MacFarlane, Matthew
Rubenstein, Beth L.
Saw, Terry
Mekonnen, Daniel
Spencer, Craig
Stark, Lindsay
Funding for this research was provided by:
United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (AID-OFDA-G-15-00176)
Article History
Received: 8 February 2018
Accepted: 28 May 2019
First Online: 10 June 2019
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: This study was covered under Columbia University Medical Center’s IRB reference AAAQ8815, as well as ethical approval from Save the Children’s Ethical Review Committee, the Ministry of Women’s and Children’s Affairs and an ad hoc ethics review committee of local experts from outside the government structure. Consent was obtained at three levels: first, in written or oral form from community liaisons, depending on their preference; second, orally from community leaders in a private meeting; and third, communal consent to participate was obtained orally from community members at each site during public meetings. As the project focused on liaisons sharing publicly available information about unaccompanied or separated children and strictly forbid direct interaction with children, the researchers and ethical reviewers agreed that a formal assent or consent process with the children or their parents/guardians would potentially increase risk to those individuals and thus was not included in the procedures. Any information communicated was without identifying information and came from community knowledge that the liaisons would be privy to rather than direct interviews with children or guardians.
: Participants were informed that their comments and feedback would be used in reports in a de-identified manner. Otherwise, this section is not applicable as the manuscript does not contain specific participant details, images, nor videos.
: Lindsay Stark is a member of the editorial board of this journal. There are no other known conflicts of interest associated with any of the authors.