Global Protection Cluster

📢 ¡Hola! Les invito a unirse la próxima semana al Global Protection Forum 2025, que organiza cada año de manera virtual el equipo de Global Protection Cluster. En esta ocasión, el Foro se centrará en la protección de comunidades afectadas por conflictos y desastres, en el actual contexto de restricciones presupuestarias y de reforma humanitaria.    Esta vez, participaré como panelista en la Sesión 6, sobre la importancia de la justicia y la rendición de cuentas para la protección en contextos humanitarios. En el diálogo me acompañarán:   🔸Ghulam Isaczai, Representante Especial Adjunto del Secretario General, Coordinador Residente en Irak 🔹Un/a representante del Legal Task Force en Gaza, en los Territorios Palestinos Ocupados. 🔸Inah Kaloga, Directora de Respuesta y Prevención de la Violencia, del International Rescue Committee. 📅 Viernes, 14 de noviembre 2025, 8:00 - 9:30 (hora Colombia) 🆎 Habrá interpretación simultánea en inglés, francés, español y árabe. 💻 ¡No se lo pierdan! Pueden elegir las sesiones que más les interese y registrarse aquí: https://lnkd.in/e4hXJk43

📢 Join the discussion on Protection and Technology. For Better or Worse. 📅 Wednesday 12 November 2025, 14:00 - 15:30 (CET) 💻 Register here: https://lnkd.in/eprMHCT4 Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are drastically changing the global landscape including humanitarian action and modern conflicts. This session will reflect on both the positive and negative uses of technology in humanitarian settings, and how this impacts the protection of civilian populations. It will include a panel discussion moderated by the Humanitarian Policy Group with speakers from Andariya and Shabaka (Sudan), the International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, Diakonia, the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) Syria, UNICEF Ukraine, CDAC Network. Check the full programme here: https://lnkd.in/eGCfsyHG Simultaneous interpretation will be available in Spanish, French and Arabic.

📢 Join the discussion on Advancing Protection in Prioritized Humanitarian Action 📅 Tuesday 11 November 2025, 14:00 - 15:30 (CET) 💻 Register here: https://lnkd.in/e9tnT2qS This session will explore the impact of funding cuts and reforms on the ability of protection and humanitarian actors to effectively address protection risks. The session will reflect on the practical challenges and opportunities that hyper-prioritized responses pose for collective efforts to advance the centrality of protection. It will include opening remarks from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and a panel discussion moderated by United Nations OCHA with speakers from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency in Mozambique, the Ukraine Protection Cluster, the Norwegian Refugee Council in Myanmar, Fundación Apoyar (Colombia), IYD (Syria), and Communities in Need Aid (South Sudan). Check the full programme here: https://lnkd.in/eGCfsyHG Simultaneous interpretation will be available in Spanish, French and Arabic.

📢 Join the discussion on Threats, Risks and Needs: A Global Overview of Protection Trends in 2025 📅 Monday 10 November 2025, 14:00 - 15:30 (CET) 💻 Register here: https://lnkd.in/g9sHpzEE The opening session of the #GlobalProtectionForum2025 will set the tone for collective reflection and action, providing a global overview of protection trends and exploring the mounting challenges to upholding international law and protecting civilians amid complex and protracted conflicts.   The session will include opening remarks from Sweden and United Nations OCHA, and a panel discussion moderated by Norway with panelists from International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion, United Nations Human Rights, Save the Children International, Solidarité Féminine pour la Paix et le Développement Intégral (DRC) and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (Palestine).   Check the full programme here: https://lnkd.in/eGCfsyHG Simultaneous interpretation will be available in Spanish, French and Arabic.

