Enhancing Protection in A'zaz through Integrated Mine Action and Child Protection Activities The HALO Trust and its partners, World Vision International and Shafak Organisation, propose to improve the protection environment in A’zaz district, with a focus on the protection of children, through psycho-social support, protection monitoring, and integrated Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) Risk education (RE). 

Protection was identified as one of three overall strategic objectives for the Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria in 2016, recognizing the importance of protection mainstreaming and risk mitigation. The conflict has shown devastating consequences for specific groups such as women, children, female-headed households, the elderly, and people living with disabilities, who were already identified as highly vulnerable. The ongoing conflict has eroded the protection environment and access to protection services is lacking in many areas, including A’zaz. Children in A’zaz are a particularly vulnerable group they comprise more than half of the IDP population in the district and are particularly at risk of both physical harm and psychological distress.

The proposed project will enhance the protection environment in A’zaz for children and their caregivers, hosts, and the returning population.  This will be achieved by increasing access to psychosocial support, providing risk education and life-style lessons for children and youth, and establishing a protection monitoring capacity in the district.

The expected outcomes of the proposed response are: 1. Conflict affected boys and girls, youth and caregivers affected by the crisis, with a focus on those most at risk in prioritized locations, have access to effective and age-appropriate child protection responses in line with the Child Protection Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Action and 2. Increased protection of affected people through sustained protection monitoring and protection mainstreaming activities

These outcomes will be achieved through the following main activities: WVI will establish a Child Friendly Space (CFS) in A’zaz city in order to coordinate age-appropriate psycho-social support activities, risk education, and life skills activities for children, adolescents and youth. The focus will be on the most vulnerable children who will be provided with emergency one-off support that might include their caregivers. This CFS will be complemented by a mobile team for harder to reach areas both in the target communities and in surrounding rural areas. The movement of this team will be determined based on IDP population concentrations, needs and security conditions. In addition, World Vision will work to enhance community-based protection responses through protection monitoring, workshops and bi-weekly meetings on protection mainstreaming for community members with the aim to coordinate protection response and disseminate information to community members and other actors in the response in A’zaz. 

Shafak will also use a small office, already established in A’zaz, to increase their protection capacity to implement risk education activities and protection monitoring. Shafak will embed a risk educator in both the CFS and the mobile teams, whose activities will be fully integrated with the other activities. HALO will train these risk educators to constantly tailor their messages to the age and activities of the beneficiaries. 

Protection monitoring capacity within A’zaz district will be established and built by a WVI trained team of two people, who will methodically monitor the conditions in the district through direct observation, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, monitoring surveys, and awareness sessions. This information will be fully shared with all humanitarian actors as well as the local community via WVI, HALO and the Protection Cluster.