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Self Report 2019

The self-report on WHS Commitments below is organized according to the 24 transformations of the Agenda for Humanity. It is based on commitments pledged at the time of report submission. Click on the 'Expand' symbol to expand each section and read the reporting inputs by transformation.

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  • 2A
    Respect and protect civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of hostilities

    Individual Commitments (3)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to continue working with schools and communities in conflict or post-conflict situations to advocate against the targeting of schools for attack or using schools for military purposes.
    • Advocacy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    • Save the Children commits to playing a lead role in identifying and responding to capacity-building needs among humanitarian practitioners, and in developing sustainable approaches to embedding child protection competencies among national disaster management and social welfare workforces in priority countries.
    • Capacity
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    • Save the Children reaffirms and strengthens its commitment to ensuring that its humanitarian policy and practice recognise child protection as a life-saving intervention, and to prioritising this across all its humanitarian action, including in the first phase of an emergency response.


    • Policy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Save the Children (SC) continues to advocate for endorsement and implementation of the Safe Schools Declaration (SSD). The SSD provides states the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict and is the instrument for states to endorse and commit to implement the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use During Armed Conflict. During the reporting period, a further ten states endorsed the SSD, including Germany and the UK, as a result of extensive advocacy efforts by SC.

    During the reporting period, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) published Education under Attack 2018. The report tracks violent attacks on education in countries impacted by armed conflict and insecurity from 2013-2017 and provides a valuable tool for further advocacy on this issue. GCPEA was co-founded and is co-chaired by SC. SC also developed and endorsed a Safe Schools programmatic approach that helps keep children safe in and around school, including in times of conflict.

    Regarding work towards state armed actors, SC followed up on the Protection of Civilians Concept that became part of NATO doctrine. This makes it possible to feed into NATO and NATO member states education, training and exercises of militaries on issues that concern children in conflict and to maintain links to policy developments within NATO and partner countries. SC has continued to engage states and militaries on the SSD and the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict.

    SC conducted research on African Union processes for holding perpetrators of violations against children to account based on desk reviews and engaging with military and peacekeeper training centres. In addition, we advocated for UN member states to ensure full compliance with IHL and the Children and Armed Conflict framework in Yemen.

    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Adherence to standards and/or humanitarian principles
    • Field conditions, including insecurity and access
    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    Save the Children is planning training modules to build capacity of its country offices and partners on the Safe Schools approach. Discussions are under way to understand how Save the Children’s Safe Schools approach can be leveraged as a global good for the Education Cluster and Child Protection Area of Responsibility.

    Keywords

    Education, Protection

  • 2B
    Ensure full access to and protection of the humanitarian and medical missions

    Individual Commitments (5)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to strengthen and systematically use the best interest of the child both as a principle and as a tool in its programmatic interventions to ensure that every individual child is supported and cared for according to his or her identified needs, ensuring that unaccompanied and separated children receive priority attention and response in its programmes.
    • Operational
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to strengthened engagement with existing child rights systems in humanitarian contexts, including children'€s ombudspersons and inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms, to ensure a holistic and accountable response to address boys' and girls' needs in humanitarian crises.


    • Partnership
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to taking the first turn at being the NGO co-lead of the new Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, and to use this position to forge close links between this group and the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children, including sharing of lessons learned.


    • Partnership
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to working with others to build and disseminate evidence on social protection mechanisms that are able to adapt quickly to address the needs of at-risk children and households in humanitarian crises - for example, by being linked to early warning systems.


    • Operational
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    • Save the Children reaffirms its commitment through the Social Protection Inter-agency Coordination Board to support national governments to develop and scale-up sustainable social protection systems, including in humanitarian contexts, to protect those suffering chronic poverty and deprivation, as well as those affected by humanitarian crises, particularly children, and those facing discrimination on the basis of, for example, gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity.
    • Partnership
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Save the Children co-led the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action for the third and last year before handing over the NGO co-leadership to Plan International. This included funding a full-time senior coordinator. 2018 highlights included a roundtable with the Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) resulting in concrete actions for joint Child Protection and Education programming and integrated sector approaches. During 2018, the Alliance reached 100 members, of which national and local NGO members now make up 56%. Within the Alliance, Save the Children continues to co-lead the development and, since 2018, revision of the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPMS). The 2nd edition aims at strengthening accessibility and user friendliness for frontline workers, targeting specifically national and local organisations. The CPMS works in collaboration with the other humanitarian standards to increase the adherence to humanitarian standards and principles overall. Save the Children is furthermore represented in the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, ensuring continuous close links between the cluster setting and the Alliance. Within this collaboration Save the Children is leading an effort to strengthen national NGO capacity and ability to take on Child Protection coordination roles. Save the Children also advocated strongly for international support for humanitarian access in a number of contexts where it is operational, in particular Syria and Yemen.

