Neil Boothby

Dr. Neil Boothby is a psychologist and former US Government special advisor and senior coordinator to the USAID administrator on Children in Adversity, and former director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Currently, he is the founding Director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at the University of Notre Dame (go.nd.edu/globalchild). His research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of organized violence on children. As a senior representative of UNICEF, UNHCR, and Save the Children, he has worked for more than 20 years with children in crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe and is an internationally recognized expert and advocate for children affected by war and displacement. 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, the United Nation's Golden Achievement Award for Social Services, and Duke University's Humanitarian Service Award.
Career.
In the late 1980s Boothby was a psychologist at Duke University, and he worked for Save the Children at the Lhanguene children's center helping children who had been traumatized by exposure to armed conflict in Mozambique. He also served as an advisor to the Mozambican Ministry of Health in the attempt to develop national programs to address this problem.
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 Interagency Learning Network — a constellation of international and national agencies worldwide working on the development of an evidence base for efficacious child protection programming in war, disaster and post crises settings. The network has engaged in 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 ever 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, a public-private partnership dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing children in low and middle income countries. Boothby returned to academia in March 2015.
In 2019, Boothby joined the University of Notre Dame as research faculty and founding Director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, which is housed within the university's Institute for Educational Initiatives. His interdisciplinary teams strives to make certain positive outcomes for children and youth who face adversity. Currently, the Initiative works with non-governmental organizations, policy makers, communities and other stakeholders in seven countries: Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Peru. The goal of their work is to create environments that "not only fulfill children’s and youth’s basic needs, but also promote nurturing relationships, socio-emotional skills, and civic engagement."
He received a D.Ed. from Harvard University.(https://ncdp.columbia.edu)
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.