Annex 5: Assessing child safeguarding understanding and commitment

To implement the Movement Action Plan (MAP), the Brave Movement will engage a broad range of global, national and sub-national partners. In some cases, this engagement will include financial, technical and/or in-kind support. Ideally, all Brave Movement partners will have formal child safeguarding policies in place, with codes of conduct, risk assessment guidelines and practices related to recruitment, training, communications and responding/reporting clearly defined.

Some of these partners, however, are likely to be small, under-resourced and unfamiliar with formal policies of this kind. The nature of the support and the speed and timing of the activities proposed may make the establishment of a full child safeguarding policy impractical.

In these cases, the goal of the Brave Movement is to confirm that the partner(s) understand the principles of child safeguarding and have integrated these principles – and associated practices – into their operations. It recognizes that commitment to child safeguarding takes several forms. While the existence of a child safeguarding policy is one manifestation of this commitment, it is not the only one, particularly for small, more informal and activist groups.

The first step in considering support for partners will be to ask if they have a child safeguarding policy in place. If yes, the partner will be asked to provide the full policy and associated guidelines to the Movement Executive Coordinator (MEC). The MEC (or her/his designee) will discuss the development and implementation of the policy with the partner and a report of this discussion as well as the policy itself will be included in the documentation when the proposed support to the partner is approved.

If no, the following three steps will be undertaken:

1. The MEC or her/his designee will initiate a discussion with the partner the following ten questions.

• What measures do you take to keep your beneficiaries, staff or community members safe from the risks of harm, abuse or exploitation?
• If you perceive that such risks exist, how do mitigate them?
• How do you assess your level of contact with children?
• How do you identify risks related specifically to children?
• If you are engaging child survivors of sexual violence in your activities or events, do you take any special measures to ensure their safety and well-being? Can you provide one or two examples of such measures?
• If someone was concerned about the safety or welfare of anyone connected with your work, how would they report this concern? How do you encourage reporting?
• Please give an example of an incident where your organization had to take action to protect the safety and welfare of someone connected with your work. What actions did you take?
• What are your processes for staff and volunteer recruitment and management? How do you ensure that they are fit to work with children and/or data related to children?
• How do the leaders and senior managers of your organization demonstrate concern regarding the safety of the children with whom you work directly or on whom your activities have an impact?
• Who in your organization is responsible for ensuring that all possible measures are taken to identify and mitigate the risks of harm to children?

• How do you ensure that existing and new staff and volunteers understand and are able to support your commitment to protect the rights and welfare of children?

  2. Based on the answers to these questions, the MEC will decide whether to move forward with support to the partner(s) in question. If the partner(s) do not have sufficient measures in place, they will be encouraged to improve their systems and reapply for support. The Brave Movement will try, in so far as possible, to refer the partner(s) to organizations that might be able to help with this process.

  3. A written report on the discussion – and the MEC’s assessment of it - will be included in the documentation when the final agreement with the partner(s) is approved.

Note: The term “safeguarding” is not always generally applicable. For this reason, the ten questions in these guidelines use a range of terms, including “child safety and protection”, “organizational safety and protection” and “protection of beneficiaries”, “misconduct”, “committing harm against children”, etc.