Inter-Agency Protection Standby Capacity Project (ProCap) and Gender Standby Capacity Project (GenCap) Appeal, 1 January 2025–31 December 2026

Chapeau

The world is struggling with escalating conflicts, climate emergencies, and economic instability, leading to nearly 300 million people requiring humanitarian assistance in 2024. These crises have caused unprecedented displacement, with 1 in 73 people displaced globally. Women, girls, and marginalized groups are disproportionately affected, bearing the brunt of these challenges. Despite ongoing global efforts, achieving gender equality remains a distant goal. Protection vulnerabilities impact women, men, boys, girls by eroding safety, security, and access to basic rights, with systemic issues like poverty, discrimination, and climate instability increasing risks and reducing resilience across all communities. To address these growing challenges, greater collaboration among stakeholders is essential. Sustained and predictable funding, along with concrete policy and programmatic actions, are needed to mitigate protection risks, reduce gender disparities, and empower women and girls worldwide. At the same time, a coordinated collective effort is crucial to ensure protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA).

The urgency of these issues calls for not only immediate action but also long-term strategic frameworks to guide humanitarian efforts. While collaboration and funding are critical, these efforts must be anchored in policies that prioritize gender equality and protection for all vulnerable groups. This is particularly vital in addressing the complex and intersecting needs of women, girls, and marginalized communities who continue to face disproportionate risks in crisis situations. Men and boys also face unique vulnerabilities, including risks of forced recruitment into armed groups, exposure to hazardous labor, and social stigma around seeking help for mental health or trauma, often leaving their specific protection needs overlooked.

The updated 2024-2028 Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Policy on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls (GEEWG) in Humanitarian Action represents a renewed and resolute commitment to advancing gender equality in humanitarian contexts. Through the policy the IASC reiterates renewed commitment to a people- centered, gender sensitive, and intersectional approach to understanding and addressing the diverse experiences and needs of people affected by crises. It reinforces the collective responsibility of IASC members, their field representation, and the broader humanitarian community to ensure that the rights, needs, and priorities of women, girls, men and boys, people with disabilities and the elderly, as well as all individuals with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are upheld and met equitably.

Similarly, the IASC’s commitment on the Centrality of Protection (CoP), the work of the IASC’s CoP Task Force and the United Nations Agenda for Protection (2024), have galvanized efforts to prioritise and mainstream protection. The IASC Centrality of Protection (CoP) toolkit, which consists of the IASC CoP Benchmarks, the Aide Memoire and the measurement framework aim to facilitate multisector protection analysis and consensus on prioritized critical protection risks to inform and gauge action in high-risk countries.

The IASC Principals affirmed their renewed commitment to proactively prevent and address sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment by humanitarian workers while considering gender considerations in every action under the overall protection umbrella. This was clearly outlined in the revised 2024 IASC Statement on Protection from Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Sexual Harassment.

With strong humanitarian leadership and clear direction, it is crucial to identify the appropriate tools and mechanisms that can help turn global commitments into practical approaches and concrete actions; for which we need dedicated expert capacity to operationalize them.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Protection Standby Capacity Project (ProCap), the IASC Gender Standby Capacity Project (GenCap) and the IASC Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Standby Capacity Project (PSEACap) are initiatives that aim to adapt these collective commitments into practical approaches and concrete action. The projects provide expert advisors and coordinators in high-risk, active, and protracted crises, offering system-strengthening support. Deployed experts help integrate gender, enhance collective PSEA programming, and promote protection-centered approaches while strengthening capacity and advancing the localization agenda. The experts deployed through these projects are dedicated to supporting leadership, particularly Humanitarian Coordinators (HCs) and Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs), to ensure that programming and coordination efforts are protection-centered, gender-sensitive, and actively contribute to preventing and protecting against sexual exploitation and abuse. In doing so, they help embed these critical priorities across all aspects of humanitarian action.

Creating Synergies Across the Projects: All three projects – ProCap, GenCap, and PSEACap – are designed to support operational leadership by deploying expert advisors in high-risk crisis settings. Capacity building is a core element of every deployed advisor’s role. To enhance this, the management teams of ProCap, GenCap, and PSEACap are actively working to foster synergies across the respective rosters, ensuring experts can be deployed in multiple capacities. Through comprehensive capacity-building exercises and by leveraging a diverse range of skills, the projects promote intersectional approaches to protection, gender-sensitive programming, and PSEA. This ensures that experts are well-prepared to support country-level systems, align global policies with local actions, and drive system-wide changes. These collective efforts help the humanitarian community translate global commitments into tangible results, supported by Technical Reference Groups and advisors.

Aligning with the direction set out in the 2024-2027 Strategic Framework, this Appeal aims to provide a pragmatic structure and modality for inter-agency system in humanitarian action. While the projects are complementary in their goals, the Appeal is divided into three Chapters to reflect their distinct management teams, governance mechanisms, budgetary needs, and support profiles.