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Funding amounts
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    Global coordination and interagency collaboration is critical for access to research and good practice, development of and adherence to standards and principles, and to avoid duplication. However, this requires stable and long-term funding which is not adequately reflected in the donor landscape.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    Save the Children will continue co-leadership of the Child Protection Minimum Standards and ensure finalisation of the 2nd edition in 2019 together with Terre des Hommes. Within the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, SC will proceed with the Child Protection coordination localisation project in two initial countries, in collaboration with the Education Cluster.

    Keywords

    Education, Protection

  • 2C
    Speak out on violations

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children reaffirms its commitment to speak out and advocate on behalf of the children in need of humanitarian assistance when existing mechanisms fail to address their needs adequately.
    • Advocacy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Save the Children launched a 'Speaking Out' toolkit, which aims to help to increase the organisation's ability to speak out about child rights violations. Save the Children published a number of reports including:

    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Adherence to standards and/or humanitarian principles
    • Human resources/capacity
    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    In order to continue to reaffirm our role as a rights-based organisation that routinely speaks out on grave violations of children's rights, Save the Children need to create additional capacity in key country offices so they are better positioned to speak out, and continue to develop more robust risk management tools and processes.

    Keywords

    Protection

  • 2D
    Take concrete steps to improve compliance and accountability

    Individual Commitments (2)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to advocate for Member States and other actors to uphold existing rules and standards and to integrate such standards into national-level legislation and policy.
    • Advocacy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to promote commitments on the Call to Action on Protection from Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies and its Roadmap within its own humanitarian work, as well as national and international policy platforms where Save the Children is involved.


    • Advocacy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Gender-based violence prevention and response

    In 2018, Save the Children developed and rolled out its commitments to the Gender-Based Violence Call to Action. There are eight commitments against which the organisation is held to account. In addition, a Gender Equality in Humanitarian Settings Working Group was established and embedded within the humanitarian architecture of the organisation, to enable and support the realisation of these commitments. This Working Group also ensures that gender advisors are deployed to Category 1 emergencies (Save the Children's highest level of emergency), in 2018 this included the Rohingya response.

    IHL and IHRL compliance and accountability

    In 2018, Save the Children (SC) published a report and campaigned on the prevalence of violations against children worldwide. SC invested in advocacy at the Human Rights Council and UN Security Council, and directly towards influential governments, pushing - with some success - for accountability measures for violations in Myanmar, the occupied Palestinian territory, Syria and Yemen. Save the Children continues to advocate for Member States to commit to the Safe Schools Declaration and advanced the issue of denial of humanitarian access.

    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Data and analysis
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    Conducting gender analysis at the outset of a response is still not being prioritised which renders it more difficult for aid agencies to understand the specific and different needs, interests, capacities and vulnerabilities of women, men, girls and boys.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    More systemic and effective GBV prevention and response requires gender analysis to be conducted from the outset of a response. It also requires donors to insist on an organisation to design interventions that are informed by that analysis. Save the Children also require increased investment from donors in gender equality programming through targeted girls' empowerment interventions and the addressing of discriminatory gender norms.

    Keywords

    Gender, IHL compliance and accountability

  • 3A
    Reduce and address displacement

    Individual Commitments (9)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to develop new partnerships to encourage innovative approaches to support the self-reliance of refugees and IDPs, through seeking funding for programmatic responses on child protection, education, health and livelihoods; through participation and civic engagement; and through encouraging investment that facilitates access to livelihoods for refugees and host communities.
    • Partnership
    • Leave No One Behind

    • Save the Children commits to scale up programmatic responses to forcibly displaced children and youth, and to all children on the move, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, working across institutional divides and mandates, and in multi-year frameworks to achieve clear outcomes.


