Contents
- An Overview of the 2026 Annual Meeting
- Agenda and Session Summaries for the Annual Meeting
- Day 1 → 9th June 2026
- Day 2 → 10th June 2026
- Day 3 → 11th June 2026
- Participant Pack for the 2026 Annual Meeting
- Read the Background Paper on Child Protection in a Resource-Constrained World
An Overview of the 2026 Annual Meeting
The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (the Alliance) is organising the 2026 Annual Meeting for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action on Zoom from the 9th to 11th of June 2026. This includes 3 days dedicated to the theme of the meeting, “Child Protection in a Resource-Constrained World: From Challenges in Financing to Innovative Solutions”.
At a time when humanitarian needs are escalating while resources are tightening and the global legal and normative framework for protecting children due to increasing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law is under strain, collective reflection and exchange are critical to sustaining and strengthening child protection outcomes. In response to these challenges, the 2026 Annual Meeting will provide a dedicated space to share evidence, practice, and innovation that can support more effective and resilient child protection responses. The meeting will retain its global focus, while centering realities and solutions emerging at national and sub-national levels.
Open Space Sessions: Shaped by You! This year, the Annual Meeting introduces a new feature: Open Space Sessions, taking place on the 10th of June. These sessions offer a space where you can propose and lead discussions on topics that matter most to you—from emerging challenges to practical solutions and lessons from your context. Designed to be informal and collaborative, Open Space sessions create room for deeper exchange, peer learning, and collective problem-solving. No advance preparation is needed—topics will be proposed during the session by you, and you can join the conversations most relevant to you.
The Annual Meeting will be conducted primarily in English, with simultaneous interpretation services available in Arabic, French, and Spanish. In addition, translated captions will be available for all sessions in a wider selection of languages to ensure accessibility for all participants.
Agenda and Session Summaries for the Annual Meeting
Day 1 → 9th June 2026
The first day of the Annual Meeting will begin with an opening session setting the stage for discussions on child protection in a resource-constrained world, bringing together diverse perspectives on the challenges, risks, and strategic shifts facing the sector. Participants will then engage in a strategic session exploring how more connected, child-centred ecosystems can strengthen collaboration across humanitarian settings, followed by an interactive discussion on child protection system strengthening in humanitarian action. The day will conclude with a bilingual English-Spanish thematic session highlighting community-based, evidence-driven, and locally led approaches to sustaining child protection responses in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
Session 1 → Opening Session | Setting the Scene: Shaping the Future of Child Protection Amid Financing Challenges
The opening session of the 2026 Annual Meeting for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, taking place on 9 June from 13:00–14:00 CEST, will bring together a wide range of actors — from frontline practitioners to senior sector leaders — to collectively take stock of the mounting pressures facing child protection in humanitarian contexts. Through a mix of practitioner reflections, high-level dialogue, and interactive discussion, the session will create space for honest conversation about the risks, difficult choices, and strategic shifts required to sustain child protection outcomes amid shrinking finances and an increasingly constrained operating environment.
Facilitators and Speakers: Hani Mansourian, Elspeth Chapman, Sheem Sen Gupta, Inah Kaloga, Hussain Abdallah Salman, Alaa Zaza, Solomon Okech, and Youth Advocate
Session 2 → Strategic Session | From Silos to Synergy: Child-Centered Connected Ecosystems
What would it take to truly put children at the center of how the humanitarian system works? This session brings together practitioners from Child Protection, Early Childhood Development, Care, SEL, and other child-focused sectors to confront a shared challenge: despite working toward the same goal, our sectors too often operate in silos—rarely aligning in practice, even when serving the same children and families. Through interactive discussion and practical examples, participants will unpack the challenges of working across sectors, with an emphasis on child-focused sectors, and begin to rethink how the broader humanitarian community can collaborate more effectively towards better outcomes for children. The session will spark fresh thinking on how to shift from disconnected approaches toward more coordinated, child-centered “ecosystems” of support. Join us to build a shared understanding of the problem, challenge the way we currently work, and identify promising entry points for stronger alignment and collaboration across child-focused sectors.
