Improving the protective environment for returnees and out-of-camp displaced children and their communities in underserved areas of Ninewa and Sulaymaniyah governorates The project aims at providing timely, culturally appropriate and gender sensitive child protection (CP) and legal services (GP) to conflict affected communities, while strengthening community-based mechanisms of risks prevention and response. Both immediate responses and long-term solutions will be implemented, notably building on existing systems, and continuing to build capacities of local communities.

Thanks to teams composed of skilled CP staff and lawyers, the project will build on each partners’ expertise to provide a comprehensive response to protection concerns affecting children, women and men’s access to their rights, development, resilience and well-being in Sulaymaniyah district, Til Keif (district center), Rabia sub-district (Tel Afar) and Mosul informal sites (Rajm Hadeed amp Qadisseya II) (project maps, Annex 1a, 1b and 1c). While TGH is strong from its longstanding experience in CP and in CP capacity development activities, KSC’s knowledge of Sulaymaniyah’s context will allow the most relevant response to CP issues. JC will complete the intervention by ensuring IDPs and returnees (including in detention) receive the legal support they need to access fundamental rights and basic services. 

The project directly targets children, adolescents, men and women and to a larger extent communities that will be supported in becoming actors of protective environment promotion for their peers. By combining static approaches and mobile teams (providing outreach services), TGH, KSC and JC will ensure that vulnerable IDPs and returnees can access services even when living far from the centers ran by the project and lacking of mobility means. The project has been designed based on needs assessment conducted in each location.

TGH and KSC will respond to CP issues in identified locations by providing full CP activities package. Both organizations will run centers in their respective locations where case management, PSS, parenting sessions, CP trainings and community-based CP activities will be provided. Both organizations will also have mobile teams providing the same activities in further locations including villages surrounding covered urban areas. TGH and KSC will comply to CP minimum standards and cluster guidelines ensuring activities are adapted to the sanitary context. CP activities will be adapted to age, gender and specific needs taking into each group’s specificities. TGH will support KSC in building the capacity of their project teams by providing CP trainings and mentoring sessions to CP workers. TGH Protection Technical Advisor will work closely with KSC team to ensure quality monitoring well as harmonization of the interventions as much as the different contexts allow. TGH (lead) will thus provide CP services in Til Keif and Rabia, and KSC in Sulaymaniyah.

JC will be in charge of the legal component of the project in Ninewa. JC lawyers will work in detention settings by coordinating with local police offices as well as Til Keif and Al-Faysaliah (in Mosul) detention centers where they are already operating. They will also work in out-of-camp settings through outreach service provision. They will work closely with TGH CP teams operating in the same areas (Til Keif and Rabia in Tel Afar) to ensure referrals as well as share of resources (i.e. office in Rabia). TGH and JC have been working together since 2019 providing integrated CP and legal services to vulnerable communities in Southern Iraq. This project reflects the will of both partners to expand the working partnership to Northern Iraq where both organizations are also operating.

Capacity building of both KSC and JC by TGH is also a strong component of the proposed intervention aiming at strengthening local capacities in line with the strategy of localization of aid and sustainability of the action. Capacity building will aim at developing their capacity in protection services provision as well as supporting their structural devel