Child Protection Sub-Cluster Handover Strategy Summary

1. 
   Partners Involved (Suggest partners with technical capacity for coordination plus capacity building per geographical area)
   

2. 
   Strategy ( Provide 1-2 paragraphs highlighting steps of handing over capacities and timeframe for such handover)
   

Transition is considered as extending to recovery phase and not the end of the CP coordination mechanisms. Therefore, the current strategy is continued with UNICEF as the lead agency and in close collaboration with UNHCR,NDMA Gender and Child Cell, and the Ministry of Social Welfare. During the next six months (January-July 2011) the emphasis is on strengthening the capacity of government authorities and other local stakeholders. Ideally in due course, the government should lead with strong support from UNICEF and other key agencies.

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  Capacity building for NDMA, Ministry of Social Welfare and implementing partners on key child protection issues as well as preparedness and response by organizing training workshops and seminars.
  
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  Advocating and promoting children’s rights and protection from abuse, exploitation and violence. Special attention is given to girls to ensure their equal access to assistance.
  
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  Identifying the most vulnerable children in the worst affected areas, streamlining appropriate response according to local needs and priorities of each province.
  
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  Identifying, registering and providing separated and unaccompanied children with alternative care while family tracing is carried out, and reunification with families or placement in family based care.
  
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  Establishing Child Friendly Spaces to provide psychosocial support and to assist in returning to normalcy.
  
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  Putting in place referral systems in order to ensure access to essential services for vulnerable women and children, including access to food and non food items (NFIs) and psychosocial support, educational and recreational activities, and response to violence, exploitation, and abuse.
  
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  Mainstreaming child protection in other sectors of the humanitarian response.
  

Working groups have been established in Sibi and Jhal Magsi districts while Protection and Child Protection Sub-Cluster approach has been adopted in district Naseerabad led by CRS and in District Jaffarabad led by UNHCR as main caseload of IDPs hosted in these districts. CBOs will play role of focal point for to highlight issues of Protection and Child Protection to Social Welfare Department at provincial level.

A six month exit strategy for KPK may not be feasible because there may be fresh displacements that take place inside FATA, and also because the FATA returns are in progress.

UNICEF has established its leadership through human and financial resources. The ideal exit strategy should include continued leadership by UNICEF. This means establishing an early recovery coordination mechanism through UNICEF programs, with responsibility to coordinate activities among donors/NGOs/INGOS with support of the relevant line Department/Ministries.

In North Sindh, Social Welfare Department (SWD) has a strong Human Resource (HR) structure in all districts and following are the steps suggested by North Sindh Child Protection Sub-Cluster for the exit strategy: 1) profiling of CP Sub-Cluster members; 2) formation of Protection/Child Protection working groups; 3) develop a handing over and work plan with the collaboration of cluster members; 4) continue activation of referral mechanism, and 5) monitoring of Child Protection activities.

In South Sindh, CP Sub-Cluster is working with support of Ministry of Social Welfare, Karachi. The Hub Structure is incompatible with Government structure. The government officials require capacity building. (To be completed by the provincial sub-cluster).

3. 
   Constraints/Issues (linked to the above with consideration of the following partners) per region:
   

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  Lack of organizational and human resources to implement child protection interventions, particularly for the most vulnerable women and children.
  
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  Limited financial resources to conduct capacity building activities. Training workshops are required to support programme response particularly in the areas of CFS standards, psychosocial support, referral mechanisms, and policy advocacy on key issues such as identification, reunification of separated and unaccompanied children, child trafficking, early marriage, child labour and birth registration as well as training on monitoring and evaluation of Child Protection problems and response. Capacity building at the district and community levels should be a high priority.