Protection Cluster Co-Facilitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Lessons Learned for Oxfam's Protection Cluster Support Project

Oxfam’s protection cluster support project, which started in mid-2010, combined cluster
co-facilitation with the development of cluster tools and the strengthening of cluster
processes in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Several of the
lessons learned are of broader use to agencies involved in cluster co-facilitation both
within protection and more generally. Direct co-facilitation of the cluster in Orientale
transformed a low-functioning provincial protection cluster into one of the more active in
the country and increased awareness of, and response to, provincial protection issues at
the national level. Activities to improve the effectiveness of the protection clusters across
the east included support for annual processes such as the Humanitarian Action Plan, and
the production of several procedural and advocacy tools and resources such as the
Protection Toolkit and the Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit. Standard impact indicators
for protection programs were developed, adopted by the protection cluster at the national
level, and are in the process of being adopted by the Pooled Fund. The project also worked
to increase the meaningful involvement of Congolese NGOs in the protection cluster
through training workshops.
NGO’s bring several distinct advantages to their role as co-facilitators, including
encouraging greater inclusivity and ensuring linkages to communities through connections
to programs. Oxfam’s project underlined the importance of focusing on the added value of
NGO’s and avoiding acting as a replacement to the cluster lead. Oxfam particularly brought
strong protection and advocacy expertise to the cluster, as well as a strong engagement
with humanitarian reform in DRC and the capacity to bring concerns raised in the
provinces to the attention of national actors through a proactive advocacy coordinator
based in Kinshasa.
Due both to the decentralized nature of the protection cluster in the DRC and a series of
changing leads and co-facilitators, it has historically been difficult to ensure the uptake and
long-term durability of support tools developed. The national cluster does not standardize
cluster tools across the country. Providing effective support to the coordination of
protection initiatives was dependent upon the regionally distinct characteristics of
provincial and national protection clusters and their relationships with the range of other
protection structures within the UN integrated mission. The protection cluster is not the
primary forum for a number of protection issues, including sexual violence, within UN and
state-led coordination systems in the DRC, and there is a lack of systematic coordination
between these systems.