📢 Register Now for the Global Protection Forum 2025.    This series of virtual events on current topics and emerging issues, in collaboration with a range of protection allies and partners, is open to the broader protection community and serves as a platform for dialogue on current protection priorities.   The programme includes sessions on the following topics: 🔹 Protection Trends and Protection of Civilians’ Efforts in 2025 🔹 Protection in Prioritized Humanitarian Action 🔹 Protection and Technology: For Better and Worse 🔹 Food Security and Protection 🔹 Affected Populations in Decision-Making 🔹 Justice as Protection 🔗 Check out the detailed programme on our website page: https://lnkd.in/eGCfsyHG   Looking forward to your participation!

📢 Global Protection Update: Protection in a Prioritised Humanitarian Response As of October 2025, Protection Clusters estimate that 395 million people across 23 countries are exposed to protection risks. These risks include direct threats to life from violence, coercion, and deliberate deprivation. Across operations, the main protection risks reported are attacks on civilians, abductions and movement restrictions, alongside gender-based violence, denial of services, lack of legal identity, and psychosocial distress. The convergence of these risks, coupled with the erosion of protective environments, has created an unprecedented global protection crisis, challenging both humanitarian response and political accountability. Countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt - Gaza & West Bank), Sudan, and Ukraine face the most extreme situations, where populations experience overlapping patterns of violence, exclusion, and deprivation. Rising violence in Mozambique (Cabo Delgado), Haiti, and Colombia (Catatumbo) has further exacerbated vulnerabilities, while fragile institutions and economic collapse compound risks in protracted and forgotten crises in Cameroon, Chad, and the Sahel. Climate shocks exacerbate the effects of protection risks on people’s life and continue to aggravate protection needs, with earthquakes in Myanmar and Afghanistan displacing communities and heightening vulnerability, and floods in Nigeria and Venezuela disrupting access to essential services. While most humanitarian crises are fundamentally protection crises, driven by violations of international law and patterns of abuse and violence, the current humanitarian response is constrained by increasing funding restrictions and access limitations, driving to significant service gaps and limited capacity to meet urgent needs across sectors. Protection operations have been severely disrupted, with the scaling back or suspension of critical protection services, community-led interventions and early-warning/prevention mechanisms. 🔗 Read the publication: https://lnkd.in/eW-KAUG9

🔴 Haiti Protection Analysis Update Haiti has been experiencing a deepening political, security, and humanitarian crisis since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, with escalating gang-related violence and civil unrest, particularly in the West, Artibonite, and Centre departments. Weak rule of law institutions, constrained resources, and endemic corruption hinder the State’s ability to protect and promote human rights. Armed violence exacerbates pre-existing humanitarian needs and vulnerabilities stemming from multiple socio-economic inequalities and frequent natural disasters. The current context exposes the population to serious protection risks, with people caught between multiple armed actors. From 1 January until 31 August 2025, the Human Rights Service (HRS) of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented 4,006 killings and 1,617 injuries. These casualties occurred as a result of gang attacks, security forces’ operations against gangs, as well as through acts of “popular justice” carried out by self-defense groups and unorganized members of the population. Gangs use kidnapping as a systematic tactic for extortion. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) remains alarmingly high yet underreported, with 6,450 incidents primarily targeting women and girls, reported from January to the end of August 2025. Children are also affected by violence, face family separation, and are at risk of trafficking, including recruitment by armed gangs, where they are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Additionally, restrictions on freedom of movement further expose people to violence and human rights violations and abuses, create significant barriers to basic services (including food, safe drinking water, healthcare and education), affect transportation of goods, and have resulted in shrinking humanitarian space that impedes the delivery of life-saving activities. Since 2022, nearly 1.3 million people have been forcibly displaced within the country. Many have sought shelter within overstretched and strained host communities, while others reside in unsafe, overcrowded displacement sites with limited basic services. The Haitian social fabric has been deeply affected, families are separated, education and employment disrupted, and social protection further constrained. The protection risks requiring immediate attention are: 🔹 Killings, injuries, and attacks on infrastructures 🔹 Kidnapping, captivity and disappearance 🔹 Sexual and gender-based violence 🔹 Trafficking and exploitation of children through gang recruitment 🔹 Impediments and restrictions on freedom of movement and forced displacement 🔗 Read the full publication: https://lnkd.in/dXydnnMe

