Ethiopia

  • Humanitarian Response Plan
  • From: 01/01/2024 to: 31/12/2024
  • Published: 26/02/2024
  • Coordinated by: OCHA

3.10 Protection

PEOPLE IN NEED
14.2 million
PEOPLE TARGETED
5.0 million
REQUIREMENTS (US$)
311.7 million
CHILDREN
55%
WOMEN
46%
MEN
54%
WITH DISABILITY
17%
Protection AORs

Objectives

In 2024, the Protection Cluster will seek to prevent and mitigate protection risks and their harmful consequences for the civilian population in Ethiopia affected by conflict and natural disasters, including drought and floods, in conjunction with its Child Protection (CP), Gender-Based Violence (GBV), and Mine Action (MA) Areas of Responsibility (AoRs), and the Housing, Land and Property (HLP) Working Group. More than 14 million individuals in Ethiopia require specialized lifesaving and life-sustaining protection services in 2024, and the Protection Cluster will target around 4.6 million people in need.

The Protection Cluster will work with protection stakeholders, community-based structures, and non-protection actors to identify the most vulnerable ones and address their protection needs.


As per the Protection Cluster Strategy 2023-2025, the Protection Cluster sectoral objectives for 2024 are the following:

  • CO1: Prevent harm to persons at risk of or mitigate harm to persons who have suffered life-threatening events, violence, abuse, or serious neglect, and support the restoration of people’s capacity to live a safe and dignified life through life-saving specialized services.
  • CO2: Provide protection assistance and specialized life-sustaining protection services to mitigate and address protection risks for conflict and disaster affected women, men, boys, and girls, as well as persons with disabilities and those affected by explosive hazards.
  • CO3: Strengthen and implement community-based responses, resilience activities, and durable solutions, including through protection awareness-raising and enhancement of individual and community coping strategies and conflict resolution mechanisms.
  • CO4: Enhance protection mainstreaming across sectors incorporating protection principles into humanitarian aid delivery targeting partners, service providers, civil society, and authorities.



Response

The focus of the Protection Cluster response will continue to be on the protection risks triggered by conflict – including but not limited to Amhara and Oromia regions – and natural disasters, including floods and the drought that is a recurring problem in the Southern and Eastern parts of the country. The Cluster will target affected persons living in and fleeing from the woredas that are classified as an extreme inter-sectoral level of severity, as well as selected woredas that present extreme levels of severity for the Protection Cluster. Persons at heightened risk will be prioritized in the response, including women and child-headed households, pregnant and lactating women, unaccompanied and separated children, older persons, those suffering from chronic diseases and persons with disabilities.

The Cluster’s response will be guided by a human rights and community-based approach, taking into consideration different forms of discrimination and power imbalances to ensure that interventions reach those who are disproportionally affected. Inclusion will be mainstreamed across all protection activities. By placing affected people at the center of operational decision-making, and building inclusive protection strategies in partnership with them, they will be better protected, their capacity to identify, develop and sustain solutions will be strengthened, and the resources available will be used more effectively. The capacity of duty-bearers to meet their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights will be strengthened as will the ability of affected persons to claim their rights.

The protection response will in the first place seek to prevent or mitigate the harm and traumatic effects caused by conflict, drought and resulting displacement. Lifesaving interventions will include psychosocial support, case management and referral services, family tracing and alternative care options for unaccompanied and separated children (UASC), material and cash assistance, and legal counselling. These interventions will be complemented by life-sustaining activities, which will encompass improving access to civil documentation to ensure access to basic services, and activities to promote social cohesion and reduce tension. As a third layer of action, promoting sustainable durable solutions and access to livelihood opportunities will contribute to an enhanced protective environment in the medium to long term.

The Protection Cluster will employ cash assistance as a response modality where this is feasible. It will include emergency cash to address urgent protection needs and to complement other services provided through case management and Individual Protection Assistance. Cash for Protection will be provided as an additional one-off support to extremely vulnerable households and individuals who face severe protection risks and have limited to no access to livelihood opportunities. This approach is intended to prevent or minimize resorting to negative coping mechanisms.

Limited capacity and operational presence in some regions and access constraints have been a major challenge in 2023 along with critical underfunding. If this situation continues in 2024, protection interventions and delivery of services to those who need them the most will be significantly impacted. It means that for instance survivors of violence and abuse, including victims of serious human rights violations, will be left without life-saving support and remain exposed to further harm. Limited livelihood opportunities and food insecurity may lead to a rise in social tension, leaving the most vulnerable behind and with no support hence increasing the risk of resorting to negative coping mechanisms. The Protection Cluster, together with the Access WG and the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), will work on carrying out needs assessments in hard-to-reach areas.

