UNHCR and its partners will mobilize and empower refugee communities, building on the education, skills, and capacities of affected populations in order to strengthen their abilities to protect themselves and identify solutions. With particular attention given to the participation of women and girls, this will be done mostly through trainings on community mobilization and empowerment, (self-)management, writing project proposals, fundraising, the establishment of inclusive leadership structures, including complaint mechanisms, and on legal awareness. The mobilization of active community members will focus on topics such as education, transmittable diseases, the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), social assistance and social rights. UNHCR will encourage the participation of refugees with particular skills and capacities, so they can reach out to the rest of community members (e.g. DAFI students, successful small business owners, etc.). Apart from trainings, UNHCR will support exchange between communities, or other community initiatives, as well as peaceful co-existence projects, which could include infrastructure repairs. For all such projects, whenever possible, the priority will be given to joint projects including refugees, IDPs and host communities. Building on the network of already assisted communities, as well as communities identified through the communities mapping conducted in 2018, UNHCR will intensify its efforts in reaching out to new and smaller communities and encourage less organized communities to take a proactive approach in building up their internal structures and resources. As another important topic for the development of refugee communities and their empowerment, UNHCR will, as much as possible, assist in facilitating meetings with the authorities at the national, regional and local level as a mechanism enabling community participation in government decision-making on measures that affect them. UNHCR will involve the State Migration Service and local state actors in communication with community representatives on regular basis. UNHCR will work closely with development actors and local communities, focusing on inclusion of refugees in the existing programs for local and internally displaced communities. Through the UNCT working group, UNHCR will ensure that refugee communities are engaged into the community capacity building activities conducted by other agencies, namely IOM, UNICEF and UNFPA. As young refugees have reported that their communities are formed around sports, UNHCR will build linkages with local sports organizations to promote the inclusion of refugee youth. If the state proceeds to establish the regional integration centers envisaged in the National Strategy and its Action plan, UNHCR will provide appropriate support. UNHCR has requested its partners’ staff to undergo the PSEA prevention training, according to the developed SOPs for accountability to affected populations (AAP). This will be monitored. PSEA information package has also been supplied to partners and distributed during community events. UNHCR will hold its partners accountable to the standards on PSEA and assist them in the development of prevention and complaint mechanisms if needed. The level of awareness of people of concern on PSEA will also be monitored during post-distribution monitoring exercises, as well as during participatory assessment exercises and community consultations meetings.
