/safeguarding
ACCOUNTABILITY
Safeguarding
The standard everyone acting in our name is held to, what counts as harm, how to report a concern about anyone here including whoever is in charge — and, at the bottom, an honest list of the protections we do not yet have in place.
01
Who this protects, and who it binds
It protects anyone who comes into contact with our work: the people we are trying to help, children above all, adults who are at risk because of illness, disability, displacement or dependence — and also the people doing the work.
It binds everyone acting in our name without exception: anyone running the organisation, anyone employed by it, volunteers, board members, contractors, interpreters, drivers, visiting photographers, and partner organisations delivering work we fund.
Seniority is not a defence and never a reason to handle something quietly. The more central someone is to this organisation, the more seriously a concern about them is taken.
02
What we mean by harm
Physical harm
Hitting, restraining, or any use of force that is not immediately necessary to prevent injury.
Sexual harm and exploitation
Any sexual act, contact, language or imagery involving a child; and any sexual conduct with an adult that relies on our position, their need, or their dependence on aid.
Emotional and psychological harm
Humiliation, threats, isolation, or persistent behaviour that erodes a person's sense of safety or worth.
Neglect
Failing to act when someone in our care needs food, shelter, medical attention or protection we could have provided.
Exploitation of need
Using access to aid, work, training or selection as leverage over anyone — for money, favours, sex, silence, or anything else.
Harm through information
Publishing names, faces, locations or stories in a way that exposes someone to danger, shame or reprisal — including with their consent, if we should have known better.
Harm caused carelessly counts the same as harm caused deliberately. Intent matters when deciding what to do about a person; it does not change whether someone was hurt.
03
Things nobody acting for us may ever do
Sexual activity with anyone under 18, regardless of local law, local custom, or a claim about their age.
Exchanging money, goods, employment, aid, training or selection for sex or sexual favours — this includes transactions that are legal where they happen.
Sexual relationships with people who receive our aid, because the imbalance of power makes meaningful consent doubtful.
Physical punishment or humiliating treatment of anyone, in any circumstance.
Being alone and unobserved with a child in a situation we arranged, where an observable alternative was possible.
Photographing or recording anyone without their informed agreement, or in a state — injury, distress, undress — that we would not accept being shown in ourselves.
Offering, taking or promising anything of value to influence a decision about who receives help.
Withholding, delaying or threatening to withdraw aid to punish, control or silence someone.
These are absolute. They are not weighed against how useful someone is, how hard they are to replace, or how much a programme depends on them.
04
What we do to prevent it
Before anyone starts
Identity and references checked, previous humanitarian roles asked about directly, and criminal record checks where the law allows us to make them. A reference we cannot verify is treated as no reference.
How work is arranged
Contact with children happens in the open, in view of another adult, wherever it is possible to arrange it that way — and where it is not, we record why in advance rather than explain afterwards.
Images and stories
We ask before we photograph, we explain where it will be published, and we accept a refusal without pressure. We do not publish images of a person in distress, injury or undress. We do not use a location that could identify where a vulnerable person now lives.
Money and selection
Decisions about who receives help are never made by one person alone in private. This is a safeguarding control as much as a financial one, because control over aid is the most common lever for exploitation.
05
How a report is handled
Safety first, before anything else
If someone is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services. Nothing in this policy asks you to wait for us, tell us first, or check with anyone before getting someone to safety.
Tell us
Use the reporting address below. You can report a concern about anyone connected to us — including whoever is running us. You do not need proof, certainty, or a complete account. A suspicion is enough and is treated as enough.
We acknowledge
You get a reply confirming we received it, and who is handling it. If the person you are reporting is the person who would normally handle it, we say so and name someone else.
We act on the duty, not on our reputation
Where the law requires a report to authorities, we make it. We do not run an internal process instead of a statutory one, and we do not delay a referral to work out how it will look.
You are told what happened
Within the limits of the affected person's privacy and any legal restriction, you are told the outcome. "We looked into it" without a conclusion is not an outcome.
It reaches the public record
Where a concern is upheld and publishing it does not identify or endanger the person harmed, it appears in our public correction log.
06
If you report something, you are protected
Nobody who raises a concern in good faith will lose work, funding, a place on a programme, or access to aid because of it. That applies even if the concern turns out to be mistaken. It applies to the person harmed, to a witness, and to someone reporting on another person's behalf.
We will keep your identity to the smallest number of people possible. We will not promise you total confidentiality, because a statutory referral or a criminal process can require disclosure — and a promise we might have to break is worse than an honest limit stated now.
Deliberately false reports made to damage someone are a different matter and are dealt with. Being wrong is not the same as lying, and we will not treat it as if it were.
07
Partners are held to this too
Any organisation delivering work we fund must hold a safeguarding standard at least as strong as this one, must tell us about incidents affecting our work, and must accept that we can end the relationship over a safeguarding failure at any point in a project.
We would rather stop a piece of work than continue it through a partner we have lost confidence in. If that ever happens, the reason appears in our public correction log in whatever terms protect the people affected.
08
What is not in place yet
This section is the most important one on the page. The commitments above are real, and several of the structures that would make them reliable do not exist yet.
No designated safeguarding lead is named
Reports currently go to a general address read by whoever runs the organisation. If your concern is about that person, this route is inadequate and we are telling you so rather than letting you find out.
There is no independent reporting route
No external person, ombudsman or partner organisation currently receives reports that bypass us entirely. This is the single most important thing missing.
No safeguarding training has been delivered
A policy nobody has been trained on is a document, not a protection.
Vetting has not been tested in practice
The checks described above are what we will do. No one has been recruited through them yet.
No incidents have been recorded
Read that as what it is — an organisation that has not started operating — and not as evidence that nothing happens here.
If you are deciding whether to work with us, fund us, or send people into our care, these gaps are a legitimate reason to wait, and we would rather you asked about them than assumed they were closed.
This policy has not yet been through a formal review. It is reviewed at least once a year and immediately after any incident. Concerns about the policy itself, not only about conduct, can be sent to the same address.
