Embracing a Safeguarding Culture by Civil Society Organisations in Uganda

Safeguarding means to protect from harm or damage with an appropriate measure. There is increasing awareness of the need for safeguarding among development and humanitarian organisations the world over. Organisations have adopted safeguarding practices albeit to varied degrees. The CivFund under the Usalama[1] fund is contributing to efforts to raise awareness on safeguarding of women, children, and persons with disabilities and ensuring that these practices become lived experiences.  The fund is supporting national anchor and grassroots organisations to learn, build internal capacity and infrastructure for safeguarding within and for their beneficiaries.

In August 2022, I together with two of my colleagues visited partners in northern and West Nile sub regions if Uganda 271 and 474 Kilometres respectively away for the capital, Kampala. These are just four out of 11 organisations with five located in the capital and one further up in Koboko district. Our partner check-in visits take the form of site visits to our partners’ offices and at times their beneficiaries. Our conversations during the visits are open with the partner doing most of the talking while we listen. The objective is to learn from the partners’ experiences related to the work they are doing.

As I prepared for the check-ins with these organisations and indeed over the six-hour long drive to the first stop in Gulu City, I was preoccupied by one question. How has the safeguarding journey of these organisations unfolded over the last six months? The initial discussions with stakeholders in the development field working with women, children, and persons with disability and discourse during the inception meeting of March 2022 revealed that organisations were at different stages of the safeguarding trajectory. Some had basic understanding and were applying simple safeguarding practices, while others exhibited long standing experience with the subject.

The safeguarding stage notwithstanding, there was consensus and apprehension about how indulging and costly a safeguarding enterprise could be thanks to the detailed presentations by the learning partner.  It was observed that there has not been mainstream funding for safeguarding although many donors want to work with ‘safe’ organisations. These views had somewhat dampened my optimism about this endeavour. My long experience with development work has taught me that it is important to believe in the work that you do. That your efforts matter and that the impact that you strive for is achievable.

The visit to our partners buoyed my positivity about this stream of work. There were testimonies that affirmed the notion that safeguarding journey is a learning ride where for as long as one stays on the bus, they will reach the next stage and yonder! At the most basic level, safeguarding is about being aware of the responsibility to provide a safe environment at the workplace and ensuring safety of beneficiaries, anticipating safeguarding risks associated with one’s work and devising measures to minimise the risks. Prevention is better than cure so goes the adage. Redress or restitution upon violation or abuse may be too costly. The organisations reputation could be irretrievably damaged while the survivor may not recover for a very long time.

The partners narrated how they had unravelled a nuance of safeguarding risks associated with their work not perceived before. For example, at one organisation we listened to different risks associated with their work including safety of persons with disability in residential training at their facility, and on travel out of the district and the country to participate in sports competitions. Some risks were related to unlikely operations of the organisation.

“One time we had a group of your people (persons with disability) attending a skills training here. We discovered that our kitchen staff were exploiting male trainees by asking them to split firewood in exchange for larger portions of meals. This was wrong!” Usalama Fund Partner Gulu

In the end safeguarding policies and infrastructure may not be sufficient. It is only embracing a safeguarding culture that can stand in the face a multitude of ever-changing safeguarding risks compounded by persistent capacity and resource deficits. This means seeing the organisations work through a safeguarding lens i.e. Who is at risk? How can the risk be minimised? What happens in the event of an incident?

[1] Usalama is Swahili word for safety.