Facilitators and Speakers: Elspeth Chapman, Laurent Chapuis, Zeinab Hijaji, Sweta Sha, Aniruddha Kulkarni, and Maysa Jalbout
Session 3 → Strategic Session | Child Protection System Strengthening in Humanitarian Action
As the Alliance launches a new initiative on Child Protection Systems Strengthening (CPSS) in Humanitarian Action, this interactive session will bring together key stakeholders to help shape its direction and priorities. Through live polling, facilitated discussion, and case studies from humanitarian contexts, including Syria, participants will explore what systems strengthening looks like in humanitarian contexts and how humanitarian crises can serve as opportunities to build more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable child protection systems. The session will examine key considerations for advancing CPSS in humanitarian action, including government engagement and leadership, the role of communities and local and national actors, sustainable financing, workforce strengthening, and the continuity of services during crises. Participants will have the opportunity to share experiences, reflect on emerging practice, and provide critical inputs to inform this emerging workstream from the outset.
Facilitators and Speakers: Matthew Dalling, Elspeth Chapman, Rita Neves, Wathek Alhallak, and Dareen Khattab
Session 4 → Thematic Session | Innovation and Community Action for Child Protection in Contexts with Limited Financial Resources in Latin America and the Caribbean
In contexts of shrinking humanitarian funding and increasing operational constraints, child protection actors are being challenged to rethink how services are designed, delivered, and sustained. This session — held in both English and Spanish — brings together experiences from across Latin America and the Caribbean that demonstrate how local leadership, community participation, operational evidence, and innovative low-cost approaches can help sustain meaningful child protection responses in resource-constrained settings. The session will highlight practical lessons on sustainability, decentralisation, solidarity-based approaches, and the importance of community ownership in maintaining essential child protection services during times of crisis. Facilitators and Speakers: Annalisa Brusati, Carlos Trapani, Daniella Inojosa, Paula Smits, Lyda Guarin, Claudia Di Lucia, and Laura Alejandra Morales Lopez
Day 2 → 10th June 2026
The second day of the Annual Meeting will begin with thematic sessions exploring innovative and community-driven approaches to sustaining child protection systems in resource-constrained settings, followed by discussions on family strengthening, positive parenting, and preventing child recruitment in humanitarian contexts. Participants will then engage in a session focused on meaningful child and youth participation and accountability to children, featuring perspectives and recommendations from children, young people, and practitioners. In the afternoon, participants will take part in the Annual Meeting’s new Open Space sessions—an interactive format designed to foster peer learning, networking, and collaborative problem-solving around emerging priorities and shared challenges. The day will conclude with the Alliance Marketplace, providing participants with an opportunity to connect with the Alliance’s Working Groups, Task Forces, and Initiatives to learn more about their priorities, activities, and opportunities for engagement.
Session 5 → Thematic Session | Locally-led, Financially Smart: Sustainable Child Protection in Resource-Constrained Settings
This session will showcase innovative, community-driven approaches to sustaining and strengthening child protection systems in resource-constrained and humanitarian settings. Drawing on diverse experiences from Uganda and Kenya, it will highlight low-cost, community-based financing models such as the Granary Hub that link post-harvest management and livelihoods to child protection outcomes, as well as women-led initiatives that enhance system strengthening, cross-sector coordination, and localised responses amid funding constraints. The discussion will further explore integrated, community-owned child protection solutions with a focus on disability inclusion mainstreaming. Together, these approaches illustrate how locally rooted, inclusive, and multi-sectoral strategies can build resilient and sustainable child protection systems.
Facilitators and Speakers: Wajahat Ali, Elena Giannini, Sunday Kumakech, Geoffrey Kumakech, Kigen Kipchirchir Benar, Justine Etabu, and Florence Ringe
Session 6 → Thematic Session | Families at the Centre: Preventing Child Recruitment and Advancing Parenting Support in Humanitarian Settings
This session brings together innovative and field driven approaches from Yemen and Kenya to explore how family strengthening and positive parenting can prevent violence, including child recruitment, in contexts of shrinking humanitarian funding. Drawing on experiences from IDP, refugee, and host community contexts, presenters will share how culturally adapted parenting programmes can support families under pressure while strengthening protective environments for children. In increasingly resource-constrained environments, the session will highlight how partnerships between communities, governments, and humanitarian actors can sustain impact. From volunteer-led delivery models to integration with case management and MHPSS services, participants will learn how locally anchored, scalable interventions can continue despite funding cuts. Join us to exchange practical lessons on scaling parenting programmes, strengthening collaboration across stakeholders, and ensuring sustainability. Whether working in emergency or protracted settings, humanitarian practitioners will gain actionable insights to strengthen protective family environments and sustain impact under pressure.