🔴 Sudan Protection Analysis Update Sudan is experiencing one of the most acute and complex humanitarian crises globally. Now in its third year, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has entrenched frontlines across Darfur, Khartoum, Kordofan, and Al Jazirah, with recurrent flare-ups in Blue Nile and the Red Sea states. Mediation attempts have failed, and both parties continue to employ tactics that systematically harm civilians and violate International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). The crisis is characterised by overlapping drivers: armed violence, mass displacement, economic collapse, weakened institutions, disease outbreaks, and worsening climate shocks. Sudan now faces the largest internal displacement crisis in the world, with over 10 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 2.6 million refugees in neighbouring countries. Many families have been displaced multiple times due to sieges, renewed fighting, and insecurity in IDP sites. Humanitarian access is among the most restricted globally, with 198 access denials recorded in the first half of 2025, coupled with widespread looting, militarisation of aid, and obstruction of relief convoys (OCHA, July 2025).The Protection Cluster analysis estimates that 43.8 million people are exposed to protection risks, 9.5M IDPs, 32M non displaced people, 1.5M returnees and 820k refugees. Against this backdrop, the protection environment has worsened sharply. Civilians are trapped in front-line fighting, exposed to explosive weapons in populated areas, and forced into repeated displacement as infrastructure is destroyed. Prolonged sieges and aid obstruction have created extreme deprivation, driving families into harmful coping strategies. Women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities, and minority communities face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and exclusion. With institutions incapacitated, accountability absent, and humanitarian access obstructed, violations remain systematic and largely unpunished, leaving millions without meaningful protection. The protection risks requiring immediate attention are: 🔹 Attacks on civilians and other unlawful killings, and attacks on civilian objects 🔹 Discrimination, stigmatisation, and denial of resources, opportunities, services, and/or humanitarian access 🔹 Gender-based violence 🔹 Presence of mines and other explosive ordnance 🔹 Recruitment and use of children within armed forces and groups 🔗 Read the full publication: https://lnkd.in/ebdDTHsM

🔴 Ukraine Protection Analysis Update 3.5 years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022, the protection environment in Ukraine has continuously been impacted by the conflict, with implications stretching beyond the emergency and affecting the resilience of Ukrainian society. The situation along the frontline has shifted with Russian Armed Forces gaining territory resulting in further displacement. The escalation in the Russian Armed Forces’ use of drones all over Ukraine has expanded the threat to civilian populations and humanitarian workers. With up to 20% of Ukraine occupied by Russian Armed Forces, the population living in these areas are increasingly isolated and face a human rights crisis, including changes in Russian policy towards the Occupied Territory. Protection actors have documented the significant strain of the war on the civilian population in Ukraine. In one survey, 55% of people report that they do not feel safe. Thirty-eight percent of people report they are separated from one or more family members, and 43% report a mental health and psychosocial safety concerns. There have been notable changes in the Ukrainian ministries responsible for displacement and the Government’s Strategy of State Policy on Internal Displacement is due to expire at the end of 2025. These changes come at a time when the impact of the reduction of international financial assistance to humanitarian actors in Ukraine is beginning to take hold. With no quick end to the conflict, and its impact on civilian life in Ukraine, those actors providing a response to affected people find themselves at cross-roads in how to provide principled, sustainable and effective assistance to those in need. The protection risks requiring immediate attention are: 🔹 Restrictions to Freedom of Movement, Forced Displacement and Returns under Adverse Conditions  🔹 Children’s Physical and Psychosocial Safety and Well-Being Threatened by Compounded Risks 🔹 Gender-Based Violence 🔹 Presence of Explosive Ordnance 🔹 Impediments and Restrictions to Access to Legal Identity, Remedies and Justice, including Housing Land and Property Rights 🔗 Read the full publication: https://shorturl.at/GzWZL