    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to support increased capacities and resilience of host communities and of formal and informal existing systems to quickly adapt to influxes of refugee and internally displaced families and children, guarantee that they access dignified reception, good-quality health services, livelihood opportunities and long-term solutions.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind

    • Save the Children commits to support access to child and gender-sensitive social protection for conflict-affected, internally displaced and refugee children and youth, including economic security to meet basic needs; and legal, social and economic opportunities to access education, healthcare, livelihoods, labour markets, and protection from violence and exploitation, without discrimination and in a manner that also supports host communities.


    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to support additional and expedited pathways for admission of refugees, including resettlement and humanitarian admission, family reunification, private sponsorship, labour mobility and educational opportunities.
    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to support legal rights to a secure stay in host countries including through adequate, safe and dignified reception conditions and robust registration, including birth registration.
    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind

    • Save the Children commits to support the development of national legislation, policy, strategies and capacities for the protection of conflict-affected IDP and refugee children and youth. This will include supporting and advocating for coordinated policies and practices between countries of origin, transit and destination in at least three key migration corridors and addressing discrimination on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality.


    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to support the provision of access to good-quality education for all internally displaced and refugee boys and girls equally, and to advocate for this to take place within one month of displacement.
    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children will advocate for a reduction of the key drivers of displacement, including through enhanced programming that reduces these drivers. Advocacy will be carried out through a range of initiatives, including promotion of the Safe Schools Declaration and broader work within the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack; advocacy work on the grave violations against children and gender-based violence and support for the Children and Armed Conflict agenda and Call to Action on Protection from Gender-based Violence in Emergencies initiative and roadmap; documentation within the International Network on Explosive Weapons of the harm caused by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and the work towards a political declaration to reduce such harm; promotion of international humanitarian law; promotion of concrete action on Security Council Resolution 2242 [2015].
    • Advocacy
    • Leave No One Behind

    Core Commitments (5)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to a new approach to addressing forced displacement that not only meets immediate humanitarian needs but reduces vulnerability and improves the resilience, self-reliance and protection of refugees and IDPs. Commit to implementing this new approach through coherent international, regional and national efforts that recognize both the humanitarian and development challenges of displacement. Commit to take the necessary political, policy, legal and financial steps required to address these challenges for the specific context.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Commit to promote and support safe, dignified and durable solutions for internally displaced persons and refugees. Commit to do so in a coherent and measurable manner through international, regional and national programs and by taking the necessary policy, legal and financial steps required for the specific contexts and in order to work towards a target of 50 percent reduction in internal displacement by 2030.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Acknowledge the global public good provided by countries and communities which are hosting large numbers of refugees. Commit to providing communities with large numbers of displaced population or receiving large numbers of returnees with the necessary political, policy and financial, support to address the humanitarian and socio-economic impact. To this end, commit to strengthen multilateral financing instruments. Commit to foster host communities' self-reliance and resilience, as part of the comprehensive and integrated approach outlined in core commitment 1.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Commit to collectively work towards a Global Compact on responsibility-sharing for refugees to safeguard the rights of refugees, while also effectively and predictably supporting States affected by such movements.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Commit to actively work to uphold the institution of asylum and the principle of non-refoulement. Commit to support further accession to and strengthened implementation of national, regional and international laws and policy frameworks that ensure and improve the protection of refugees and IDPs, such as the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol or the AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala convention) or the Guiding Principles on internal displacement.
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Refugees

    Save the Children has actively contributed to the elaboration of the Global Compact on Refugees in supporting the inclusion of strong text on education, child protection and child-sensitive durable solutions. Save the Children co-chaired the Initiative on Child Rights in the Global Compacts which played a key role in mobilising, organising and coordinating joint advocacy across the sector and in ensuring the Compact included child-sensitive and child-focused approaches. Furthermore, Save the Children co-authored, through the process of consultations in 2018, 5 joint NGO recommendations which aimed to push the Compact to include equitable and predictable responsibility sharing, enhanced accountability, minimized protection gaps, expanded solutions and improved participation of people of concern. Finally, Save the Children co-convened a High-Level Meeting on Action for Refugee Education at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018, which secured commitments to act from 29 organisations and an agreement how to accelerate commitments made under the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, including “to ensure all refugee children are receiving education within a few months of arrival and to prioritise budgetary provision to facilitate this, including support for host countries".

