Protection

Protection Program

About the campaign

Generally, protection is concerned with safety, dignity and defending the rights of all persons, especially those persons affected by hunger, poverty, violent conflicts, disasters and other forms of emergencies. Protection is a major focus of GFDLP, and hence it has several aspects under it. The specific areas of focus under protection are: legal aid, civil status documentation, child protection, release from detention/freedom of movement, campaign against Gender Based Violence (GBV), protection monitoring, and rights of women to own property. Each of the aforementioned listed is explained briefly below:

Legal Aid (LA)

The legal aid team of the GFDLP LA team is composed of legal/peace experts, and women, youth, and community leaders, who provide advisory and mediation services to disputing parties. Equally, GFDLP where necessary pays the legal fees of the less privileged persons unable to afford it.

Civil status documentation

GFDLP assists in re-produce/replace lost documents. Note that loss of a national identity card, birth certificate, marriage certificate, and passport or land title can deny an individual access to several entitlements. So far, 600 birth certificates for Internally Displaced Women and Children including birth registration have been secured/replaced.

Child protection

GFDLP’s interventions on child protection focus on separated and unaccompanied children. The approach is to dissuade families from de-parenting their children through public education and family counseling services, and then arranged caregivers or foster homes for separated children. This is followed by tracing and reunification of the separated children with their families. Quite often, GFDLP uses international and national legal protection mechanisms to ensure child protection.

Human Rights Monitoring, Documentation and Reporting Program

The purpose of the human rights monitoring, documentation, and reporting program is to:

Ensure improved coordination of legal protection responses for the affected population.
Strengthen the capacity of human rights and humanitarian organizations to monitor human rights vio ng conflicts.

GFDLP currently has a human rights monitoring, documentation, and reporting desk in its Head Office at Buea, where complaints of bothering on human rights abuses are documented and working in collaboration with the NHRC the reports are investigated and parties responsible for the abuses are contacted with a view to ensuring the necessary mediation between complainants and the alleged responsible parties. It is hoped that with time, the desk services will grow and ultimately transformed into a fully-fledged human rights monitoring, documentation, and reporting center.

Gender-Based Violence

GFDLP is concerned with the plight of girls/women and the need to protect them from different forms of abuse and respect their rights in a largely male-dominated world. Hence GFDLP works with its partners to ensure the elimination of forms of Gender-Based Violence (GBV). The key activities carried out with regards to GBV prevention/elimination include: (1) door-to-door sensitization in communities to promote understanding of the types, causes, and consequences of GBV, and how the victims can access treatment and support and where to seek redress; (2) advocacy campaign for the reform of laws and practices that directly or indirectly discriminate against girls/women; and (3) providing the survivors with protection and support to aid their recovery.

The suite of protection and support that GFDLP plans to offers to the survivors of GBV and caregivers on regular basis include:

Psychosocial support – essentially counseling services to help restore the self-appreciation and the emotional balance of the victims.
Creation of safe spaces where the victims/those at risk may have to relocate to, and where Safe Reproduction Health and Hygiene (SRHH) services will be accessible and affordable.
Regular capacity-building programs for GBV survivors, caregivers, and other local humanitarian actors to strengthen their capacity for dealing with GBV cases and threats.
Women empowerment program and skills development to reduce the vulnerability of girls/young women to engage in sex-for-survival.
Provision/distribution of Dignity kits for improved SRHH.
Designing and implementing youth/adolescents and community members’ targeted GBV elimination programs.
Capacity building of actors on Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS) in order to enable the effective and safe collection, storage, analysis, and sharing of data related to the reported incidents of GBV.

Rights of women to own property

GFDLP is committed to promoting equal rights for girls/women as it is for boys/men. Hence it campaigns against unfair and all forms of discriminatory inheritance and widowhood practices, readily educates the population on constitutional provisions giving equal rights to all gender types. Generally, GFDLP engages in awareness-raising and capacity building to enlighten women and community leaders on the constitutional provisions that nullify cultural practices and norms that disinherit girls/women under any guise.

Detention and Freedom of Movement

GFDLP is concerned with ensuring that criminal suspects are not kept in detention centers longer than required by extant provisions of the Law. Specifically, the period of detention in Police or Gendarmerie Cells is regulated by Law and should not exceed Forty Eight (48) hours pursuant to Section 119(1) (2)(a). Also to ensure speedy trial of awaiting trial cases, the Legal Aid service of GFDLP may consider paying the legal fees for those who have remained in detention because they cannot pay for legal representation.