DG ECHO Thematic Policy on Protection

This document updates the 2009 Funding Guidelines for Humanitarian
Protection, based on global developments and accumulated experiences
over the past years. It defines humanitarian protection from the
European Commission’s perspective as addressing violence, coercion,
deliberate deprivation and abuse for persons, groups and communities in
the context of humanitarian crises, and promotes the risk approach to
humanitarian protection as a tool for identifying the aspects and
considerations that should be reflected in proposals submitted to the
European Commission. It highlights that the Commission will fund both
stand-alone and integrated protection programming, and that protection
should be mainstreamed in all humanitarian actions funded by the
European Commission. Finally the document offers guidance on response
types and modalities that can be funded, on the importance of
protection-sensitivity in vulnerability targeting, on engagement of
local actors and on measuring output and outcome of protection
interventions. It is the hope of the European Commission that this
document will serve as a useful tool for our partners in assessing,
designing, implementing and monitoring humanitarian protection
interventions funded by the European Commission and that it will be a
valuable complementary tool to existing globally recognized guidelines
and manuals.