    Other

    As part of its commitment to reduce and address displacement crises and to ensure that children are at the heart of global solutions, Save the Children established the ‘Migration and Displacement Initiative’ (MDI), to facilitate increased organisational/ sector coherence around interventions across child-focused programming, policy/advocacy and research on displacement. Additionally, in 2018, displaced children were identified as a priority target group for Save the Children in our 2019 – 2021 global strategy. One element of Save the Children’s commitment to “promote and support safe, dignified and durable solutions for internally displaced persons and refugees” has been the development of the MDI’s Durable Solutions for Children Toolkit – applying to both IDP and refugee populations. The toolkit allows practitioners to build evidence-based and child-focused long-term solutions and advocacy interventions. It provides substantial direction on issues of return and re-integration and outlines options, actions and legal guidance related to local integration and resettlement. While it is an internal document, it has been circulated widely between partners.

    IDPs (due to conflict, violence, and disaster)

    Save the Children continued to work extensively with IDP populations globally over the reporting period, with notable focus on programming (both humanitarian and protracted) at country and regional levels. The vast majority of these interventions were multi-sectoral covering healthcare, food and nutrition assistance, child protection services, and education. As part of our focus “to a new approach to addressing forced displacement”, Save the Children's Migration and Displacement Initiative (MDI) released its prototype tool for Predicting Displacement in late 2018. This innovative and user friendly tool predicts the duration and scale of a forced displacement (by conflict & violence) at the start of a new displacement crisis. Predictive analytics, done effectively, can provide critical information about how a crisis will unfold, right from the start, enabling actors to better target and coordinate their response, make a stronger case for funding, and effectively plan and advocate for long-term solutions, where appropriate.

    Keywords

    Displacement, Education

  • 3D
    Empower and protect women and girls

    Individual Commitments (6)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commit to building the knowledge of its staff on standards, guidelines and principles applicable to protection, gender, age, disability-sensitive programming, and where appropriate, building specialist skills to address gender inequality, as well as the needs of other vulnerable groups.
    • Training
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commit to using humanitarian assessments, project monitoring and evaluations to collect data that is, at a minimum, disaggregated by sex and age, and incorporates gender, age and disability considerations utilising IASC gender guidelines, IASC GBV guidelines, Child Protection Minimum Standards, and Age and Disability Minimum Standards.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind

    • Save the Children commit to working with others to develop cross-agency mechanisms to empower women, adolescent girls and other vulnerable groups to participate meaningfully in programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and to adapting programmes based on feedback received through these processes. It will participate in formal and informal decision-making structures and processes, including assessments, community committees, monitoring and feedback within Save the Children's humanitarian responses.


    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to designing humanitarian programmes that are gender-sensitive as a minimum and based on data disaggregated by age and sex, and to ensuring that programmes target the needs of vulnerable groups, even at the expense of a more costly or complex response.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to develop, document and share learning from innovative gender transformative pilot projects to promote the empowerment of women and girls and engage men and boys as part of the solution, in order to address the root causes of gender inequality and prevent and respond to gender-based violence in crisis settings by 2020.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children reaffirms its commitment to delivery of the Minimum Initial Services Package for reproductive health, family planning and post-abortion care within 48 hours of an emergency, and ensure safe, gender-sensitive, adolescent-friendly and ethical referral linkages to legal, psychosocial, protection and livelihood services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Empowerment of women and girls

    Good practice from 2018 includes conducting a Safety Audit and Assessment in North East Syria on a regular basis to inform programme adaptations to mitigate Gender Based Violence (GBV), including Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA). In the Rohingya response we segregated Child Friendly Spaces, noticing lower uptake by adolescent girls (most at risk of child marriage) in mixed sex spaces and established Girl Friendly Spaces where Save the Children rolled out a Life Skills curriculum to build girls' resilience. With the establishment of an organisation-wide Gender Equality in Humanitarian Settings Working Group and the corresponding launch of a Humanitarian Gender Equality Marker, progress is being made and will continue to be made in how Save the Children can contribute to empowering women and girls.