Facilitators and Speakers: Agnes Tillinac, Akram Bahalwan, Dennis Kitsao, and Beatrice Nyakwaka
Session 7 → Thematic Session | Children as Agents of Protection: Meaningful Child and Youth Participation and Accountability to Children in Humanitarian Action
This session explores the role of children and adolescents as agents of child protection and accountability. Save the Children will interview Fatima, a young research participant of Plan International Nigeria, about the findings from the global accountability study Put Us At The Centre and share powerful recommendations from children and young people directed at humanitarian decision-makers. This is followed by Children's Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF) who will present the Tiny Cave, a creative methods-based accountability education resource for young people, including an example of youth-led work with Haitian youth migrant workers in the Dominican Republic. The session will close with the DRC-based Bureau International des Droits des Enfants who will present practical examples that will inspire the audience to approach meaningful child participation and accountability as essential elements of sustainable, locally-led child protection systems. Throughout the session the audience will be encouraged to critically reflect on their role in achieving meaningful child participation and accountability.
Facilitators and Speakers: Lotte Claessens, Nkeh Blessing Tamfu, Elena Giannini, Fabrice Kazadi, Alexandra Bidégaré, Juhi Jha, Zaid Ghnimat, and Fatima
Open Space Sessions
This year, the Annual Meeting introduces a new feature: Open Space Sessions! These sessions offer a space where you can propose and lead discussions on topics that matter most to you—from emerging challenges to practical solutions and lessons from your context. Designed to be informal and collaborative, Open Space sessions create room for deeper exchange, peer learning, and collective problem-solving. No advance preparation is needed—topics will be proposed during the session by you, and you can join the conversations most relevant to you.
Session 8 → The Alliance Marketplace: Meet the Working Groups, Task Forces, and Initiatives
This Marketplace-style session offers participants an interactive opportunity to connect with several of the diverse groups that make up the Alliance community. Through dynamic exchanges and networking opportunities, participants will be able to engage with multiple Working Groups, Task Forces, and Initiatives throughout the session. Attendees will learn more about ongoing priorities, activities, and collaborative efforts across the Alliance, while exchanging ideas with colleagues and exploring opportunities for future involvement and partnership.
Facilitators and Speakers: Kyra Loat, Sandra Maignant, Musa Gambo, Brikena Zogaj, Elena Giannini, Marion Mwebi, Sazan Baban, Eric Gisario, Wajahat Ali, Ilenia de Marino, Justine Abenaitwe, and Ulrike Julia Wendt
Day 3 → 11th June 2026
The final day of the Annual Meeting will begin with a thematic session on integrating, localising, and sustaining quality mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian settings. Discussions will then turn to financing and localisation, exploring how resources can be allocated more effectively, how community expertise can be better recognised and supported, and how more equitable financing approaches can strengthen child protection responses. The afternoon will feature a strategic session focused on reimagining child protection advocacy in a changing humanitarian landscape, followed by a thematic session examining the impacts of funding cuts on child protection outcomes, systems adaptation, and frontline service delivery. The meeting will conclude with a closing session reflecting on key insights, shared learning, and collective priorities for advancing child protection in humanitarian action moving forward.
Session 9 → Thematic Session | Integrating, Localising, and Sustaining Quality MHPSS in Humanitarian Settings
This session explores how child protection and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) actors can redefine and sustain quality programming in the context of shrinking funding, increasing needs, and evolving humanitarian challenges. Bringing together global evidence, critical reflections on localisation, and concrete country experiences, the session will move from co-defining quality and demonstrating how it can be operationalised in practice. Participants will engage with diverse perspectives—from evidence-based programming and competency-building tools to system strengthening and locally led approaches—while reflecting on key questions around power, sustainability, and effectiveness. As the session takes place on 11 June, the International Day of Play, it will also let participants experience the vital role of play through active participatory methods.
