Attachments
Key Message 1 - Protection has Life-Saving Impact
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Protection remedies, mitigates and prevents direct loss of life and harm. It enhances conditions that ensure the physical, material and legal safety of people experiencing or at risk of abuse, violence and exploitation. It protects dignity and avoids long-term harmful impact on communities.
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Fulfilling the leaving no one behind commitment. Protection reaches those most at-risk of abuse, violence, exploitation and exclusion, and who, due to their specific situations and/or vulnerabilities, may not be able to reach and seek assistance. Protection actors actively support humanitarian actors to identify those in a community who are experiencing the greatest vulnerabilities, what capacities exist and what kinds of humanitarian assistance and support is needed to eEectively respond. Mobile protection teams and community-based case management models enhance service accessibility in hard-to-reach areas.
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Where no action is swiftly taken to address protection threats and risks, communities are at a significantly higher risk of death, injuries, trauma and exclusion than when there are a protection interventions and when protection is at the core of humanitarian assistance.
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Protection is an enabler of e=ective humanitarian action and is central and critical to all humanitarian operations (Centrality of Protection). The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) recognizes that protection is one of the main purposes and intended outcomes of humanitarian action. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) states that “Protection of all persons a/ected and at risk must inform humanitarian decision-making and response (…). It must be central to our preparedness e/orts, as part of immediate and life-saving activities, and throughout the duration of humanitarian response and beyond.” - Lack of consideration for protection in lifesaving emergency interventions is detrimental to the entire humanitarian response and, ultimately, a=ected populations. This, in addition to recognizing that protection risks are often the very drivers of humanitarian needs in emergency situations.
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Protection Cluster, in addition to ensuring the e=ective coordination of the protection response, also plays a key role in advising and supporting humanitarian leadership, other sectors and actors in identifying and addressing critical protection risks in a coherent and collective manner.
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Protection is inherently interlinked with other sectors of the humanitarian response. Gaps in service provision, limited or constrained access to essential services such as food, shelter, or health challenge the resilience of aEected populations and often amplify existing or create new protection risks.
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Protection interventions and actions contribute directly to early recovery and durable solutions frameworks to foster longer-term changes (see chapter 3 for specific messages on the Impact of Protection on Social and Economic Stability and Durable Solutions).