    Sexual and reproductive health

    In 2018, Save the Children has taken several actions in the area of sexual and reproductive health (SHR) to demonstrate timely and coherent response to acute and protracted emergencies. The level 1 and 2 responses included the Rohyinga response in Bangladesh, the ongoing Syria and Yemen response that are delivering SRH services and working with the health clusters. Save the Children is leading the capacity building initiative on adolescent SRH (ASRH) with regional training to humanitarian actors on how to assess, design and deliver ASRH responses in humanitarian settings. In addition, Save the Children, in partnership with KIT Amsterdam, has designed a SRH in fragile settings training curriculum that will be applied to build the capacity of humanitarian responders. In the area of global thematic leadership, Save the Children along with other humanitarian actors, for the first time highlighted the successes and gaps in providing contraceptive services to communities affected by conflict, disaster or in displacement situation at the International Conference in Family Planning. Save the Children also contributed in the development of research priorities for SRH along with other global partners and has a confirmed panel at Maternal and Newborn Panel at Women Deliver 2019.

    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Information management/tools
    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    Save the Children (SC) has committed to piloting gender equality interventions which will look at empowering girls in humanitarian contexts. SC intend to develop and pilot a few interventions within the coming years. For SRH, building capacity of national and local CBOs on acute response could enable a better transition and joined up work with national strategies and a more rapid comprehensive response.

    Keywords

    Gender, PSEA, Youth

  • 3E
    Eliminate gaps in education for children, adolescents and young people

    Individual Commitments (5)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility

    • Save the Children commits to being the first agency to formally endorse the Key Principles of Community-Based Safe School Construction€; it commits that for every classroom it substantially remodels or rebuilds, Save the Children will adhere to these principles, including by meeting "€life safety"€ standards


    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind

    • Save the Children commits to continue to lead civil society engagement relating to the establishment of the Education Cannot Wait Initiative, and work to ensure ongoing civil society engagement and buy-in.


    • Partnership
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to playing a lead role in building the programming and coordination capacity of education in emergencies practitioners and education authorities to respond to humanitarian crises effectively and in line with the Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies.
    • Capacity
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children reaffirms and strengthens its commitment to ensuring that its humanitarian policy and practice recognise education as a life-saving and life-sustaining intervention, and to prioritising the provision of safe, good-quality and inclusive education before, during and after emergencies.
    • Policy
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children reaffirms its commitment to co-leading the Global Education Cluster and working with coordination staff and partners at the global, national and sub-national levels to strengthen response capacity and the transition to recovery.
    • Partnership
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    In 2018, Save the Children continued to co-lead the Global Education Cluster (GEC), together with UNICEF, providing support and remote support to all 49 country cluster staff (including 13 Save the Children staff). This includes staffing of the Global Helpdesk which responded to 90 requests for support from 28 countries, including 19 of the 23 countries with an active EiE cluster. In addition, global coordination experts from Save the Children provided 49 weeks of in-country support to country clusters. Recognising that funding remains a critical barrier to achieving targets (around 40 per cent of the global requirements were unfunded in 2018), Save the Children, together with UNICEF continued to raise the profile of education in emergencies through the Global Cluster. For example, two of the four planned Elevating Education in Emergencies (EiE) series (on the protective role of education, and the role of cash in EiE) were convened this year. Five core skills trainings were delivered to around 125 people from 22 countries. Each of the new countries receiving ECW multi-year financing in 2018 were supported through deployments, to assist them to prepare their Multi-Year Response Plans. Looking forward, an internal review of the Cluster Lead Agency function (and functioning) was conducted, to provide strategic guidance to the organisation to strengthen its cluster leadership role in the coming years. Internally, Save the Children has strengthened its commitment to the Cluster - for the first time, committing regular internal resources to cover core costs for the GEC beginning from 2019. 

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Education Cannot Wait
    • Grand Bargain
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Funding amounts
    • Information management/tools
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    The Education sector remains underfunded, accounting for less than 4 per cent of the total humanitarian ask; and receiving less than 40 per cent of this. It remains difficult to identify and retain coordination experts, particularly in insecure and high risk contexts.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    Consistent and predictable funding is a necessary precondition to identifying and retaining qualified personnel for education clusters. In addition, more must be done to position education as a humanitarian priority and to ensure that the linkages with other sectors, and the humanitarian-development nexus are well understood and well coordinated.