Facilitators and Speakers: Domenico di Nuzzo, Fiamma Rupp, Henry Gathercole, Shakirah Luwedde, Maria Bray, Deepali Pavagadhi, Anas Beliah, and Roula Abi Saad
Session 10 → Thematic Session | How Are Resources Allocated? Rethinking Financing and Community Expertise in Child Protection
As humanitarian funding becomes increasingly constrained, child protection actors are being challenged to do more with less while ensuring that resources reach the children and communities most in need. This session brings together three complementary perspectives to explore how financing decisions can strengthen locally led responses and transform the way resources are allocated. Hugh Salmon from the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance and Martha Bragin from the International Association of Schools of Social Work, led by Oksana Boyko from Ukraine and a practitioner from Gaza, will highlight the critical role of local social workers, family, and community-based systems in delivering effective protection services when international support is limited. Pedro Gallido from Child Fund Philippines will share how blended financing models combining community resources, local government support, private sector contributions, and NGO funding can enable rapid, child-focused responses to crises. Gabrielle Bailey, from Children's Rights Innovation Fund will examine the politics and power dynamics of grantmaking, challenging participants to reflect on who gets funded, why, and what innovative financing approaches are being explored. These presentations will offer practical examples and critical reflections on how child protection actors can mobilise resources differently, strengthen local expertise, and build more equitable and sustainable financing approaches in humanitarian settings.
Facilitators and Speakers: Sandra Maignant, Gabrielle Bailey, Pedro Gallido, Oksana Boyko, and Hugh Salmon
Session 11 → Strategic Session | Reimagining Child Protection Advocacy in a Changing World
The humanitarian landscape is shifting — funding is shrinking, political will is faltering, and the tools and strategies we have relied on to advocate for children protection in humanitarian action are being tested like never before. This session invites the child protection community to pause, look critically at our advocacy efforts, and ask honest questions: What is actually working? What assumptions are we still clinging to that no longer hold? And what does meaningful, effective advocacy look like in this new reality? Through interactive reflection, diverse panel perspectives, and facilitated group dialogue, we will hear from a range of voices — including a young advocate — bringing different vantage points on what needs to change and why. Together, we will move from honest diagnosis toward action, identifying concrete next steps that our community can own and carry forward.
Facilitators and Speakers: Elspeth Chapman, Brikena Zogaj, Kristen Hope, Ghazal Keshavarzian, and Youth Advocate
Session 12 → Thematic Session | From Systems to Households: Evidence and Recommendations on Funding Cuts, Child Protection Outcomes, and System Adaptation
During this session, a range of speakers from local to international actors, academics to policy-makers, will take you on a journey from current evidence to practical recommendations. The session kicks-off with findings of a global rapid evidence review on the impact of resource constraints on programming for unaccompanied and separated children, to adapting initiatives for children in fragile urban settings in Kenya following funding cuts. After a half time energiser, we zoom into the refugee contexts of Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh and Dadaab, Kenya to explore the impact of cuts on child protection standards and outcomes. Recommendations for practice including adapting child protection systems and funding models will be explored. We hope to see you at the penultimate session of the 2026 meeting! Facilitators and Speakers: Camilla Jones, Irene Wali, Hannah Thompson, George Ochieng Odalo, Diana Imbiti, and Bree Akesson
Session 13 → Closing
After three days of discussions, strategic workshops, open space sessions, and presentations from across the child protection community, this closing session provides an opportunity to reflect on key insights, emerging themes, and the collective direction of the child protection in humanitarian action sector. Through a facilitated conversation, interactive participant reflection, and small-group dialogue, participants will consider what challenges their thinking, what gives them hope, and what actions they will take forward in their own work. The session will also explore priorities for the Alliance and the wider child protection community looking ahead, helping to translate learning and connections from the meeting into shared commitments and momentum for future action.
Facilitators and Speakers: Hani Mansourian, Elspeth Chapman, Yvonne Agengo, Alaa Zaza, and Laurent Chapuis
Participant Pack for the 2026 Annual Meeting
This Participant Pack provides all the key information needed to prepare for and engage in the 2026 Annual Meeting for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action. It brings together important messages, key materials to review in advance, guidance on respectful participation, and detailed joining instructions to support a smooth and meaningful experience
Available in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, the pack supports participants to fully engage in the meeting.
Read the Background Paper on Child Protection in a Resource-Constrained World
To give participants a deeper understanding of the meeting theme, we are pleased to share the Background Paper for the 2026 Annual Meeting.
This background paper provides key analysis and context to inform the 2026 Annual Meeting discussions. It outlines the current humanitarian landscape affecting child protection, including the funding crisis, erosion of international humanitarian and human rights law, humanitarian architecture reforms, and their impacts on programming and protective environments. Drawing on emerging evidence and field perspectives, the paper highlights both the risks to children and the adaptive strategies underway. Each section concludes with guiding questions to support reflection, exchange, and collective problem-solving during the meeting.
Access the Background Paper in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.
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