Protection in every activity

1What is protection mainstreaming?

Protection mainstreaming (protection mainstreaming) means incorporating protection principles into all humanitarian activities (water, health, distributions, shelter…), even when the project is not a protection project. It is not the job of specialists alone: it is everyone's responsibility.

The Global Protection Cluster identifies four elements:

1. Safety, dignity and "do no harm": prevent assistance from exposing people to risks (dangerous distribution sites, unlit latrines, beneficiary lists being circulated).
2. Meaningful access: assistance reaches everyone, without discrimination, including older persons, persons with disabilities and marginalised people.
3. Accountability: provide information, collect feedback and complaints, and respond to them.
4. Participation and empowerment: involve people in decisions and strengthen their own capacity to protect themselves.

2Practical examples

• Separate latrines for men and women, with an internal lock and lighting.
• Distributions at times that allow people to get home before dark, priority queues for vulnerable people.
• Water points located after consulting women and girls on safe routes.
• Protected personal data: lists not displayed, password-protected files, sharing only when necessary.
• Information in local languages and in accessible formats (spoken, pictures).

3Referring: the referral pathway

A referral pathway (referral pathway) is the up-to-date list of services available in the area (health, psychosocial support, legal aid, safe shelter, child protection), with contacts and eligibility conditions. It is generally maintained by the Protection Cluster or the GBV sub-cluster.

Non-specialist staff do not investigate or provide case management themselves: they inform the person about existing services and, with their consent, refer them to those services.

4Responding to a disclosure: guiding principles and psychological first aid

If a person discloses violence to you (including gender-based violence), apply the guiding principles:

• The person's safety above all;
• Confidentiality: information is shared only with their informed consent, and only what is necessary;
• Respect for their choices and dignity;
• Non-discrimination.

Psychological first aid (WHO) can be summed up in three verbs: look (safety, urgent needs), listen (without pressing or judging, without asking about details), link (to services and to loved ones who can help).

Avoid: asking for details of what happened, taking photos, promising what you cannot deliver, confronting the perpetrator, talking about it with colleagues who are not involved.

5Analysing the protection risks of an activity, step by step

Protection mainstreaming cannot simply be declared: it has to be demonstrated, activity by activity. The method below follows the logic of the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) Protection Mainstreaming Toolkit and the IASC Policy on Protection in Humanitarian Action (2016): for each step of an activity, identify what could expose people to harm or exclude them, then budget for and monitor mitigation measures. It applies equally to a WASH project, a mobile clinic or a cash transfer.

Step 1: break the activity down into concrete steps (half a day, as a team)

Do not reason about "the distribution" as a whole but about its actual steps: community information, registration, verification, notification, the journey to the site, waiting, handover, the journey home, use of the items or cash, and post-distribution monitoring. Each step carries its own risks. The exercise brings together the project manager, a member of the field team, the accountability officer, a logistician and, ideally, a protection or GBV specialist. A team that does this exercise without anyone from the field produces a theoretical analysis.

Step 2: consult affected people before deciding

• Focus group discussions separated by sex and age (women, men, adolescent girls, adolescent boys, older people, persons with disabilities), 6 to 10 participants each, facilitated by someone of the same sex as the group.
• Questions about places and times perceived as dangerous, never about individual incidents: "Where do women avoid going alone?", "At what time of day are journeys difficult?".
• A safety walk (safety walk) with a small group of women along the routes to the activity site, during the day and at the end of the day.
• A physical accessibility check with persons with reduced mobility: distances, slopes, steps, latrines, time spent standing in line.

Step 3: complete the risk matrix

For each step, record the risk, the most exposed groups, the likelihood and severity (scale of 1 to 3), then the mitigation measure, its cost and the person responsible. A severity-3 risk (harm to physical integrity, sexual exploitation, exclusion of an entire group) requires a measure before the activity starts, whatever its likelihood.

Step 4: budget and assign

A measure without a budget line remains an intention. Typical budget lines: solar lighting for latrines and water points, interpreters and accessible materials, transport for persons with reduced mobility, waiting shelters with drinking water, enough female staff at registration points, a toll-free hotline, training for daily workers. In practice these measures often represent 2 to 5% of the activity budget; donors accept them all the more readily when they are linked to the risk analysis attached to the proposal.

Step 5: monitor and revise

The matrix is reviewed at every change of context (new site, displacement, insecurity) and at least every three months. Post-distribution monitoring includes questions on perceived safety ("Did you feel safe on the way and at the site?") and on awareness of complaint mechanisms, disaggregated by sex, age and disability.

A protection risk analysis has succeeded when it has changed at least one project decision (site, timing, modality, team composition). If nothing has changed, either the project was perfect or the analysis was not taken seriously.

6Measuring protection mainstreaming: indicators and safety audits

Donors and evaluators increasingly ask for evidence that protection is mainstreamed, not just a statement in the proposal. ECHO, for example, applies a Gender-Age Marker to its projects and expects a protection risk analysis; the FCDO and UN agencies check that complaint mechanisms and safeguarding measures are in place. You therefore need simple, measurable and disaggregated indicators.

