Child Safeguarding in Coordination of Education and other Clusters

Module Overview

Child safeguarding (including sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children) is a major concern for all sectors in humanitarian crisis, and because of the wide-reaching impact of child safeguarding violations, it is a system-wide issue which requires collective, joint action as well as action by individual organizations. Coordination teams, working in clusters, sectors, areas of responsibility (AoRs) or working groups, therefore have an important role to play in keeping children safe in humanitarian responses by embedding child safeguarding (including protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) of children) actions in their coordination functions and supporting partners to improve their commitments to child safeguarding.

This module provides clarification on what child safeguarding (CSG) is and how it differs from child protection (CP) and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), explores the child safeguarding responsibilities of cluster coordination teams and provides an overview of the responsibilities of individual organizations.

This module is primarily aimed at education cluster/Education in Emergencies (EiE) working group coordination teams but is relevant to those working in all clusters/ sectors/ AoRs.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the module, you should be able to:

• Explain what child safeguarding is and the responsibilities it involves,
• Differentiate child safeguarding from child protection (CP) and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA),
• Describe how child safeguarding can be embedded in humanitarian coordination, and in particular the coordination of the education cluster/EiE working group,