“Ethical standards/compliance” refers to policies and procedures organizations have in place to uphold integrity, ethical conduct and accountability among staff and partners. These include measures related to PSEAand others.
Why is this entry point important?
Compliance measures like PSEA are recognized as essential obligations by humanitarian actors and have become institutionalized as a key accountability issue. Since SEA is a form of GBV, integrating GBV risk mitigation into PSEA efforts is crucial. Leveraging the established PSEA frameworks offers a strategic opportunity to incorporate GBV risk mitigation into program design and delivery.
Additionally, PSEA’s mandatory requirements for humanitarian workers can help make GBV risk mitigation more automatic within organizations.
Other compliance structures, such as financial procedures, safeguarding, and environmental standards, are also being explored as entry points for institutionalizing GBV risk mitigation.
When GBV risk mitigation is part of an organizational or sectoral/cluster plan, the organization, sector or cluster is accountable and obliged to mobilise resources and report against progress – an important step to institutionalizing GBV risk mitigation. It also increases visibility of GBV risk mitigation in an organization, for example, by triggering annual reporting against progress implementing GBV risk mitigation. It can also make progress in GBV risk mitigation tangible, as the results of GBV risk mitigation can be presented in a more visible way, e.g., through statistics, dashboards, vignettes pulled from qualitative data, and examples from other offices. This entry point is linked to the strategy and funding entry points. It may form part of a wider strategy or feature as a trigger for mobilising funding within some organizations.
Why are they relevant?: Provides a clear explanation of how GBV, including GBV risk mitigation, and PSEA are related and how they can be linked.
Why are they relevant?: Provides examples of how GBV risk mitigation actions can contribute to PSEA.
Why are they relevant?: A PPT (a video) on how GBV risk mitigation and PSEA are related. Used in the inter-agency GBV risk mitigation training. [also available in video]
Why are they relevant?: This includes checklists for all sectors to integrate GBV risk mitigation and PSEA into the Humanitarian Programme Cycle. A good example to learn how colleagues working on GBV risk mitigation and PSEA, respectively, can collaborate
Why are they relevant?: This PPT provides concrete examples of how to integrate gender considerations and GBV risk mitigation into education’s needs assessments
Example 1
GBV risk mitigation in UNICEF emergency procedures
UNICEF revised the Emergency Procedures for Every Emergency (L1, L2, L3) and created the Guidance Handbook in L1, L2 and L3 Emergencies in 2021. Both GBV and PSEA specialists were invited to engage in the process so that both GBV risk mitigation and PSEA provisions were considered. In the end, PSEA held a dedicated section within the Emergency Procedures which mandates UNICEF to “conduct PSEA risk analysis as part of regular Emergency Preparedness and enterprise Risk Management” and to allocate funding – US $500,000 for L2 emergencies and $750,000 for L3 emergencies to scale up PSEA intervention.
The guidance document further details requirements related to GBV risk mitigation. For example, as key actions to integrate PSEA, UNICEF is required to “include standard questions on SEA/GBV risk in needs assessments” and in Programme Documents (PDs), and to “integrate PSEA programmatically in all UNICEF PDs with focus on BV/SEA risk mitigation” among other issues.