Recommended indicators

Conducting a site safety audit

The safety audit is a tool from the IASC Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action (2015). It is a structured observation, not an investigation into violence. Procedure:

1. Preparation: form a mixed team of two to four people, including at least one woman; inform site authorities and community leaders of the purpose of the visit.
2. Observation during the day and at the end of the day: lighting, condition of latrines and showers, locks, distance between shelters and facilities, isolated areas, presence of armed groups or idle men near water points, use of spaces by women and children.
3. Informal conversations with women, adolescent girls and older people about their perception of safety, without asking about incidents.
4. Feedback within 72 hours to the relevant sectors (WASH, shelter, site management), with a table of findings, responsible parties and deadlines.
5. Follow-up: a new audit after three months or after any major change to the site.

Reusable checklist

A protection mainstreaming indicator is only meaningful when disaggregated. An overall rate of 92% of people "feeling safe" can hide a rate of 60% among women who walk home alone after the distribution.

7Building and maintaining a referral pathway

In most areas, the referral pathway exists on paper but is out of date: numbers that no longer answer, closed services, unknown eligibility criteria. Referring someone to a service that does not exist causes real harm: the person travels, exposes themselves to risk and loses trust. The pathway must therefore be verified, tested and maintained.

Who does what

• The Protection Cluster and its Areas of Responsibility (GBV, child protection, housing, land and property, mine action) maintain the service mapping, often by geographic area and updated every three months.
• Service providers share their opening hours, criteria, capacity and contact points, and report any interruption.
• Each non-specialised organisation designates a focal point who disseminates the pathway to its teams, checks the contacts and trains staff in safe referral.

Minimum content of a service sheet

Safe referral: the sequence

1. Inform the person about available services, what they actually offer, their cost (free of charge), their location and what will happen if they go there.
2. Obtain informed consent: the person chooses the service or services, and what may be shared. A refusal is respected and does not prevent you from giving them the information for later.
3. Choose the modality: information only (they go when they wish), accompanied referral, or a call to the provider in their presence. For medical emergencies, accompaniment is preferred.
4. Share the minimum: for an inter-agency referral, use the cluster's common referral form, filled in with only what is necessary, handed over in person or sent through an encrypted channel, never via a group messaging app.
5. Follow up within the limits of your role: check with the provider that the person was received, without asking for details about the care provided.

When there is no GBV actor in the area

In 2018 the GBV AoR published a pocket guide, How to support survivors of gender-based violence when a GBV actor is not available in your area. It provides a script for non-specialised staff: welcome, listen, give accurate information on existing services (even distant ones), respect choices, promise nothing. The absence of a service never justifies providing care oneself that one is not trained to provide. It must, however, be reported to the cluster as a critical gap.

Testing the pathway

A simple practice increasingly expected by coordination bodies: every three months, the focal point calls every number on the list, checks opening hours and availability, and updates the sheet. A well-prepared "mystery client" (for example a colleague who calls the line presenting themselves as seeking information) makes it possible to check how callers are actually received, without ever simulating a disclosure of violence to a specialised service.

Non-specialised staff have three obligations: know the up-to-date pathway, give accurate information, respect consent. They are not to investigate, document the facts or decide on the person's behalf.

8Receiving a disclosure: detailed conduct, children and reporting obligations

The core course set out the guiding principles (safety, confidentiality, respect, non-discrimination) and the WHO psychological first aid sequence: look, listen, link. This section details what to do minute by minute, then the situations that complicate the response: children, disclosures involving a colleague, and mandatory reporting obligations.

The first ten minutes

Medical timeframes to know

Non-medical staff must know three benchmarks from the WHO, UNHCR and UNFPA protocol on Clinical Management of Rape and Intimate Partner Violence Survivors (2020): HIV post-exposure prophylaxis must start within 72 hours; emergency contraception is effective up to 120 hours (5 days); presumptive treatment of sexually transmitted infections and hepatitis B vaccination can be offered beyond that. These timeframes justify informing quickly, but never coercing.

When the person is a child

• The guiding principle becomes the best interests of the child: confidentiality remains the rule, but a referral to a child protection service may be necessary even without the child's agreement if the child is in danger.
• Adapt your language to the child's age: short sentences, reassure the child that they were right to speak, do not promise to keep it secret ("I will need to talk to someone whose job is to help children, so that you are safe").
• Do not question the child: the interview is the role of a trained case worker, following the IRC and UNICEF guidance Caring for Child Survivors of Sexual Abuse (2012).
• Do not assume that the family is protective: the perpetrator may be a relative. Whether to inform the parents is decided with the case worker.

Legal obligations and the limits of confidentiality

Some national laws impose mandatory reporting of certain forms of violence, particularly against children. Staff must know the applicable rule and their organisation's position, established with the GBV sub-cluster and the Child Protection Area of Responsibility. Recommended conduct: inform the person of the limits of confidentiality before they say too much; consult the organisation's focal point or legal adviser; weigh the real risk to the survivor of a report to the authorities (reprisals, criminalisation, forced marriage to the perpetrator in some contexts).

