Protection Service to Emergency Affected Children in Humanitarian Crises in Guji and West Guji zones of Oromia Region, Ethiopia The Child Protection concerns are highly prevalent in areas where Internally Displace People and Returnees exist, but highly rampant in Oromia Region and West-Guji and Guji Zones’ Context. The conflict situation that had erupted before two years has not yet radically been resolved, and as a result, this has not brought confidence and self-assurance for the returnees to lead their lives in a secured manner. According to West-Guji Disaster Preparedness and Risk Mitigation Office, there are more than 411,396 returnees who have got back to their original living areas and yet, 25,960 (5,438 female) individuals have not yet returned so far. Whereas in the Guji context, there exist 120,718 IDP due to the prior clashes between Guji-Gedeo conflict and recently exploding conflicts between government and unidentified armed group, and the Guji zonal DRMO has revealed that so far there have not been registered number of returnees in zone.

As per the need assessment conducted by Plan International Ethiopia in December, 2019 for ECHO Project Development purposes in West-Guji Zone(Kercha, Birbirsa Kajewa and Bule Hora Woredas), some of the husbands (the bread-winners) of the House-hold in West-Guji-zone have not returned yet to their living areas for fear of revenge by their opponents. As result, there are a number of Unaccompanied and Separated Children living in the areas. According to the information received from West-Guji Women, Children and Youth Department, there are 2145 (973 girls) UASC at zonal level, and 247(115 girls) children in targeted woredas. According to the KII with zonal and woreda WCYA Departments and Office experts two months ago without deployed CPiE Coordinator , the number of other vulnerable children such as single orphans, Children with Disabilities and Street Children also increasingly exist in the zone and the respective woredas. In the context of Guji, there are a total of 42,989 IDP children. Though the vulnerabilities of children are very serious and rampant, the vulnerable children such as UASC, Children with Disabilities and other forms of disabilities have not yet been identified and registered as the zone is under-capacity to collect, organize and present the data and coupled with this, there are not NGOs or UN Agencies working on Child Protection and GBV in the zone.

On top of the above mentioned vulnerabilities of returnees, according to our child protection assessment findings conducted by PIE Country Office staff in December, 2019 in the target woredas of West-Guji to inform project development as well as a joint monitoring Reports conducted by PIE Country Office and Oromia PA Staff  conducted in March, 2020, it has been found out that there are high prevalence rate of Child Marriage by abduction and rape are highly prevailing in the societies of both Gedeo and Guji. For worse of this, the cultural and the traditional ways of social legal handling are also in favour of the perpetrators of the cases. As the information we have got from the Focus Group Discussion with the Zonal and Woreda Child Protection Committees, 10 cases of child marriage and 10 cases of rape occur per month in most of the woredas of West-Guji and Guji Zones.
As result of the atrocities created on the members of their beloved family members in the time of conflicts children and women have been suffering from psychosocial trauma and MHPSS has not been well strengthened in response to relieve the affected children from their psycho-social problems. The current COVID-19 pandemic is also another overwhelming challenge which can have very serious impact in semi-pastoralist community where social cohesion and interaction is very high. Hence, series of consecutive awareness, preventive and responsive interventions are required to bring about desirable changes in the lives of vulnerable children, particularly Unaccompanied and Separated Children including COVID-19 affected Children