Action Against Hunger: Integrating Protection

As the humanitarian community recognizes the importance of the Centrality of Protection, there are emerging efforts underway by organizations seeking to better implement programs to achieve protection outcomes. Recently, Action Against Hunger implemented a new program, Protection Integration in Nutrition Security (PiiS), in order to foster an integrated approach to their programming, with a focus on both protection and nutrition. The program strives to increase communication between the protection and nutrition sectors, as well as provide a set of tools and resources for integrating protection into the nutrition work stream.

This first phase of AAH’s new Protection Integration program focuses on capacity building, a component identified by InterAction in their Risk Equation. According to this equation, an increase in a community’s capacity to thwart threats and vulnerabilities can lead to an overall reduction in risk. AAH is reinforcing capacities through its protection-centered framework and through the creation of a protection toolkit.

Firstly, “all AAH’s nutrition security strategies and interventions” are implemented through a Protection-integrated framework. This allows for a more holistic understanding of the affected community, their needs, and the risks they endure. The toolkit, created by AAC in collaboration with other humanitarian actors, provides the following resources, available in both French and English:

• “AAH’s Protection Policy
• Guidelines and tools to conduct a protection risk analysis linked with nutrition security
• Briefing papers on specific protection and nutrition security issues
• Training kit on protection essentials and the PiiNS methodology
• Protection Mainstreaming Sectoral Tip Sheets
• Tools and a protocol for referrals of protection cases
• Tools to conduct a satisfaction survey on integrated protection activities”

Several of the resources embrace an outcome-oriented approach to protection by emphasizing iteration, flexibility and adaptation when designing and measuring efforts to achieve a protection outcomes. The resources also encourage a common understanding of protection, utilize MEAL strategies that embrace outcomes, and prioritize the needs of the community as the starting place for analysis and program design.

The PiiNS toolkit is an extensive collection of resources, trainings, and documents to assist in the implementation of a protection framework and focuses on integrating protection principles into AAH’s humanitarian interventions. It highlights key concepts such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Centrality of Protection, the risk equation, and a multi-sectoral integrated approach to implementing protection. Using these concepts, the toolkit provides tip sheets, training packets, referral slips for identifying protection cases, and protection satisfaction surveys. The toolkit is comprehensive and detailed, and vital to the protection work being implemented by AAH.

The second phase of AAH’s Protection Integration program will continue to build capacities and access to resources in the community. It will provide additional tools and supplement material to strengthen the impact of the current toolkit, it will work on applying the PiiNS framework to different humanitarian contexts, and it will strengthen communications and networks between humanitarian actors working across disciplines. This component is a key factor in reducing risks in a community, as protection is a highly multidisciplinary field.