Humanitarian Accelerator Program - Safety and Protection

Concerns for safety and protection have gained increasing recognition in humanitarian response, and are now integrated in programming covering most crises. At the same time, numerous pressing issues persist. Gender-based violence is still rampant in many conflict settings, most refugees are still living in highly unstable and unsafe conditions, and cases of child-marriage, child-labour, and other forms of child-abuse increase sharply when these crises persist. These pressing problems call for new solutions with increased impact. To better address the current issues around safety and protection which crisis affected populations and humanitarian staff are facing, the opportunities offered by new technologies and innovation from within and outside of the humanitarian sector, need to be explored. DCHI therefore supports the spreading of awareness and knowledge around these challenges, and the exploration of innovative solutions to deal with them, enabling coalition partners to better understand the issue, to connect to each other, and to take concrete action together. DCHI’s facilitation of the Dutch Relief Alliance Innovation (DRA) Fund 2019 came to a close, when 5 proposals were chosen as the granted pilots. This years DRA Innovation Fund followed the HAP mechanism that has been developed by DCHI to support humanitarian innovation with impact at scale. Through integrating the lessons learned from the DIF Call in 2018, the HAP started with defining problem statements during the kick-off, to producing challenge brief’s in order to engage partners outside the humanitarian sector. Thereafter, the pilot proposals started taking form, with a concept note selection leading to a final, full proposal stage.