Community based integrated child protection and gender-based violence assistance for the Crisis-affected communities in East Hararghe through quality and timely response services and benefits from risk reduction and prevention measures The humanitarian landscape of Ethiopia continues to be dominated by the triple challenge of drought, localized flooding, and intercommunal violence. The Oromia Region is especially affected. Recurrent below-average rains result in drought conditions, particularly in the lowland areas, resulting in over a million people relying on emergency relief assistance. Heavy rains, since July and August, in East Hararghe have led to an increasing number of displacements, human deaths, crop losses, damage to homes and properties, and widespread infrastructure damage. According to the East Hararghe Zone Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Committee’s August 2020 IDP Information from 20 Weredas’ of East Harerge, 341,354 IDPs are in need of urgent support and assistance.
The conflict and displacement have had severe adverse effects on the physical, social, and emotional well-being of the communities as a result of exposure to violence, family separation, deterioration in living conditions, loss of property and livelihoods, disruption to social networks, inability to provide for one’s self and family, and lack of access to services.

To respond to the child protection and gender-based violence concerns exacerbated due to the recurrent displacement in Eastern Harerge , GOAL Ethiopia (GE) proposes to address the concerns through implementing integrated community-based child protection and gender-based violence program. GOAL defines Gender-Based Violence (GBV) as any harmful act carried out on a person because they are female or male. It includes domestic violence, sexual harassment, human trafficking, forced prostitution, early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/ cutting, acid attacks, honor killings and many more. Globally, GBV disproportionately affects women and girls, but it can also affect men and boys. Our efforts to end GBV have some degree of overlap with another critical area of our work: Child Protection (CP). When looking into addressing GBV and CP issues, our evidence from the field found that they share similarities, with the same groups at risk, and therefore this intervention proposed a joint intervention. Based on this evidence we designed an integrated approach that would effectively meet the needs of beneficiaries and complement our wider humanitarian response programs.  Hence, this project combined GBV and Child Protection (CP) to help us address issues of abuse, discrimination and inequality more effectively. Taking an integrated approach allowed us to build on our institutional expertise and ultimately provide a better outcome for women and children in particular girls. This integrated GBV and CP projects also aims to generate learning and promote more evidence-based programming.

Accordingly, the proposed integration will address cross-cutting GBV and CP issues such as Early and Forced Marriage (EFM), Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), physical and sexual violence, exploitation, and child labor. This project will focus on preventing GBV and child abuse as well as supporting survivors. One of the keys aims of the project is to help survivors become more confident and comfortable in accessing support, which involved strengthening the existing referral pathways. Key local stakeholders will be targeted through awareness-raising workshops and advocacy sessions. The integration will also be reflected during the awareness-raising events planning, shared prevention messages preparations and strategizing response activities. Besides, we will explore existing referral pathways and strengthened relationships with local service providers to improve coordination between local protection actors. GOAL will establish/strengthen the referral mechanisms in the proposed location for addressing the GBV and CP concerns. Besides, the internal referrals between the two integrated interventions will be strengthened. 

GOAL will integrate COVID-19 community risk communication, infection prevention, and control in the project.