The Cluster and all its AoRs and HLP WG will work to:

  • Generate evidence on core protection issues to inform humanitarian responses and advocacy with duty bearers.
  • Strengthen timely response to evolving situations and emerging needs through rapid deployment of resources addressing urgent protection needs.
  • As social cohesion is the prerequisite to achieving resilience among the communities, embed social cohesion-related considerations in activities like fair representation of community members from diversified groups, and support existing community-driven initiatives.
  • Build on linkages with resilience-based programming and actors to support efforts to decrease vulnerabilities for targeted populations and locations.
  • Strengthen the nexus approach and increase their participation, representation, and leadership in humanitarian coordination structures.
  • At the level of national coordination, support subnational capacity and partners to ensure harmonization and joint approaches across different locations and programs.
3.10.1 Child Protection (CP) AoR

The Child Protection AoR will pursue the following priorities:

  • Provide a minimum assistance package of child protection services to populations living in high severity locations through center-based and outreach/mobile approaches to bring services closer and faster to those in need.
  • Improve the quality of community-based child protection interventions and specialized child protection services, such as case management and referrals, multi-sectoral and multipurpose cash assistance.
  • Enhance capacity sharing and exchange with national and local NGOs in order to strengthen their institutional, operational and technical capacities, meaningful participation in decision making, and improve access to funding opportunities as part of the overall sector strategy to scale up services.
  • Support multi-sector and integrated responses contributing to child protection outcomes by enhancing referral pathways and networks through a multi-cluster approach, particularly with the Food and Education Clusters.
3.10.2 Gender-Based Violence (GBV) AoR

The GBV AoR response will focus primarily on women and girls, who are the primary victims of severe forms of sexual violence and rape and are often also forced to assume additional roles such as household heads and primary earners. Despite the under-reporting, women and girls account for the majority of survivors seeking services, with some GBV incidents against men and boys also recorded. Conflicts and climate shocks have weakened social support structures, institutions, and networks, leading to a breakdown of traditional accountability mechanisms, increased exposure to and normalization of acts of SGBV, amid restricted access to services, and shortages of frontline providers, and limited service availability, evidenced by the number of One Stop Centers, Safe Houses, and Women and Girls Friendly Spaces being far fewer than the service needs in the context.


To respond to these needs, in implementing the 2024 HRP, the GBV AoR partners will:

  • Prioritize and strengthen access to multi-sectoral lifesaving GBV case management, Mental Health, and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), GBV and health services integrating sexual reproductive health (SRH); support to existing One Stop Centers, Women and Girls Friendly Spaces, health facilities, and safe houses, and establish new ones in underserved areas.
  • Facilitate referrals of survivors and vulnerable women and girls for specialized health, mental health, safety, and legal and access to justice services in the care continuum and mainstreaming across sectors to strengthen access to life-sustaining basic services.
  • Carry out GBV awareness with a focus on community engagement and mobilization aimed at addressing stigma, social norms, capacity building of frontline service providers, supportive supervision, staff care, and trauma mitigation.
  • Procure, preposition, and distribute dignity kits to women and girls of reproductive age, provide life skills, vocational training, and livelihood programming, and refer survivors and vulnerable women and girls for livelihood, empowerment, and multipurpose cash support to mitigate the effects of exposure to negative coping mechanisms, and sexual exploitation and abuse.
  • Improve the accuracy of monitoring and assessment data for a more effective, contextualized response, through improved ethical data and information management practices including through the rollout of the GBV Information Management System (IMS) in IDP settings.

3.10.3 Housing, Land and Property (HLP) AoR


The overall objective of the Housing, Land and Property (HLP) Working Group (WG) is to facilitate a more systematic approach to addressing HLP issues on the ground. This will be done by promoting collaboration and complementarity of efforts amongst government entities and agencies undertaking HLP activities and by addressing gaps in policy and technical areas.

In 2024, vulnerable displaced persons will be supported to allow them to access, claim, and exercise their HLP rights during displacement and return processes. Awareness raising activities on HLP rights will also be conducted to reduce the risk of eviction and violations of HLP rights. Support with securing the required HLP documentation will be provided to increase the security of tenure and exercising of HLP rights. Cash for rent will be provided to extremely vulnerable households or individuals exposed to forced eviction and/or secondary displacements who face severe protection risks and have limited or no access to livelihood opportunities. Capacity needs assessments will inform the needs of duty-bearers aimed at addressing HLP capacity gaps through trainings and technical assistance. HLP actors will also support access to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms or the formal justice system, with special attention to women's and girls’ rights.

To mitigate the risks of HLP issues becoming the cause of further disputes or conflict as a result of humanitarian response, the HLP WG will support relevant actors to undertake due diligence before implementing activities that can have a direct or indirect effect on HLP rights (including construction of IDP sites, the reconstruction and/or rehabilitation of houses or shelter, allocating housing and agricultural land in relocation sites, or other construction such as WASH facilities). In this context, the HLP WG will provide capacity development to humanitarian and durable solutions actors on HLP and due diligence, especially in priority returnee areas.


