CHILD PROTECTION
Children in humanitarian settings are at risk of injury and disability, physical and sexual violence, psychosocial distress, and mental health issues. They may be separated from their families, recruited into armed forces, economically exploited, or come into contact with the justice system. The Child Protection Area of Responsibility supports global, regional and local actors to ensure that humanitarian efforts to protect children in Humanitarian Coordinator and Early Warning settings are timely, well-coordinated, and achieving maximum coverage, quality and impact.
Child Protection is an Area of Responsibility (AoR) within the Global Protection Cluster. As the designated Lead Agency for the Child Protection AoR, UNICEF coordinates the Child Protection AoR and is also the Provider of Last Resort. With the CP AoR strategy, the CP AoR aims to ensure the efforts of national and international humanitarian actors to protect children are well coordinated, achieving maximum quality and impact. Its initiatives aim to further develop or improve operational standards and the capacity of the child protection in emergencies workforce.
The CP AoR Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) is its governance and oversight body and includes over 20 international and national organisations along with UN agencies. The SAG contributes to the overall strategic work of the CP AoR on behalf of the broader partnership.
The CP AoR provides in-country and remote support to inter-agency coordination groups and their members throughout 40 countries, via a rapid inquiry service and communities of practice managed by the Help Desks along with in-depth remote support and deployments facilitated by the Field Support Team (FST). The FST provides high quality, rapidly deployable child protection coordination and information management technical capacity in humanitarian situations. Deployments are made to UNICEF, as the Lead Agency for Child Protection, to support the inter-agency coordination of child protection responses at country-level.
The CP AoR Help Desks provide a free, remote service for Coordination Group members to access rapid, tailored support in their working language about child protection-related queries and issues. Contact them here.
MORE INFORMATION
WWW.CPAOR.NET
CONTACT
Michael Copland
Child Protection AoR Coordinator
mcopland@unicef.org
Perta Heusser
Child Protection AoR Deputy Coordinator
pheusser@unicef.org