New 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.