What is the state of world’s children, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, and what can foreign policy and development practitioners do to improve the lives of children? To explore these and related questions, Religion & Diplomacy editor Judd Birdsall interviewed Philip Goldman, the founder and president of Maestral International. Maestral is a team of leading global experts supporting the development, strengthening, and coordination of child protection and social welfare systems that meet the needs of children in adversity. Maestral has worked in over 100 countries since its establishment in 2008 in close collaboration with UNICEF, USAID, the World Bank, and countless other NGOs and funders.
Prior to founding Maestral, Goldman was a member of the World Bank’s Human Development team with a regional focus on Europe and Central Asia, where he managed the preparation, negotiation, and implementation of Bank operations focused on social protection, health, and education system strengthening. Since 2018, Philip has been a member of the Lancet Commission on the Institutionalisation and Deinstitutionalisation of Children and is currently a member of the Global Reference Group for Children Affected by COVID-19 and Other Adversities.
Birdsall: Tell us a bit about your work and how you got interested in global children’s issues.
Philip Goldman
Goldman: After the breakup of the Soviet Union, I joined the World Bank’s Human Development team. We were tasked with helping countries across that region to address the substantial economic, social, and political ramifications of their transition to newly independent states—particularly in the health, education, and social protection sectors. During those early visits, I was struck by the heavy reliance of the Soviet system on child institutionalization and witnessed the horrific conditions faced by children placed in those institutions. Too many of those institutions still exist in the region to this day.
This early exposure to serious child adversity sparked my interest in the role of child welfare and protection within the global development agenda. Evidence shows that children who are protected and raised in safe and nurturing families are more likely to reach their physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development milestones. Over the long term, this translates into improved education and health status, higher individual productivity in adulthood, fewer social problems, and, ultimately, poverty reduction.
Yet many countries invest little in child protection and welfare. I set up Maestral International in 2008 to mobilize global expertise to put children higher on the policy agenda, and to help governments and other stakeholders around the world to take a systemic approach to developing or strengthening the programs and services that vulnerable children need.
Birdsall: What can we say about the range of impacts the COVID-19 pandemic had on kids around the world?
Goldman: The pandemic has been a disaster for children and the impact will be felt for many years. In December 2021, UNICEF announced that COVID-19 represented the worst crisis for children in its 75-year history. This was due to severe multivariate stressors that children faced—quarantines and school lockdowns, economic disruptions, sharp increases in reports of physical and sexual violence against children, lack of access to critical services such as immunizations and health care, and other factors. An estimated 60 million children fell into poverty during the pandemic, and those who were already poor saw further deterioration in their well-being.
I was a member of a research team that sought to estimate how many children were losing primary or secondary caregivers to COVID-19. Some 10.7 million children lost one or both parents, a custodial grandparent, or a co-residing grandparent to the disease. The rate of loss was far in excess of what we saw from HIV, and the deaths were occurring so quickly that families had little time to prepare. We felt it was essential to mobilize policymakers to ensure that these children remained in family-based care and were not placed in residential care facilities such as orphanages and children’s homes, given their deleterious impact on children.
The World Bank recently published a study showing that learning losses from COVID-19 will lead to lower earnings for today’s children in adulthood. The present value of those lost earnings is calculated to be a jaw-dropping US$21 trillion dollars, or 17 percent of today’s global GDP.
Birdsall: As someone who is Catholic and involved in global child protection, how did you see the Catholic Church responding to these issues?
Goldman: The Catholic Church has been going through a process to better safeguard children in the wake of the serious abuse scandals that surfaced in recent years. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development issued a statement on the impact of COVID-19 on children and calling for the promotion of equitable vaccine access, the provision of family-based care for affected children, an increase in government budgets for programs that protect children, and other measures. In May 2022, a large gathering of catholic leaders from Eastern and Southern Africa was convened in Nairobi, Kenya to discuss ‘The Theology and Practice of Child Protection in Africa in Times of Pandemics.’
The Vatican established a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2013, which is tasked with strengthening the Church’s safeguarding institutions. Commission President Cardinal Sean O’Malley noted recently that there have been challenges with defining the mandate of the Commission, and that efforts are underway to both expand that mandate and to increase its resources.
Birdsall: How can diplomats incorporate attention to children’s issues into foreign policy? What would that attention look like in practice and what difference would it make?
Goldman: Diplomats can work to ensure that foreign assistance programming recognizes the dire state of today’s children, many of whom are buffeted not only by the aftermath of COVID-19, but also by conflict and climate change. We also need to expand our understanding of social policy to go beyond health and education interventions, and to incorporate social welfare interventions. For example, trained social workers are the best placed to assess the complex needs of today’s children and families and to connect them with available resources. Yet social work is vastly under-resourced in foreign aid programming.
Many diplomats are grappling with difficult issues associated with migration (forced or otherwise) and children. Too much of the focus is on border protection, which is a very narrow perspective on the problem. We encourage them to consider migration holistically, addressing the root causes of migration, the challenges of the journey, and the protection of children after they arrive at their destination.
Birdsall: For diplomats and other foreign policy practitioners who are interested in learning more about or getting involved in children’s issues, what are some next steps they can take?
Goldman: They can always send a note to Maestral International with their inquiry (info@maestral.org), and we can point them in the right direction. We actively monitor that mailbox. Beyond that, I am really excited about the new Georgetown University Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, which is covering an array of topics of interest to the diplomatic community, including a new Faith and the Family Forum. The Better Care Network is the leading provider of well-curated resources on children’s care and protection, and the USAID Global Development Alliance Changing the Way We Care has materials on how to strengthen families and to ensure children are safe and nurtured within them. For European diplomats, Eurochild has terrific resources for both EU member states and accession countries. There are too many resources to list so do please feel free to contact us at the above address.