Vulnerable Groups: CIVIC recognizes that vulnerable groups (e.g., women and girls, children, older persons, persons with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, internally displaced persons) are affected differently by conflict. CIVIC-facilitated Community Protection Groups (CPGs) or comparable structures or individual civilians engaged (applying a CBP approach) must demonstrate that they are willing and able to impartially, jointly, and inclusively assess the different POC risks of their communities taking all POC-relevant vulnerabilities into account.
Conflict Sensitivity: Conflict sensitivity is “the practice of understanding how aid interacts with conflict in a particular context, to mitigate unintended negative effects, and to influence conflict positively wherever possible, through humanitarian, development and/or peacebuilding interventions.” If it is learned that a program was in some way causing or increasing tensions between sides of the conflict or local communities or increasing risk to civilians, engagement would be paused, and local civilian leaders would be convened to help better understand the dynamics at the local level.
Guiding Tenets: Three tenets guide all CIVIC’s MEL activities. These principles are all closely linked and must all be in place to ensure the safety and security of CIVIC staff, stakeholders, partners, and beneficiaries.
- Do No Harm: In accordance with global best practice and CIVIC’s Safety and Security protocols, CIVIC, in both program implementation and MEL work, endeavors to do no harm to all program staff, stakeholders, and beneficiaries.
- Transparency and accountability: CIVIC views transparency and accountability from two perspectives – internal and external – and from multiples levels (e.g., program and organization). Internally, the MEL teams share data and analysis back to CIVIC program staff. Externally, CIVIC endeavors to be both transparent and accountable with/to partners, stakeholders, and beneficiaries.
- Responsible collection and use of data: “The physical representation of information in a manner suitable for communication, interpretation, or processing by human beings or automatic means. Data may be numerical, descriptive, audio or visual.”