Systems and methods for Segment Routing Traffic Engineering (SR-TE) with awareness of local protection include the advertisement of local protection information in effect at each SR capable node via Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), Border Gateway Protocol Link-State advertisement (BGP-LS), telemetry, etc. This information can include identity (IP address) of protected elements (link/node), type of protection (node, link, SRLG), a SID list for the backup path, whether protection is active, etc. This information can also be advertised via Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) as well. The information can also include a Binding SID (BSID) in the advertisement for local backup paths. Further, the present disclosure can enable a new SR OAM message (probe) to instruct a node to activate/deactivate a specific backup path in the forwarding plane for testing purposes.