Attachments
This facilitator guide empowers you to lead effective community awareness sessions on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA). It equips you with clear explanations of PSEA principles, relevant case studies, and interactive activities to engage participants. The guide fosters a safe space for open discussion, equipping community members with the knowledge and tools to identify, prevent, and report PSEA incidents. The guide has been finalized and cleared by the Sudan PSEA Sudan Network’ Strategic Advisory Group (PSEA Network - SAG).
INTRODUCTION
Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of any person is a serious human rights violation and needs to be
prevented and eliminated. In an emergency context, there is often a breakdown of the usual protective
institutions such as the family, community, government, police and so on. Sustainable means of
livelihood get severely affected and there are huge psychosocial implications on the lives of the affected.
In such a scenario, the likelihood of any kind of exploitation or abuse, especially of a sexual nature,
increases due to increased vulnerability, lowered resistance and stark powerlessness experienced by
those who survive the emergency situation. In order to fulfill our commitment towards prevention and response to any form of sexual exploitation or abuse of program participants, we have to, at a minimum, ensure that served communities are aware of the UN’s zero-tolerance policy for SEA and SEA risks.
Sexual exploitation is a complex and sensitive issue that needs more time and reflection to develop
deeper understanding. However, we do not usually have the luxury of time or resources to conduct
awareness to community, especially during emergencies. Engaging communities and communicating
PSEA-relevant information is one of the key PSEA measures and one of the eight Minimum Operating
Standards for PSEA defined by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), considered the most widely
used international PSEA standards. Organizations need to ensure that the communities they work with
can access timely, relevant, appropriate and context-specific information about expected and prohibited
staff behavior and the organizations’ measures and systems that address SEA by aid workers.
PSEA awareness-raising is fundamental to preventing staff from causing harm and to enabling an
organization to respond to allegations of misconduct. It will increase community awareness of issues of
gender-based violence (GBV) and promote collective responsibility toward PSEA among aid actors in the
community. Effectively communicating requires a sound understanding of the community and its context.
This module, that is expected to run for approximately 2 hours, has been developed to serve as a basic
orientation module for served communities. The aim of the module is to provide a training resource,
which could be used to sensitize and orient the target/served communities on sexual exploitation and
abuse with a human rights perspective and the role of the community in prevention of sexual
exploitation and abuse. The first activity allows the session to get started with participant introductions
and sharing of the agenda and norms for the session. The second activity aims to create awareness
about basic aspects related to sexual exploitation and abuse through the enactment and analysis of a
role-play. The third and final activity aims to sensitize participants to individual responsibilities to
prevent and respond to incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse through an opportunity to engage
with two different scenarios.