Earlier this month, world leaders gathered in Doha for the Second World Summit for Social Development—thirty years after the first summit in Copenhagen. Then, the global community was emerging from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide and the early days of the internet; now, it faces fractured geopolitics, economic retrenchment, and widening social divides. As Elissa Miolene reported in Devex, the summit sought to “re-anchor promises made three decades ago” around three enduring pillars: poverty eradication, full employment, and social inclusion.

The resulting Doha Political Declaration was adopted in what UN Secretary-General António Guterres called “a booster shot for development.” Its tone is both ambitious and sobering, reaffirming universal human rights and sustainable development as shared goals while acknowledging persistent poverty, inequality, and growing mistrust in multilateralism.

Yet beneath this renewed commitment lies a critical omission. The Declaration captures many outcomes that matter for children—ending violence, expanding social protection, and investing in essential services such as health and education and achieving gender equality and social inclusion—but it does not recognise child protection itself as a pillar of social development. What is not named cannot be systematically financed, measured, or governed. Without explicit recognition, child protection remains peripheral to the architecture that determines where political will and resources are directed.

Even where child protection issues are referenced, they are framed as discrete siloed programmes rather than as interlinked dimensions of a single global challenge — the persistent failure to protect children through a coherent, system-wide response. The Declaration reinforces a historic pattern in international development: progress in protecting children is acknowledged rhetorically but unsupported institutionally. This blog explores what that invisibility means for practitioners, governments, and children—and why elevating child protection as a core development function is essential to realising the promise of the Doha Political Declaration.

The world the summit confronts a stark reality

The Declaration opens with a stark assessment of the global social landscape. Despite decades of investment, over one billion people still live in poverty and almost four billion lack social protection, including two billion children. Inequality is widening, gender-based discrimination persists, and youth unemployment remains high. Digital divides, demographic shifts, and climate disruption deepen vulnerability—especially for children, women, and persons with disabilities.

Against this backdrop, the Declaration reaffirms the principles first set out in Copenhagen but reframes them for a world in crisis. Social development is presented as both a human rights imperative and a resilience agenda—one that enables societies to withstand shocks, sustain equity, and guarantee inclusion. It calls on Member States to invest in health, education, and social protection, promote gender equality, and enable just transitions to low-carbon economies. Beyond economics, it seeks to “bring social issues to the highest level,” positioning social justice as the organising principle of international cooperation.

For those working on child protection, this context is pivotal. The same forces the Declaration describes—inequality, poverty, displacement, and climate stress—also drive protection risks for millions of children. Yet without naming child protection as part of the development agenda, the world risks addressing these challenges without confronting their human consequences for the most vulnerable children.

What the declaration says about children

Although the term child protection never appears, the Doha Political Declaration includes multiple commitments directly linked to the protection and care of children. It pledges to end violence, exploitation, abuse, and child labour—including trafficking; to expand social protection and universal child benefits; and to invest in early childhood development, education, and inclusive health services. It reaffirms gender equality, calling for the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls, and urges attention to migrant children, children with disabilities, and those affected by poverty, displacement, and conflict.

The Declaration also places new emphasis on the care and support economy, recognising the value of caregiving as both a social and economic function. It calls for investment in affordable childcare, family benefits, and social services that promote work–life balance and support families across the life course. Yet, while this framing rightly highlights the economic contribution of care work, it overlooks the relational and protective dimensions of care that determine children’s safety, stability, and well-being. The result is an understanding of care as an economic input rather than as part of a continuum that includes nurturing, family strengthening, and the prevention of unnecessary family separation.

Taken together, these commitments reflect many of the outcomes that child protection actors work to achieve. Yet the Declaration does not recognise child protection itself as a distinct area of investment or a pillar of social development. The result is a framework that acknowledges symptoms—violence, child labour, exclusion—without naming the field responsible for addressing them. This invisibility prevents child protection from being treated as a development priority on par with health, education, and social protection.

Even when child protection issues are mentioned, they are presented as stand-alone programmes or silos rather than as elements of a child protection system. The Declaration assumes progress can be achieved through programme expansion rather than system building. It omits the foundations of effective protection—a trained workforce, coherent governance, interoperable data, and cross-sector coordination—needed for sustainable delivery at scale.

This absence of recognition matters deeply. As practitioners often note, the challenge is not a lack of concern for children but the absence of a recognised framework through which concern can be organised, funded, and governed. In this sense, the Doha Declaration mirrors a persistent pattern in global policy discourse: it references protection outcomes but leaves child protection itself conceptually invisible.

The invisibility of child protection in global language

The Declaration’s silence on child protection is more than semantic—it is structural. Its absence from the global development lexicon weakens the political legitimacy of child protection as a recognised field of public policy and investment. What is not named is rarely prioritised. Without explicit reference in global frameworks, child protection remains invisible within international debates on system strengthening—standing outside the core development pillars of health, education, and social protection. This narrows the space for advocacy, constrains financing, and leaves governments without a clear mandate to act.

At the global level, the omission undermines coherence across the UN system. Agencies align priorities with intergovernmental language; when child protection is missing from defining declarations, it is treated as peripheral to mainstream planning. The result is fewer opportunities for joint programming, weaker financing, and limited inclusion in multilateral policy dialogues.

