The
Professional Standards for Protection Work, initially published in 2009 and revised in 2013, is the product of an ICRC-initiated and -led effort involving several human rights and humanitarian NGOs and UN agencies. Its purpose is not to provide a ‘how-to’ guide for practitioners but, rather, to establish professional standards informed by international law, professional ethics, good practice, and operational reality. They are expected to be a living body of standards which respond to new developments in situations of armed conflict and other situations of violence, including the experiences of humanitarian and human rights organizations responding to these crises.
In 2015, the ICRC-led Advisory Group commenced a new process to update the Standards, in order to integrate the evolution of the environment in which we operate (stronger data protection norms, challenges and opportunities linked to the use of new technologies, evolution of the “counter-terrorism” narrative, etc.) and of our own reflection and practice (managing protection strategies, etc.). This revision will also seek to make some sections more accessible (Chapter 6 on managing sensitive information is completely restructured). The draft documents prepared by the Advisory Group seek to integrate these elements.
The ICRC is now working with the International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP) to circulate these drafts more widely in order to gather inputs from practitioners active in different areas of humanitarian work in order to ensure the Standards identified reflect the consensus of the community of protection practitioners. We also want to ensure that no other important issue has been left out, and that the documents are accessible to persons with different levels of expertise.
The consultation will run until the end of the year. In addition to the present survey, some workshops have been organized on some particular topics, and several organizations are also directly approached. The publication of the revised edition is planned for the last quarter of 2017. This revised edition will be accompanied by a simpler “field” version of the document, and a more comprehensive, web-based one. The existing
eLearning will also be revised and expanded.
Survey instructions
If you have not previously used the Standards, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the 2013 edition before beginning the survey.
Access it here.
The survey will start with a few background questions regarding your professional profile. You will be able to choose at the end of this survey whether you would like to submit your answer anonymously or not.
The rest of the survey is divided up with separate sections for each chapter of the Standards. At the beginning of each section, you will find links to both the full text of the chapter from the 2013 edition of the Standards and the proposed edits to the chapter by the Advisory Group. We recommend that you study both of these documents before answering the questions related to the chapter.
You will have an opportunity to provide overall comments on the Standards at the end of the survey.
Note: If you do not wish to comment on every chapter, you can navigate through the survey to the chapter(s) you wish to comment on. You can leave the response boxes for the other chapters blank.
Depending on how familiar you already are with the Standards and if you intend to comment on all or only some of the chapters, this survey may take a considerable amount of time to fill out. You can pause your progress at any time and resume later by clicking on "Save and continue later" on top of your screen.