Publication date: April 2020
Source: Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 102
Author(s): Ilan Cerna-Turoff, Jeremy C. Kane, Karen Devries, James Mercy, Greta Massetti, Mike Baiocchi
Abstract
Background
Empirical evidence is limited and contradictory on violence against children after internal displacement from natural disasters. Understanding how internal displacement affects violence is key in structuring effective prevention and response.
Objective
We examined the effect of internal displacement from the 2010 Haitian earthquake on long-term physical, emotional, and sexual violence against children and outlined a methodological framework to improve future evidence quality.
Participants and setting
We analyzed violence against adolescent girls and boys within the nationally representative, Haiti Violence Against Children Survey.
Methods
We pre-processed data by matching on pre-earthquake characteristics for displaced and non-displaced children and applied 95 % confidence intervals from McNemar’s exact test, with sensitivity analyses, to evaluate differences in violence outcomes between matched pairs after the earthquake.
Results
Internal displacement was not associated with past 12-month physical, emotional, and sexual violence two years after the earthquake for girls and boys. Most violence outcomes were robust to potential unmeasured confounding. Odds ratios for any form of violence against girls were 0.84 (95 % CI: 0.52–1.33, p = 0.500) and against boys were 1.03 (95 % CI: 0.61–1.73, p = 1.000).
Conclusions
Internal displacement was not a driver of long-term violence against children in Haiti. Current global protocols in disaster settings may initiate services after the optimal window of time to protect children from violence, and the post-displacement setting may be central in determining violence outcomes. The combination of specific data structures and matching methodologies is promising to increase evidence quality after rapid-onset natural disasters, especially in low-resource settings.