Please refer to the attached files.
SCOPE
This document provides guidance to the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) for the provision of material assistance to large institutions and long-term residential care facilities providing “institutional care” in the form of long-term (i) residential care facilities for children without parental care (including unaccompanied children)1 and/or (ii) residential facilities for persons with disabilities (children and adults) and those with mental health conditions. This guidance does not apply to facilities providing long-term residential care to older persons (“geriatric facilities”).
BACKGROUND
This document was developed by the HCT Protection Strategic Working Group with support from the European Disability Forum (EDF), UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO and technical review from the Protection Cluster. It acknowledges the need to balance the “humanitarian imperative” to save lives during the winter period for persons living in institutions during the harsh winter months while enabling HCT members to uphold commitments to (i) the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children: resolution / adopted by the General Assembly, 24 February 2010, A/RES/64/142 and (ii) the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 13 December 2006, A/RES/61/106. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with disabilities has made it clear that "Emergency and recovery funding should not support continued institutionalization” and that instead recovery efforts should facilitate accelerated deinstitutionalization (para 107, CRPD/C/5 Guidelines on deinstitutionalization, including in emergencies).
RATIONALE
This document proposes ways to support and simplify decision-making by HCT members and outlines an approach that separates the individual/resident, the building, and the ‘institutionalization system’ (rather than viewing them as one). It then further breaks down material assistance into the following categories: A. Support to individuals B. Support to ‘resources of the building’ C. Temporary support to a building D. Temporary support to human resource gaps E. Permanent support to a building F. Support to the institutionalisation system