Case Study: Pilot Project to Strengthen Collaboration in Child Protection and Education in Emergency Situations in North Kivu

Following the 2019 annual meeting of the Global Education Cluster, which focused on the protective role of education, the Child Protection Area of Responsibility (AoR) and the Education Cluster affirmed their shared commitment to strengthening coordination between their sectors. This momentum led to the creation of an intersectoral collaboration framework validated by the GEC and the CP AoR, which proposed concrete actions at each stage of the humanitarian programming cycle and now serves as a reference for countries wishing to
operationalise this collaboration.

As a result, joint assessments on Protection in Education, common resource allocation strategies and joint advocacy initiatives have been carried out in several contexts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, this process has resulted, among other things, in (i) the joint
review of secondary data in 2022, (ii) the effective involvement of the child protection DDR
in the development of the ECW DRC II Multi-Year Response Plan in 2024, and (iii) the development of a joint advocacy note for a safe return to school in 2025, the joint production of Cp-EiE operational resources - operational resources, resulting from a collaborative dynamic specific to the DRC context, which also serve as a model for other countries (see table 1.1).

Despite significant progress at the strategic level, collaboration between the Education Cluster and the Child Protection were slow to materialise on the ground. The technical guidelines issued at the national level were struggling to translate into integrated and coordinated interventions at he operational level. In response to this, the national coordination teams have engaged in an in-depth reflection on how to strengthen intersectoral synergies. This has led to the launch of a pilot project in North Kivu province aimed at establishing effective collaboration between the two sectors. The pilot project also aims to inform the ongoing review of the Global Cp-EiE Collaboration Framework (2025) by capitalising on concrete lessons learned from the field.