BEYOND CASE COUNTS: PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT, INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY, AND PROTECTION OUTCOMES FOR CONFLICT-DISPLACED CHILDREN AT RISK OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN PAKISTAN'S FORMER TRIBAL AREAS

Abstract

Performance measurement becomes especially difficult when the institutions being evaluated also shape whether the social problem being measured becomes visible. This study examines that problem through child protection in Pakistan’s former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), focusing on conflict-displaced children at risk of sexual violence. It investigates how institutional capacity and accountability shape the reporting, administrative visibility, and response to child protection concerns under conditions of conflict and displacement. Rather than treating recorded child sexual abuse cases as direct measures of underlying prevalence, the study conceptualizes case counts as institutionally mediated observations produced through disclosure, reporting access, detection, documentation, referral, and monitoring. This distinction is consistent with evidence showing that incident-based records may substantially understate sexual violence and with child-protection research emphasizing the importance of institutional monitoring and reporting systems. A mixed-methods design combines quantitative analysis of systematically compiled secondary indicators with qualitative analysis of legislation, policy documents, institutional assessments, administrative and humanitarian reports, and child-protection documentation. Quantitative evidence is used to examine observable variation in protection reporting, conflict and displacement pressures, and institutional conditions where comparable data are available, while qualitative analysis investigates the institutional processes underlying those patterns. The study integrates these evidence streams to distinguish three dimensions frequently conflated in performance assessment: underlying protection risk, administrative visibility, and institutional response. In doing so, it advances a public-administration approach to child protection accountability in which institutional performance is assessed not simply by whether recorded case numbers are low, but by whether institutions can make protection concerns safely visible and translate that visibility into accessible, coordinated, and accountable responses.