The Palestinian Center forms an emergency team for child protection

The Palestinian Center today held a meeting with a number of Palestinian organisations working in the governmental, civil and community fields in Gaza governorate, with the aim of forming an emergency team for child protection that works to ensure more proactive, workable and effective responses for protecting children in emergencies. The team formed considered that protecting children in emergencies requires confronting every form of abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence directed at them.
The meeting discussed the nature of the services each organisation provides and its needs, and the mechanisms and methods that will be used in the periodsto come, which will ensure that the work of the team formed is facilitated and organised and that information and communications are exchanged.
The meeting put forward a number of recommendations, among them drawing up unified national programmes and a national plan for emergencies that ensures coordination between the participating and concerned organisations so as to provide a rapid field response, as well as drafting a memorandum of cooperation and understanding with the official bodies to give the team formed a legitimate standing, setting out the roles and mechanisms under which it will work in future emergencies.
This meeting forms part of the events of the project "Responding to psychosocial stress and violence against children during and after emergencies in the Gaza Strip", and will be followed by a number of meetings to ensure the team's continuity and to follow up its work.