When the alleged perpetrator is an aid worker

The situation then falls within the scope of PSEA, covered on day 2: the person who receives the information is obliged to report it through internal channels, while continuing to apply the survivor-centred approach (assistance first, consent for services). Internal reporting of the allegation does not depend on the survivor's consent, but her identity is shared only on a strict need-to-know basis.

A good response to a disclosure can be recognised by the fact that the person leaves knowing where to go, having made her own choices, and without having had to tell her story more than once.

9Full example: mainstreaming protection in a distribution in Kalimbo

This fictional case follows an international NGO, Hora Relief, and its national partner, Association Solima, as they prepare a distribution of food and hygiene kits at the Kalimbo displacement site, in the fictional province of Tessaro. It covers the analysis, decisions, costs, monitoring and two referral situations.

Context

• Site population: 12,400 people (2,310 households), of whom 54% are women and girls and 57% are under 18; 31% of households are female-headed.
• Planned distribution: monthly rations for 2,310 households, hygiene kits for 1,850 women and girls aged 12 to 49.
• Initial plan: a single distribution point 2.8 km north of the site, at the town hall warehouse, from 10 am to 5 pm, over two days.
• Services present: health centre (clinical management of rape, 24 hours a day), women and girls' safe space run by a national NGO, child protection case management (UNICEF and a partner), no legal aid.

Consultations conducted (5 days)

Eight focus group discussions (women, men, adolescent girls, adolescent boys, older people, persons with disabilities, two mixed groups of leaders), a safety walk during the day and at the end of the day, and a safety audit of the warehouse. Main findings: the road to the warehouse runs alongside a military camp and a wooded area; women do not use it alone after 4 pm; 140 people cannot carry 25 kg over 2.8 km; women report that "middlemen" are offering to "facilitate" registration in exchange for money.

Risk matrix (extract)

Total cost of the measures: USD 7,600, or 3.1% of an activity budget of USD 245,000. The donor accepted the reallocation on the basis of the matrix attached to the request.

Post-distribution monitoring results (sample of 230 households)

Interpretation: the targets are almost met for safety, but the gap in awareness of complaints channels (72% versus 81%, and 63% among persons with disabilities) leads the team to add information sessions in the women and girls' safe space and home visits for people unable to travel.

Two referral situations during the distribution

• Situation 1: a woman tells a female distribution worker that she was assaulted the previous day on the road to the warehouse. The worker takes her aside, listens, informs her of the 72-hour window for prophylaxis and of the health centre, and offers to accompany her. The woman accepts. The only record made is an anonymous line in the referral register (date, type of service, accompanied: yes). The risk matrix is updated: the information "assault on the road" is passed on anonymously to the cluster.
• Situation 2: three complaints on the toll-free line name the same "middleman", who is asking for 5,000 currency units for registration. He is not an employee but a member of the site committee. The accountability officer refers the matter to the programme manager and to the PSEA focal point, because the same person is also accused of having asked a woman for a "service": that aspect falls under the PSEA procedure and the inter-agency PSEA network.

The reasoning to remember: each measure is linked to a risk identified by the people concerned, costed, assigned, then verified through disaggregated data which in turn trigger an adjustment.

10Common mistakes, donor expectations and contextual variations

Common mistakes and correct practice

What donors, evaluators and auditors check

• The existence of a project-specific protection risk analysis and its updates, not just a mention in the logical framework.
• Indicators disaggregated by sex, age and disability, and evidence that they were used to adjust the intervention.
• A functioning complaints and feedback mechanism, with a register, timeframes and feedback to complainants (CHS 2024, Commitments 1 and 5).
• A referral pathway known to staff: evaluators often put the question directly to a field worker.
• Training of staff and daily workers, including partners' staff, on protection principles and the code of conduct.
• For ECHO, consistency with the DG ECHO Humanitarian Protection Policy and the Gender-Age Marker; for UN agencies, consistency with the Humanitarian Country Team protection strategy.

Variations by context

The most costly mistake is not the absence of a measure, but a measure that creates a new risk: a posted list, a committee that controls access to aid, a complaints line managed by the very person who is the subject of the complaints.

11Interview questions and key references

Interview questions

Key references

• Sphere Association, The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, 2018 edition, in particular the Protection Principles and the WASH standards.
• CHS Alliance, Groupe URD and Sphere, Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS), revised 2024 version.
• Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), Policy on Protection in Humanitarian Action (2016) and Statement of the IASC Principals on the Centrality of Protection in Humanitarian Action (2013).
• Global Protection Cluster, Protection Mainstreaming Toolkit (2017).
• IASC, Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action (2015).
• GBV AoR, Pocket Guide: How to support survivors of gender-based violence when a GBV actor is not available in your area (2018).
• GBV AoR, Inter-Agency Minimum Standards for Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies Programming (2019).
• WHO, War Trauma Foundation and World Vision International, Psychological First Aid: Guide for Field Workers (2011).
• WHO, UNHCR and UNFPA, Clinical Management of Rape and Intimate Partner Violence Survivors (2020).
• IRC and UNICEF, Caring for Child Survivors of Sexual Abuse (2012).
• IASC, Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action (2019); Washington Group on Disability Statistics, Short Set of Questions.
• ICRC, Professional Standards for Protection Work (2018 edition).