Child protection and gender-based violence capacity statement
This capacity statement explains the contextual gender-based violence risks across Somalia and how Plan works with communities to address and remove them, while protecting the dignity and rights of all children and young women.
Somalia’s long‑running humanitarian crisis continues to expose children and women to severe protection risks driven by climate shocks, conflict, displacement, economic hardship, and harmful social norms. Children face multiple threats including family separation, psychosocial distress, economic and sexual exploitation and hazardous labour, especially in internally displaced settlements. Child marriage and other negative coping strategies are also rising, particularly among child‑headed households.
Despite ongoing risks, the country has made progress, including removal from the UN list of countries recruiting and using child soldiers.
Child protection services remain insufficient, especially in remote and conflict‑affected areas, with major gaps in case management, family tracing and reunification, mental health and psychosocial support, and legal assistance.
Somalia has extremely high rates of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).
Our work to protect children and reduce gender-based violence
Plan International Somalia delivers comprehensive, integrated, and quality child protection & gender-based violence (GBV) programming across humanitarian and development contexts, with a strong focus on prevention, response, and systems strengthening.
Our programmes are aligned with the minimum standards for child protection in humanitarian action. These are rules or instructions that different organisations agree to follow so they can work well together and make sure implementation of programmes is community-led and everyone can take part, especially those who are often left out.
We work in close coordination with existing community-based child protection structures, which play a central role in case identification, risk analysis, and referral to support at community level.
Our work to protect children and reduce risk includes:
- Placing 46 trained social workers (22 women) in different programme areas to help protect children and support people facing violence. This helps them quickly notice when a child needs help and build trust with families.
- Supporting 4,250 children (2,340 girls) who were facing serious problems like early marriage, violence, female genital mutilations, rape, neglect, family separation, child labour, or emotional stress.
- Ensuring children received different types of help depending on their circumstances and needs, such as: safe temporary care, emotional support, giving needed items or cash support.
How we work with communities to support mental health and psychosocial well-being
- Established 5 child-friendly spaces (CFS) using Plan International’s Child-Friendly Spaces Toolkit, providing safe, age-appropriate, and inclusive psychosocial support for children and adolescents affected by conflict, displacement, and other crises.
- Implemented life skills and peer-to-peer sessions for adolescents in and out of school, providing opportunities to build self-esteem, resilience, and protective behaviours, and to access age-appropriate information, including on sexual and reproductive health and rights, in line with Plan International’s adolescent-centred approach.
- Support existing safe spaces and deliver life skills and sexual and reproductive health and rights informed programming for adolescent girls, strengthening knowledge, confidence, protective behaviours, and linkages to child protection and gender based-violence referral services.
Our work with partners and engagement
Plan International Somalia actively engages in national and inter-agency coordination platforms to advance child protection and GBV priorities. The organisation is a member of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), Child Protection Area of Responsibility (AoR), GBV and Protection Clusters, Somali NGO Consortium, National Female Genital Mutilation Steering Committee, and the Joint Force Alliance (JFA).
Through these platforms, Plan contributes to strategy development, policy dialogue, and coordinated response planning, strengthening coherence and impact across the child protection sector.
Download the capacity statement
Child Protection and GBV-Capacity Statement
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Categories: Early childhood development, Protection from violence, Sexual and reproductive health and rights
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