Code of Conduct, Safeguarding and Reporting
The course that opens before anything else. What is expected of you, where your limits are, how to protect the people you serve and yourself, and when and how to report — with real names and numbers rather than general phrases.
- Length
- 30 min
- modules
- 6
- questions
- 7
- Pass mark
- 80%
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Requirements
No prerequisites — this course is suitable for beginners.
Course information
- Level
- 0
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Length
- 30 min
- modules
- 6
- questions
- 7
- Pass mark
- 80%
- Language
- Arabic / English
- Certificate
- Certificate of completion on passing
Who this is for
- Every volunteer, before any field activity
- Anyone who will work with children or people at risk
- Team leaders and activity coordinators
What you get
- A certificate with a public verification code
- Level 1 of the volunteer path unlocked
- The actual name and number of the person you report to
What you will learn
Course contents
Why a code of conduct exists at all
Not a list of prohibitions written because nobody trusts you. It is what a great many organisations learned the hard way.
When you volunteer, you enter people’s homes and lives at a moment when they are at their least powerful. You hold something they do not: the decision about who receives help, information about their circumstances, and sometimes access to their children. That imbalance of power is the reason every clause in this course exists.
A volunteer who causes harm rarely starts with bad intent. They start with a small step that looks kind — a phone number given, a promise made, a photograph taken, an exception granted to one family. The code draws clear lines precisely because a vague one gets crossed without anyone noticing.
You represent the association
What you do in the field is attributed to Takaful, not only to you. A community’s trust is built slowly and broken by a single incident.
The code protects you too
Following the never-alone-with-a-child rule protects the child, and protects you from an allegation you would have no way to disprove.
It is not judged by intent
The question is not "did you mean harm?" but "did harm occur?". That is what makes the rules usable.
Do no harm
Meaning well is not enough. An activity that gathers children in an unsafe place, a distribution that breeds resentment between neighbours, a photograph that reveals the identity of a survivor of violence — all good intentions that produced harm. Ask before every activity: who could be hurt by this, even unintentionally?
Check your understanding
A volunteer gave their personal number to a mother who said she needed urgent help outside activity hours, with entirely sincere intent. What is the problem?
Dignity and privacy
Assistance is a right, not charity. The difference shows in small details far more than in policies.
This is the heart of the Core Humanitarian Standard: a person receiving assistance holds a right, not a favour. In practice that means they are asked rather than assumed about, told the eligibility criteria rather than left to guess, and able to complain without fearing for their assistance.
✔ Keeps dignity intact
- Asking a family where they would rather receive their parcel
- Explaining why one household qualified and another did not
- Calling people by their names, not their numbers
- Waiting to be invited before entering a room
- Speaking to a person rather than about them in front of them
✘ Damages it
- Photographing the queue because the image is "powerful"
- Discussing one family’s circumstances in front of another
- Referring to people as "cases" within their hearing
- Distributing in public view when there is no need to
- Promising future help you are not certain of
Privacy is part of dignity. A person’s name, health situation, household size and address belong to them; you are entrusted with that information, not an owner of it. It is shared only with someone who needs it to do their job — not with a curious colleague, not in a WhatsApp group, not in a post.
Field scenario
What is the right response?
During a distribution, a woman asks you why her neighbour received a parcel and she did not. The answer is that this round’s criteria cover households with a child under five.
Professional boundaries
Where your role ends — a question the field will put to you more often than you expect.
- Never be alone with a child or a person at risk in a closed space or out of sight
- Never give out your personal number or contact someone we serve through your own accounts
- Never visit a household alone or outside a declared activity
- Never give money or gifts from your own pocket to a particular person
- Never give medical, psychological or legal advice — refer to someone qualified
- Never promise something the decision on which is not yours
- Never use your position to obtain any benefit, however small
Personal giving is not neutral kindness
Paying out of your own pocket for one family feels like the best possible thing to do in the moment. But it creates a dependency between you and that particular household, leaves others feeling wronged, and puts whoever comes after you in the position of being compared. If you see an urgent need, raise it with the association — that is the route that can continue.
A difficult scenario
What do you do?
