Protection

The prevention of and response to abuse, exploitation, neglect, and violence against children, all beneficiaries, and other vulnerable adults

Protection

The prevention of and response to abuse, exploitation, neglect, and violence against children, all beneficiaries, and other vulnerable adults

Sector at a Glance

Programming for vulnerable children strives to address the root causes of poverty by providing resources and tools to strengthen communities. Equally important is work to safeguard beneficiaries’ emotional, financial, legal, and spiritual well-being through protection programming. This holistic approach protects vulnerable people by helping to reduce their vulnerability to social stigmatization, intergenerational poverty, abuse, and exploitation. It also paves the way access to basic legal rights, such as birth registration.

Without proper support and education, caregivers who face additional stresses, such as the strain of losing a loved one, illness, caring for others in poor health, stigma, economic hardships, and strained resources, may make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the children in their care. Each year, 86% of children worldwide experience some form of violent discipline. Girls in particular are at increased risk for sexual violence. Children may be forced to drop out of school to work or marry at a very young age.

Poor program design also can place vulnerable children in harm’s way. Selective targeting that singles out a child can increase stigma, exacerbate vulnerability, or cause ill will in a community. No one-size-fits-all approach to protection exists.

Catholic Relief Services carefully considers ways to address how a person’s age and gender affect their place in society so that we may find culturally appropriate ways to address the barriers that girls, women, men, and boys face. Thoughtful, evidence-driven protection programming can help strengthen community- and government-led initiatives to keep vulnerable people from falling through the cracks. We ensure that protection programs are attuned to the local context, and we adjust that focus accordingly.

At CRS, protecting children and vulnerable adults from harm is everyone’s responsibility. Consistent with our Catholic values to uphold the dignity of all human life and promote charity and justice, CRS endeavors to mainstream protection activities in the countries and programs with which we work. We strive to strengthen family life, ensure impartial access to support—such as health and education for women and girls, as well as men and boys—eliminate child labor and trafficking, and increase legal protection around issues of property rights, inheritance, and security.

In 2014, CRS implemented one of the most wide-reaching protection policies of any international organization in the world. Staff contractually agreed that they will receive training and be held accountable to protecting children and vulnerable adults from harm, including physical or psychological abuse and exploitation. Staff also will be required to report incidences of abuse when they observe or hear about a suspected case, and to assist with recovery via referral and other follow-up actions. Beginning in 2015, CRS is asking partner organizations to follow suite with their own policies and standards of protection, thus further extending our care and support. Using a protection and justice lens, CRS ensures that children and vulnerable adults are at the center of interventions affecting them. Our programming works through local and national protection systems at the formal government level and through traditional structures to strengthen the capacity of local child protection committees. It also promotes good governance and peacebuilding. These efforts are designed to provide a safe environment free of threats to human development and growth.

      Highlights of our work in Protection
  
CRS country programs

    Guatemala
  
    Sierra Leone
  
    Bosnia and Herzegovina
  
    Cameroon
  
    Kenya
  
    Malawi

Case studies

Protecting Children Through a System That Connects the Dots in Malawi

Megan Collins

Traditional leaders, government officials, and community members teamed up in Malawi to help caregivers understand that some traditional practices may not only be illegal, but will harm children. As part of the IMPACT project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, CRS and partners worked to prevent, stop, and refer cases of child abuse by informing communities about children’s rights and teaching positive parenting. Common infractions included corporal punishment, failure to send children to school, denial of food or shelter as a disciplinary measure, coercing or condoning early marriage, property grabbing, emotional abuse, and excessive child workloads.

Key to the project’s success was the support of traditional leaders in forming and revitalizing 604 village-level orphans and vulnerable children committees and training 7,330 family care volunteers. A child status index tool was used biannually to help the committees gauge and prioritize common protection issues.

Family care volunteers regularly visited homes to identify cases of abuse, offer counseling and encouragement, and initiate referrals for cases they could not resolve themselves. Caregivers often were unaware that certain practices are considered abusive, and skilled volunteers were able to present information and solutions that helped change behaviors, increase emotional connections, and reduce family conflict.