    Keywords

    Education

  • 3F
    Enable adolescents and young people to be agents of positive transformation

    Individual Commitments (2)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to address the specific needs of adolescents and youth in humanitarian crises, building on their strengths and assets, and supporting them as essential contributors to development and peace.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Save the Children commits to promoting meaningful engagement with children and youth as a mandatory component of humanitarian preparedness and response, accounting for and addressing discrimination on the basis of gender, age and other grounds. In major emergency responses, wherever possible it will conduct formal consultations with children and young people, ideally in partnership with other child-focused organisations and government counterparts. It will ensure that these consultations inform our programming and advocacy, involve children where appropriate in implementing their recommendations, and where possible provide children and youth with feedback on the way in which their recommendations have been taken forward.
    • Partnership
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Save the Children (SC) promoted inter-agency child-focused participation initiatives in coordination with child-centred agencies including UNICEF, Plan International and World Vision International. Internally, SC is developing guidance and training to support staff to understand community, in particular children’s, preferences for feedback mechanisms. The Education Cluster, which is co-lead by SC at the global level, has promoted consultations with children and communities (through guidance development, direct and remote advisory support and through advocacy with national clusters), contributing to consultative approaches at country level, which inform HNOs and HRPs. In Bangladesh, SC programme staff advocated and led a children’s consultation along with four partners to inform the development of the Rohingya Response Learning framework. The results were shared with UNICEF and the Education Sector, and incorporated into the planning process, where there was previously no participatory input from children (only from parents, teachers, community leaders). SC also promoted inter-agency child-focused participation initiatives including in the Central Sulawesi response where UNICEF and the local partners of SC, World Vision and Plan partnered with a local research organisation to consult with children. SC supported the development of the CDAC Network’s Guide on Collective Communication and Community Engagement. The findings and recommendations of the Central Sulawesi children’s consultation report have been considered in high level discussions with government officials and also incorporated into agency response actions plans into the recovery phase. The CDAC Network's Guide will be published in 2019.

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Field conditions, including insecurity and access
    • Funding modalities (earmarking, priorities, yearly agreements, risk aversion measures)
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    The importance of child-focused participation initiatives is often under-valued and under-prioritised at country and global levels. The default approach to consultation with communities tends to focus on adults without considering the perspective of children which limits the ability of children to influence change.

    Keywords

    Education

  • 4A
    Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems

    Individual Commitments (4)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to develop mechanisms for expanded coverage of health services within national social safety nets and other social protection mechanisms, including health insurance schemes, so as to meet the essential health needs of all populations, including refugees and IDPs, as soon as possible in a crisis, and in line with the global health cluster guidance on advocating for suspension of user-fees in the acute phase of a crisis.
    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    • Save the Children commits to working with governments and humanitarian and development actors to scale-up and better coordinate cash transfers in humanitarian interventions, in a way that responds to needs across sectors and enables cash transfers eventually to be integrated with or developed into social protection systems. Through this work it will build the capacity of local and national actors, particularly governments.
    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • Save the Children commits to strengthen local and national health systems, in particular to manage risks, contain outbreaks, provide training for health responders, and build up national rapid response capabilities. It will continue to intervene directly in exceptional circumstances as needed, including through its standby Emergency Health Unit, deployable within 72 hours to rapid-onset, large-scale emergencies. Save the Children will endeavour to respond through support for existing public services and community capacity/resilience networks rather than undertaking parallel action


    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • Save the Children commits to working toward CHS certification and to continuously strengthen quality and accountability standards across our humanitarian responses.


    • Policy
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Cash-based programming

    As a member and co-chair of the Collaborative Cash Delivery (CCD) Network, Save the Children contributed time and resources to developing collaborative cash delivery models including pilots in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Ethiopia as well as global initiatives like the creation of a global data sharing agreement template (led by CARE). CCD pilots are ongoing in Ethiopia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Uganda. Pilots have informed the development of the model, contributed to streamlining cash delivery and pooling of resources including common payment platforms, shared staff and joint beneficiary databases.

    People-centered approaches (feedback mechanisms, community engagement, etc)

    Save the Children (SC) begun developing guidance and training to support its responses to better understand community, in particular children’s, preferences for feedback mechanisms. SC has explored innovative approaches to harness user-centred design techniques to promote feedback-responsive design (piloted in WASH programming in Bangladesh and Iraq). 35 staff from Asian and East African country offices trained in securing improved feedback in humanitarian contexts.

    Strengthening national/local leadership and systems

    The Global Education Cluster, which Save the Children Co-Leads, released a Localization Checklist and instigated a wider localization initiative which developed partnership assessment tools for protection and education clusters. The localisation checklist was used to train Cluster Coordinators, IMs, NGO partners and Ministry of Education (MoE) counterparts in Jordan and Uganda. The development of partnership assessment tools for protection and education clusters supported cluster partners to promote relevant issues in the lead up to the 2019 HNO and HRP preparations.