A ten-year-old has grown attached to you during an activity. She waits for you every time, and has asked for your number "so she can talk to you when she is sad".
Protection from exploitation, abuse and harassment
The hardest module in this course, and the least negotiable.
Sexual exploitation is using a position of power, trust or another person’s need to obtain a sexual benefit. Sexual abuse is any assault or threat of one. The rules below are absolute in humanitarian work: no exception, no cultural interpretation, and no consent from the other party changes them.
- Any sexual activity with a person under eighteen is prohibited, and no claim about age or consent is accepted
- Exchanging any sexual favour for assistance, a service, a job or the promise of one is absolutely prohibited
- Relationships with people we serve are prohibited, because the power gap makes free consent impossible
- Harassment of any kind — verbal, physical or digital — is prohibited towards those we serve and towards colleagues alike
- Discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, nationality, disability or origin is prohibited in service and within the team
- Anyone who knows of a breach and does not report it carries part of the responsibility
The sixth is the one that gets forgotten
Most people who know of a breach do not report it — not because they approve, but because they are unsure, or do not want to harm a colleague, or assume someone else will handle it. Judging whether a concern warrants action is not your decision, and you are not expected to be certain before reporting. What is asked of you is to pass on what you saw.
Check your understanding
You hear a colleague tell a young woman waiting in a registration queue that he "could speed things up for her" if she went out with him. She laughed and did not complain. What do you do?
Data, photography and consent
What you carry about people on your phone, and what you may publish about them.
- Do not keep beneficiary name lists or photographs on your personal phone after the task ends
- Do not send beneficiary data into a WhatsApp group — a group is read by people you do not know and cannot be deleted from their devices
- Share a file only with whoever needs it for their work, through the association’s channel
- Do not use a person’s name or image on your personal account
- Report immediately if you lose your phone or notebook, or a file leaks
Consent to photography is not a smile at the camera. Real consent means the person knows where the image will appear and why, knows that refusing will not affect their assistance in any way, and can withdraw it later. For children: the guardian’s consent and the child’s own, both together rather than either one.
Images that are not published, whatever the consent
A child’s face in a safeguarding or violence context, a survivor of assault, a person in a moment of collapse, undress or injury, or anything that reveals where an at-risk family lives. Consent does not cancel the harm that may reach the subject after publication, and they cannot foresee it the way you can.
Field scenario
An activity has ended and your supervisor asks you to send the attendance list of children’s names quickly. The fastest route available is to photograph it and post it in the team’s WhatsApp group. What do you do?
Reporting: when, how and to whom
The module that makes everything above actionable — with real names and numbers.
A complaint
An objection to a service, a decision or how someone was treated. Handled within days, and closed with a reply that reaches the person.
An incident
Something that actually happened: an injury, a breach of conduct, lost data, a concern for someone’s safety. Reported the same day.
An emergency
Immediate danger to life or safety, right now. Call the emergency services first, then the association.
Who to report to
Takaful's safeguarding focal point: ريم باشات — +961 81 206 341. Report the same day, however small or uncertain the concern seems. If you cannot get through, contact the association at info@takafullb.com.
Two limits you should know about this channel
The number above is the association’s general line rather than a direct one, so choose somewhere you cannot be overheard when you report. No second contact has yet been named for a concern about the safeguarding focal point herself — in that case go directly to whoever is above her in the association, and do not sit on it.
- Write down what you saw or heard as facts: when, where, who was present, and what was said exactly
- Do not investigate, do not ask a child further questions, and do not confront the person you suspect
- Do not promise secrecy — say you will tell only the person who can help
- Report the same day through the channel above
- Do not discuss it with anyone else, even in good faith, even without names
A difficult scenario
What is the right response?
During an activity a child says to you: "I don’t want to go home," and looks frightened. He asks you not to tell anyone.
Check your understanding
Which of the following is an emergency, where you call the emergency services before the association?
Finish the course
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Answer every question before finishing.
Standards this content is built on
- • IFRC Volunteering Policy (August 2022)
- • IFRC Child Safeguarding Policy
- • International Child Safeguarding Standards — Keeping Children Safe
- • Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (2024 edition)
- • UN Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse — core principles
- • Do No Harm principle in humanitarian action