Guidance

FCDO Due Diligence: Safeguarding for external partners

This guidance explains the safeguarding standards FCDO expects and how we assess partners’ ability to protect others from SEAH including their own staff and volunteers.

Documents

Details

The Enhanced Due Diligence provides FCDO partners with details of the new safeguarding standards the Secretary of State for International Development announced in March 2018. It explains how they will be applied as part of FCDO’s programme management cycle, and also in enhanced due diligence assessments (DDAs) of partners.

The standards aim to assess an organisation’s ability to protect children, young people and vulnerable adults they work with, as well as their own staff and volunteers, from sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. This is the first version of the guide, which was shared informally in June with UK Civil Society Organisations who receive direct funding from FCDO. It has been used in initial assessments and for consultation with partners.

The Child Safeguarding Due Diligence builds on the Enhanced Due Diligence by providing FCDO partners with additional guidance on safeguarding standards where their programmes come into contact directly or indirectly with children. Children are particularly vulnerable due to their lack of power and agency and this guidance covers safeguarding measures for these broader child harms including from sexual abuse to physical abuse, online abuse, negligent treatment, emotional abuse and commercial exploitation.

Published 18 October 2018
Last updated 7 November 2022 + show all updates
  1. Child Safeguarding Due Diligence for external partners guidance has been reviewed and updated.

  2. January 2020 document ‘Enhanced Due Diligence: Safeguarding for external partners’ has been reviewed, updated and renamed ‘Safeguarding against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (SEAH) Due Diligence Guidance for FCDO implementing partners’.

  3. January 2020 document 'Enhanced Due Diligence: Safeguarding for external partners' has been renamed 'Safeguarding against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (SEAH) Due Diligence Guidance for FCDO implementing partners'.

  4. Child Safeguarding Due Diligence: for external partners added

  5. Section 4, page 4, on the Code of Conduct amended

  6. First published.