IMPACT provided child protection case management training for officials and staff who work in the education and police departments, judiciary system, and the ministries of gender, children, and social welfare. These trained case managers now meet regularly and conduct joint supervision. With this system in place, communities can deal with common violations, such as beatings and coercion of girls into early marriages. Very serious violations like rape and child trafficking are now taken up and resolved by the case management teams.

Teaming Up With Religious Leaders in Kenya to Help Stop Early Marriage

Sara A. Fajardo

Faith is a powerful motivator. Some say it guides people more than the rule of the law. In Kenya’s coastal communities, where 42% of girls are married before age 15 years, 40% are pregnant before age 18, and sexual tourism is rampant, CRS has teamed up with the 140-member strong Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics, or CICC, to fight early marriage trends and keep girls in school.

With GHR Foundation funding, CRS has been training CICC members on the legal implications of early marriage and its effect on girls, and engaging faith communities to appeal, from the pulpit, to the community’s sense of moral duty. Muslim imams, for example, share examples from the Koran about the importance of girls’ education. Clerics refuse to perform marriage rites until they have proof that the bride is older than age 18, the legal age of consent.

Peace clubs formed at schools are providing a platform for children to learn about their legal rights. Members offer peer counseling, perform skits and poems at community functions, and sound the alarm when they see a child about to enter early marriage.

When potential cases of marriage or sexual abuse are reported, teachers and clerics step in to help take the appropriate legal and medical measures. Some clerics have taken children to the hospital and police stations. Others have helped push court cases up on the docket list. One group even managed to close down The Big Daddy Club, a brothel that operated a block away from a school.

The results are heartening. When this program first started in 2010, Dabaso Primary School saw 40 girls drop out because of marriage or pregnancy. In 2014, only one girl dropped out of school because she was pregnant.

Guaranteeing Children’s Rights as Citizens Through Birth Registration

Sara A. Fajardo

Birth certificates are a basic human right entitling children to a name, nationality, and the benefits of citizenship. Yet, nearly 230 million children worldwide do not have their births’ registered. The basic right to be recognized is founded on issues of protection and social justice. Accurate, official birth dates protect children from exploitation in child marriage, child labor, or early conscription to military service. Birth certificates are needed to enroll in school, qualify for health care, receive social services, travel freely, own property, access rights to inheritance, and eventually participate in electoral processes.

Children living in vulnerable households with a chronically ill family member or following a parent’s death have more difficulty accessing birth certificates. To assist these children, CRS weaves birth registration efforts throughout our programming for vulnerable children.

CRS Cameroon has incorporated birth registration as one of five pillars of support that vulnerable children receive in a program financed by the Global Fund. In the northwestern region of the country, an estimated 8,500 children were identified as lacking birth certificates. CRS is working with civil society organizations at 45 program sites to ensure that more than 40%—about 3,500—of children will receive their birth certificates by the program’s close.

In Lesotho, CRS and Catholics In Coalition for Justice and Peace, in collaboration with the Basotho religious community, have been working to reduce barriers to participation in national registration drives as part of the Mountain Orphans and Vulnerable Children Empowerment program. As a result, more than 7,000 people now attend community sensitization meetings about registration events that have led to 1,481 successful birth registrations in eight communities. The National Identity Civil Registry has already demonstrated its intent and desire to replicate the on-site registration events and hold similar activities nationwide.

Stopping Human Trafficking on Multiple Fronts in Bosnia and Herzegovina

David Snyder

Worldwide, more than 21 million people are victims of trafficking. Poverty, conflict, and natural disasters place kids at increased risk. Sometimes, destitute families exchange a child for money. Although the majority of trafficking is for sexual exploitation, it also can be for bonded labor, domestic work, adoption, or organ harvesting.

CRS assists victims of trafficking at the local, national, and international levels. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where youth unemployment has reached a staggering 60.4%, traffickers lure women and children with promises of good jobs.

