Building Child Protection Technology for the World’s Most Vulnerable: Two Custom Web Applications for UNICEF.

About the Client

UNICEF provides charitable and developmental assistance to children and mothers worldwide, with a particular focus on children affected by armed conflict and humanitarian crisis. Delivering that mission depends on aid workers in some of the world’s most difficult field environments — places with little or no internet connectivity, intermittent or nonexistent power, transient populations moving between field offices and camps, and a web of interdependent partner organizations that must securely share sensitive protection data.

Industry Context

The scale of the crisis this system was built to help address has only grown more severe. Global forced displacement climbed past 123 million by the end of 2024 before easing slightly to 117.8 million by the end of 2025 — the first meaningful decline in a decade, driven substantially by returns to countries where insecurity and limited services persist. Children continue to make up roughly 38 to 39 percent of the displaced population, and the number of children displaced specifically by conflict and violence has nearly tripled since 2010, reaching an estimated 48.8 million by the end of 2024. At the same time, humanitarian funding cuts in 2025 forced UN agencies to suspend protection services in multiple countries. Against that backdrop, resilient, offline-capable, field-deployable case management and incident monitoring tools — exactly what Iknow built in 2014 — have become more operationally essential, not less, as agencies are asked to protect more children with fewer resources. The broader child protection sector has moved the same direction: the open-source Primero platform, which supports standardized child protection and GBV case management and incident monitoring, began around the same time as this engagement and is now deployed as a certified digital public good across roughly 40 countries.

Current Situation

UNICEF and its major partners needed significant extensions to their existing case management and incident monitoring software. Any new system had to work reliably under conditions conventional enterprise software was never designed for: minimal or absent internet connectivity, data security and sensitivity risks inherent to conflict zones, populations that moved frequently between field offices and camps, a complex ecosystem of partner organizations with differing priorities, and power supplies that were intermittent or simply unavailable in rural areas.

• Hostile field conditions. Aid workers needed to use the system in locations with little or no internet connectivity and inconsistent or nonexistent power.
• High data sensitivity. The applications had to securely manage deeply sensitive case data on vulnerable children and survivors of gender-based violence, often in active conflict settings.
• Transient populations. Populations tracked by the system often moved between field offices and camps, requiring data and case continuity across shifting locations.
• A complex partner ecosystem. Numerous interdependent implementing partner organizations, each with its own priorities, needed to interact with the same underlying data.
• A dual mandate. UNICEF needed both new functionality and integration — extending case management for child protection while simultaneously updating GBV incident monitoring and integrating it with the new case management application, alongside data migration, training, and field testing.

• Significantly extend and improve UNICEF’s case management software for child protection.
• Deliver a new system for monitoring and reporting serious violations against children in conflict and other emergencies.
• Update the incident monitoring system for gender-based violence and integrate it with the new case management application.
• Migrate data from legacy systems, develop and roll out user training, and complete multiple phases of field testing.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow followed an agile software development approach, allowing the team to translate direct field input into working functionality through iterative build and test cycles rather than committing to a rigid specification upfront — critical for a system that had to work reliably across such varied and difficult field conditions.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Requirements Gathering. Iknow conducted detailed interviews with more than 50 UNICEF internal staff and staff from its implementing partners, compiling the findings into initial user stories that grounded the entire build in real field experience.
• High-Level Solution Design. The team designed the data architecture, key interfaces, security model, integration with UNICEF’s existing IT infrastructure, and cloud-hosting strategy.
• Iterative Development. Iknow developed new functionality directly from the user stories, using weekly build and testing cycles to keep development aligned with real user needs.
• Data Migration. Iknow developed and tested the procedures needed to migrate data from UNICEF’s legacy systems into the new applications.
• Training & Rollout. The team developed a user training program and rolled it out to end users across UNICEF and its partner organizations.
• Field Testing. Iknow conducted three phases of field testing, incorporating software fixes as required before and during rollout.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked with UNICEF internal staff and the staff of numerous implementing partner organizations, coordinating closely with subcontractor Quoin throughout design and development to deliver a system usable by a wide, decentralized network of child protection actors in the field.

Designing for the World’s Most Difficult Field Environments

Conventional cloud or server-dependent software could not function reliably where field workers had no internet access and unreliable power. Iknow addressed this by architecting a highly configurable web and mobile application capable of running entirely on a laptop, on a privately hosted server, or in a managed cloud environment, with periodic data synchronization between instances — allowing field workers in remote areas to keep working productively even when fully offline.

Serving a Complex, Sensitive, Multi-Partner Data Environment

A system shared across many interdependent partner organizations, each handling deeply sensitive child protection and GBV data, demanded careful security and data architecture from the outset. Iknow addressed this by dedicating its high-level solution design phase explicitly to data architecture, security, and integration questions, informed directly by the 50-plus stakeholder interviews conducted during requirements gathering.

Operational Outcomes

• Delivered two new web applications: an upgraded case management system for child protection, including case management and monitoring for gender-based violence, and a new system for monitoring and reporting violations against children in conflict or other emergencies.
• Completed data migration from UNICEF’s legacy systems, a full training plan, and rollout to end users.
• Built a highly configurable, offline-capable web and mobile solution using Apache Solr, CouchDB, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails, running in an Ubuntu environment.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

Iknow delivered both applications on time and on budget, meeting UNICEF’s desired enhancements for child protection case management and incident monitoring. By the time of delivery, the solutions were live across 15 deployments in 12 countries, with additional country rollouts underway — giving UNICEF and its partner organizations a field-ready system for protecting some of the world’s most vulnerable children in exactly the environments where reliable technology matters most.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow completed requirements gathering, solution design, development, data migration, training, and three phases of field testing within the 12-month engagement, moving from initial user stories to live, multi-country deployment within a single year.

Core Skills

• Custom Software Development
• Agile Solution Delivery
• Humanitarian & Crisis Information Systems
• Offline-First, Low-Resource Architecture Design

Methods & Frameworks

• Agile requirements gathering and user story development
• Weekly build and testing cycles
• Data migration methodology
• Iterative field testing and fix cycles

Technologies & Tools

• Apache Solr, CouchDB, Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, running on Ubuntu