this work, there remains a critical need for national and subnational leadership to truly optimize ECD in humanitarian settings, for donors to provide long-term and sustainable ECD funding, and for all relevant actors to work together towards a common ECD vision of supporting children, especially the most vulnerable and those living in crisis settings.