Neil Boothby

Neil Boothby (2012)

Neil Boothby is an American professor, psychologist and Government Special Advisor and Senior Coordinator to the USAID Administrator on Children in Adversity. He is the Allan Rosenfield Professor and Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[1] His research focuses on the effects of armed conflict and violence on children. He has received numerous awards for his work on behalf of war-affected children, including the Red Cross International Humanitarian of the Year Award, the Mickey Leland Award, and the United Nation's Golden Achievement Award for Social Services.[1][2]

Career

In the late 1980s Boothby was a psychologist at Duke University,[3] and he worked for Save the Children at the Lhanguene children's center helping children that had been traumatized by exposure to armed conflict in Mozambique.[4] He also served as an advisor to the Mozambican Ministry of Health in the attempt to develop national programs to address this problem.[5]

Boothby’s own research has focused on the effects of armed conflict and violence on children in Cambodia (1980–82), Mozambique (1988-2005), Guatemala (1983–86), former Yugoslavia (1992-3), Rwanda (1994–96), Darfur (2005–present), Palestine (2001-present), Sri Lanka, (2002–present), Uganda, (2005-2011) and Indonesia (1999-present). His longitudinal study of adult outcomes for child soldiers in Mozambique enabled him to identify interventions and community supports linked to positive life outcomes. Lessons learned from the Mozambique research are now being applied through operational agencies to current war-affected countries with large numbers of child soldiers. A second focus of his work has been on children separated from their families during war and refugee emergencies. His cornerstone study showed that many child-family separations are not accidental, but instead result from abductions and misguided agency policies and practices. This observation has been translated into international standards (including in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and UNHCR Refugee Policy) and inter-agency guidelines (International Committee of the Red Cross-UNICEF-Save the Children-International Rescue Committee).

Boothby has served as Principal Investigator on numerous research projects. One project focuses on the application of public health methodologies to human rights concerns, specifically development of a method to establish prevalence rates of rape and gender-based violence among refugee women girls, as well as on children associated with fighting forces. A second research project focuses on the development of an evidence base for efficacious child protection programming in crisis situations, in partnerships with operational agencies in five countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, (northern) Uganda; Sri Lanka; and (Aceh) Indonesia. A general theme emerging from this research is the importance of the household as the main component of protection systems for children.

In 2005, Boothby founded the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Interagency Learning Network—now a constellation of more than 75 agencies working worldwide on the development of an evidence base for efficacious child protection programming in war, disaster and post crises settings. Currently, CPC Network Program Learning Groups are undertaking long term research in eight countries: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Within this context, Boothby helped to create academic centers at the University of Indonesia (Center on Child Protection) and Makerere University (Center for the Study of the African Child).

In 2012, Boothby took a leave of absence from Columbia University to serve as the US Government’s Special Adviser and the USAID Administrator’s Senior Coordinator for Children in Adversity. Under his leadership, the US Government developed its first every whole of government foreign assistance policy for children globally. The policy guides some $2.85 billion annual expenditures by nine US Government agencies in low and middle income countries. During this time, Boothby also founded the Global Alliance for Children in Adversity (GAC), a public-private partnership dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing children in low and middle income countries. He continues to Chair the GAC’s Board of Advisers. Boothby returned to Columbia University full-time in March 2015. Boothby is currently the director of the Program on Forced Migration at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.[6]

Publications

Boothby has published extensively on risk and resilience among war and disaster affected children, and is also the recipient of numerous awards for his field work.

Selected Works

to Link Grassroots Networks of Volunteers to a National Program,” African Journal of Social Development, University of Zimbabwe: 11-22.

Journal of Refugee Studies, 5 (2): 107-122.

Books

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 http://www.forcedmigration.columbia.edu/faculty/boothby.html
  2. ↑ Goodman, Walter (1990-03-02). "TV Weekend; A View of the Gory Horrors Of Mozambique's Civil War". New York Times.
  3. ↑ Goleman, Daniel (1987-02-24). "TERROR'S CHILDREN: MENDING MENTAL WOUNDS". New York Times.
  4. ↑ Herbert Posted, Wray (2004-12-12). "The Children of War: The former child soldiers of Mozambique's civil war offer insights into morality and human resiliency". U.S. News & World Report.
  5. ↑ Perlez, Jane (1989-03-01). "Mozambique Seeks to Heal Young Minds". New York Times.
  6. ↑ Boothby, Neil (2010-10-27). "Don't assume they're orphans". Miami Herald.

External links

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