At the national level, invisibility translates into fragmentation. Governments interpreting “social development” through traditional welfare or poverty lenses struggle to coordinate across justice, health, education, labour, and social welfare. Without shared frameworks, data systems, or integrated pathways, responses remain reactive. The issue is not dispersed roles but missing connective architecture—data interoperability, cross-referral, case management, and shared accountability.

This challenge extends into the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks (UNSDCFs) that guide UN–government collaboration. Because these frameworks reflect global priorities, child protection often appears only as a sub-theme of gender, education, or social policy. Once omitted, there are few entry points for financing or system reform. Practitioners frequently ask: how can national actors justify investment in child protection when it does not exist in the recognised language of development?

At the subnational level, the consequences are immediate. Local authorities deliver parallel services—welfare, justice, education, and health—without mechanisms to coordinate or share information. Front-line workers face disconnected data systems, incompatible referral processes, and limited capacity to manage complex cases. Families experience this as a patchwork of unconnected services. For children, the absence of integrated governance translates into gaps in protection, duplication, and missed opportunities for prevention.

In short, invisibility at the global level produces fragmentation below. The lack of recognition of child protection as a development priority denies the coherence, legitimacy, and investment needed to build systems capable of protecting children at scale.

Why this invisibility matters for the future

Language shapes policy, and policy shapes investment. When child protection is absent from global frameworks, it is also absent from budgets, indicators, and mandates. What is not recognised cannot be prioritised or funded. The result is a development architecture that treats protection as peripheral—positioning it outside the core structures of governance, planning, and investment that drive sustainable development.

At a time of fiscal constraint and competing priorities, invisibility carries political and financial costs. Governments and UN agencies rely on recognised investment categories—health, education, social protection—to justify budget allocations and aid flows. Without inclusion in that lexicon, child protection lacks legitimacy and institutional foothold. It becomes nearly impossible for national actors to argue that protecting children from violence, exploitation, and neglect is a development necessity rather than a discretionary service.

The absence of a systems approach compounds this problem. Even in contexts with substantial child protection measures in place, these often operate in isolation rather than as components of an integrated system. Fragmented data, siloed delivery, and weak accountability prevent governments from tracking outcomes or building the evidence needed to sustain investment. Without visibility at the system level, child protection remains under prioritised and underfunded.

This combination of invisibility and fragmentation creates a self-reinforcing cycle: global frameworks omit child protection; national plans exclude it; budgets neglect it; and monitoring systems fail to capture it. Over time, the absence becomes normalised, thus sustaining a status quo in which the world addresses symptoms of vulnerability without recognising the system needed to prevent them.

Recognising child protection itself as a pillar of development—and supporting a systems approach to make it work—is therefore not only a child rights imperative but a test of the credibility of the global social development agenda.

Embedding child protection in the next UNSDCF cycle

As I have written elsewhere (Grant, 2024), the Common Country Analysis (CCA) and the UNSDCF are the mechanisms through which global commitments are translated into national priorities. They are where the aspirations of declarations like the Doha Political Declaration become operational plans. When child protection is absent from these frameworks, it becomes nearly impossible for governments and UN Country Teams to plan, fund, or measure progress systematically.

The Doha Declaration will inevitably influence the next generation of UNSDCFs. This presents both a risk and an opportunity. The risk is that the Declaration’s silence on child protection will cascade downward, reinforcing its invisibility across national planning processes. Protection concerns will once again be absorbed under social protection, gender, or education portfolios, rather than treated as a distinct system with its own policies, budgets, and workforce.

The opportunity lies in the current planning cycle. As countries create new Cooperation Frameworks, this a crucial moment to correct the pattern of omission. As I argued in my 2024 piece, integrating child protection into the CCA and UNSDCF is the most realistic accelerator for achieving the child protection targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. Doing so would ensure that protection is recognised not only as a humanitarian concern but as a structural function of governance—fundamental to social cohesion, equity, and resilience.

To seize this opportunity, three actions are essential:

Frame child protection as a governance and systems issue, not merely a set of services. It must be recognised as a state responsibility and a public good.
Build joint advocacy coalitions between governments, UN agencies, and civil society early in the CCA and UNSDCF design process to embed child protection language, indicators, and financing mechanisms.

Experience shows that where strong leadership takes up the cause—whether from UNICEF representatives, government champions, or civil society—the results can be transformative. Integrating child protection systems into these frameworks would send a clear signal that protecting children is not peripheral to development but central to its success.

Recognising and resourcing child protection within the UN’s strategic planning processes would not only align with the Doha Declaration’s vision of inclusion and justice—it would give that vision real institutional meaning.

Acknowledgements

This blog has benefited from rich ongoings discussions within the Child Protection Reference Group of HDPI, Inc (humanitarian development partners initiative)—a global think tank and network committed to advancing child protection, care and broader humanitarian objectives. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the position of any institution or organisation.

I utilised OpenAI’s ChatGPT to assist in organising the research and drafting portions of this blog post. Any errors or omissions are entirely my responsibility.

Making child protection visible in international development: Reflections on the Doha Political Declaration