The IASC Benchmarks on the Centrality of Protection require Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) and clusters to jointly identify, analyze, and respond to protection risks. For the shelter sector, this means:

1. Mainstreaming Protection - Shelter programs must be designed in ways that prevent harm. For instance, ensuring shelters are constructed with adequate privacy, are not located in high-risk zones, and provide safety from gender-based violence.
2. Integrating Protection Objectives - Shelters should actively reduce risks, such as forced evictions, by coupling shelter response with legal aid and advocacy for security of tenure.
3. Advocacy - The shelter cluster plays a crucial role in highlighting the housing-related impacts of conflict or disaster, including destruction of homes or discriminatory access to land, by feeding evidence into key messaging by humanitarian leadership.
4. Enabling Specialized Protection Services - Supporting displaced people in obtaining legal documentation can be essential for securing housing, land, and property (HLP) rights — a foundational aspect of the right to adequate housing.

Centrality of Protection Workshop 2025

The IASC Task Force 1 on the Centrality of Protection (CoP) developed the Benchmarks in 2023-24 as tool to support HCTs in implementing the IASC’s 2016 Policy on Protection in Humanitarian Action (often referred to as the Centrality of Protection). Developed and field tested with several global clusters and HCTs, the Benchmarks are now being rolled out across the IASC and global and country levels. This process is being led by the IASC’s new Community of Practice on the Centrality of Protection (which effectively replaced Taskforce 1). Within this context, the CoP organized a series of virtual workshops for country level coordinators as part of this roll-out. In March-April 2025, Vicki Metcalfe-Hough facilitated three editions of this workshop for the Shelter Cluster coordination teams  which provided an opportunity to learn about the Benchmarks, how cluster coordinators should use them, and to exchange learning on the ways in which we may already be embedding protection in cluster strategies.