Since 2004, CRS has used private and U.S. government resources to combat trafficking on multiple fronts in that country through protective tools that decrease vulnerability. We are economically empowering potential victims, launching media campaigns, and providing education. In concert with the country’s state coordinator’s office, CRS has assisted 144 schools to implement integrated counter-trafficking programs into their curricula, which reaches more than 21,000 students. Teachers now can pass critical information on to successive generations without a need for continued funding.

So that trafficking victims could receive ongoing services, including reintegration and guidance on overcoming stigma, CRS collaborated with the government to develop handbooks and other educational materials. We ensured that 82% of the country’s centers for social work have a trained social worker who can meet victims’ particular needs. More than 95% of interviewed social workers reported that the training was the first they had received on this topic.

At the national level, CRS continues to work with the government to implement and monitor key prevention and protection components of the country’s national action Pplan. CRS is now replicating this approach in Albania, where private and U.S government resources are helping the government to implement its national action plan in four targeted districts near the borders with Kosovo and Montenegro.

Placing Children Orphaned by Ebola Into Extended Families in Sierra Leone

David Snyder

Emergencies wreak havoc on every aspect of community life. They leave people penniless and without resources, and in some case, separate children from extended families. CRS works to help trace family members and place children in their care.

In West Africa, where almost 25,000 cases of Ebola have been reported as of March 2015, children who have lost one or both parents to the virus or fell ill themselves are particularly vulnerable. They have been forced to start their lives anew—often without any personal belongings, away from their extended family, and with the specter of Ebola following them. As a result, cases of street children, early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and child labor are on the rise.

Although Sierra Leone has a long history of extended family care, children orphaned by Ebola come with issues of stigma, fear, and economic insecurity within the absorbing, or foster, families that make family reintegration an extremely difficult process. The economic effect of the epidemic has left many families without resources, further complicating absorbing additional members in to already poor families. A CRS-conducted rapid assessment found that, although families are willing to take in Ebola-affected children, they need a targeted short-term cushion to help with the integration process.

CRS is working with IsraAid and Caritas Bo to trace and place 120 children with relatives. Each absorbing family will receive a personalized care and support plan that may include economic strengthening, emotional guidance, parenting skills, school support for up to three children, clothing, bereavement counseling, and referrals for further assistance. Both the government of Sierra Leone and CRS plan to expand the project nationwide.

Educating Guatemalan Communities About Children’s Rights to Stop Child Labor

Oscar Leiva/Silverlight

Worldwide, an estimated 168 million children—some as young as 5 years old—engage in child labor. Agricultural work exposes them to dangerous pesticides and fertilizers, and forces children to carry heavy loads. At home, many dedicate extensive hours to food preparation, cleaning, and child care. Those children who work as domestic servants often face exploitation in addition to sexual and physical abuses.

In the Americas, Guatemala has the highest child labor rates: 17% of children work. Many attend school but fare poorly or are forced to drop out because of exhaustion or work commitments. The problem is particularly endemic in indigenous communities, which view child labor as a milestone to reaching adulthood.

With funding from the U.S. Department of Labor, CRS launched the My Rights Matter program in 2010 to reverse child labor trends in Guatemala on multiple fronts. Taking a bilingual intercultural approach that accounts for Mayan beliefs, the 4-year program involved teaching children and adults about a child’s right to education, play and development, how to protect children from exploitation and abuse, and ways to help them fully participate in family, cultural, and social life.

CRS teamed up with schools to help students learn about civic engagement by launching student governments that influenced school improvement plans. Afterschool activities gave children access to homework assistance and tutoring. A certificate program on children’s rights was designed to develop a base of social advocates from civil society organizations and the Ministry of Education who worked to create child labor–free zones.

As a result, school attendance has increased, children’s working hours have decreased from 24.3 to 15.2 hours per week, 6,618 former child laborers no longer engage in harmful forms of labor, and 3,047 high-risk children were prevented from falling into more hazardous forms of work.

Tools and manuals

Core Protection Training Modules

Protection

This set of training modules was designed to ensure that CRS staff members have a shared understanding of what is meant by protection. The modules support the methodologies advanced under the Sphere and Do No Harm approaches. Access Resource