3.10.4 Mine Action (MA) AoR

In order to ensure an effective, sustainable, and people-centered mine action response, the Mine Action (MA) AoR implements a comprehensive mine action program involving different national and international partners to ensure mines and explosive ordnance (EO) do not adversely affect communities, causing death or injuries or forcing people to engage in risky behavior.

  • In response to the dire humanitarian needs caused by conflict, MA partners carry out technical and non-technical assessments to identify and, where possible, remove EO, including in residential areas, IDP sites and areas of operations of humanitarian actors.
  • The MA AoR puts focus on much needed and life-saving Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE) while supporting the wider humanitarian sector on the mitigation of risks posed by EO. To inform at-risk communities of the threat posed by mines and EO, mine action partners mark contaminated sites where possible, based on the findings of needs assessments. In addition to survey and explosive ordnance spot task activities, partners may also perform explosive ordnance clearance activities if authorized by relevant authorities.
  • As part of the MA AoR coordination mechanism, accurate data on mines and EO incidents as well as the availability of specialized services in conflict-affected areas are collected to develop a directory of existing services for victims. Response to EO victims will be enhanced through the development and implementation of the MA Victim Assistance referral pathway standing operating procedure. As a result, victims will be connected to service providers and cluster partners - such as health, education, and emergency livelihoods - for appropriate intervention.
  • The MA AoR progressively supports the development of a capability at national level through the Ethiopian Mine Action Office to manage and coordinate the Mine Action sector in the country. This includes the development and implementation of national standards, accreditation of operators and the set-up and operationalization of an Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA) database to capture contamination data and information from the field.



Financial requirements

The total cost of protection activities in 2024 is US$311,746,826, of which US$83,548,253 is dedicated to General Protection, US$94,544,000 for Child Protection, US$106,523,800 for GBV, US$10,353,970
for Mine Action, and US$16,776,803 for HLP response. The cost per activity was validated in consultation with partners, compared to estimated costs used by partners in various projects during 2023 and adjusted to include increasing market prices and cost of living when appropriate.

The protection activities in the 2024 HRP have been designed to avoid duplication and reduce operational costs. While mobile interventions have the potential to reach more people at a comparatively low cost, static services and partner presence must be enhanced or re-established to ensure quality service delivery, increase protection interventions in hard-to reach areas and maximize the impact of community-level interventions. Wherever possible, the Protection Cluster and its partners will enhance an individual and family-tailored approach, to ensure the delivery of the most appropriate services to the people who need them the most.

Costs for protection activities typically cover the recruitment and deployment of experts and specialized staff, such as explosive ordnance disposal experts, social workers, case workers, psychologists, lawyers and protection monitors who work closely with community-based structures on a daily basis. The costs of some activities, like family tracing and reunification, legal aid and specialized psychosocial support, or explosive ordnance survey, removal, and disposal, are therefore relatively high and are often part of larger, comprehensive interventions. The estimated cost of activities which are also common to the Cluster’s AoRs such as monitoring and vulnerability screening, data collection, training or psychosocial support, and awareness raising has been aligned with their costing methodology. Activity cost includes, where appropriate, staff, transportation and support costs, the procurement of advanced technical equipment as well as implementation in hard-to-reach areas. Activities are expected to be completed within the ordinary HRP period (12 months).

Monitoring

The Protection Cluster will report targets reached on specified indicators through the monthly updates by partners using ActivityInfo the Protection Response Gap Analysis, and the quarterly Service mapping. Regular monitoring and analysis of the protection situation on the ground, including through the activities of the Protection Assessment and Monitoring Working Group launched in 2022, will support the production of regular protection briefing notes and Protection Analysis Updates to be shared with the broader humanitarian community. Moreover, the Cluster will produce dashboards and infographics to reflect the progress made and to identify gaps and delays in implementation.

The CP and GBV AoR will assist partners in using a result-based management approach in their programming and monitoring by setting the foundation for the use of Child Protection Information Management Systems (CPIMS+) and GBVIMS+. The Mine Action AoR will collect and analyze data on the number of hazardous areas surveyed, and objects identified and removed, as well as the number of individuals who have received EORE sessions. The HLP AoR will continue analyzing data on access to HLP documentation, and HLP dispute resolution, especially in areas of displacement, relocation, and return.

Accountability to affected populations (AAP) will remain a priority for protection partners who will facilitate meaningful participation and engagement of affected communities, including but not limited to the establishment of effective feedback mechanisms. Cluster members will be regularly reminded of the core humanitarian principles and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) to ensure that beneficiaries are not negatively affected by humanitarian interventions.

Monitoring of progress against indicators will be disaggregated by sex, age, gender, and disability to better understand whether protection interventions reach all those who need them the most.