    Building community resilience

    In 2018, Save the Children’s (SC) Emergency Health Unit (EHU) expanded into new areas of work, both technically and geographically. It deployed to all five of SC’s regions – East and Southern Africa, West and Central Africa, Asia, Middle East and Eurasia and Latin America and the Caribbean. The EHU led the set-up of nine health clinics and a 24/7 primary health care centre as part of the Rohingya refugee crisis response in Bangladesh at the request of the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation. The unit provided emergency preparedness support to five Country Offices and tailored Ebola outbreak contingency planning for Uganda and Rwanda Country Offices.

    Keywords

    Cash, Community resilience, Education, Emergency Response, Local action, People-centred approach, Strengthening local systems

  • 5A
    Invest in local capacities

    Individual Commitments (3)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Save the Children commits to a global target for the proportion of funds to be directed to national and local actors.
    • Financial
    • Invest in Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to providing financial, technical and human resources to initiatives aimed at building the capacity of local actors, including the Humanitarian Leadership Academy and other partners. Save the Children recognises the considerable strategic value in supporting start-ups with their ability to innovate and positiviely disrupt in a way large organisations are not well placed to do.


    • Capacity
    • Invest in Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to undertake humanitarian capacity building work in order to train and strengthen the capacity to respond of our local staff and partners across the globe, especially those located in vulnerable crises affected countries and communities. Save the Children will embrace the potential for innovation in technology-enhanced pedagogy and utilise this in our capacity building work whenever possible.


    • Capacity
    • Invest in Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Capacity building of national/local actors

    A movement-wide Localisation Position Paper was drafted in 2018 (pending sign-off in early Quarter 2, 2019) and reflects Save the Children's organisational commitments in line with the Grand Bargain. Save the Children and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy developed a sector-applicable humanitarian capacity strengthening project that can be accessed by L/NNGOs.

    Direct funding to national/local actors

    In 2018, disaggregated financial tracking data was established to provide a global picture of Save the Children (SC) funding going to L/NNGOs. The change to our financial tracking data enables a disaggregated view of L/NNGOs funding where previously partner funding was only visible in data tracking systems as a single block. SC's efforts in this respect have shown progress in 2018.

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    Keywords

    Local action

  • 5E
    Diversify the resource base and increase cost-efficiency

    Individual Commitments (6)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • As part of the Grand Bargain, Save the Children commits to streamline and harmonise its requirements for partners, namely capacity assessments, funding proposals and reporting requirements. This will include a commitment not to ask more of its partners than what donors ask of it. Consideration should be taken not to let partners take on risks without proper support and/or capacity to manage these.
    • Operational
    • Invest in Humanity
    • As part of the Grand Bargain, Save the Children commits to be transparent about the full costs of humanitarian action, including the resources its transfer to partners, supporting the IATI framework as a suitable methodology.
    • Financial
    • Invest in Humanity
    • As part of the Grand Bargain, Save the Children commits to invest in high-quality assurance to objectively demonstrate its adherence to humanitarian standards and good practices, including how it demonstrates accountability to people affected by crisis.
    • Financial
    • Invest in Humanity
    • As part of the Grand Bargain, Save the Children commits to support more resources to first and frontline responders and more resources to capacity development of first and frontline responders.
    • Financial
    • Invest in Humanity
    • As part of the Grand Bargain, Save the Children commits to use cash as its preferred option where/when appropriate.
    • Operational
    • Invest in Humanity

    • Save the Children commits to ongoing membership and hosting of the Start Network as well as management of the Start Fund on the Network's behalf, which will help to ensure responses to crises are managed as effectively and efficiently as possible.  The Start Fund provides small-scale grants for small to medium scale emergencies.  Commitment to this Fund is paramount to reduce the gap in funding in crises for local agencies to respond.


    • Partnership
    • Invest in Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    In line with Grand Bargain Transparency commitments,International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was integrated in the scope of a new internal, online project management system (PRIME) that holds Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) and reporting data on all programming. The integration of IATI in the scope of internal information systems enables the future interoperability of Save the Children's (SC) information management system with external systems including OCHA Financial Tracking System (FTS).

    Keywords

    Transparency / IATI