The UN Refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been protecting civilians for decades, but protection as a response by the humanitarian community is still relatively new, loosely-defined, and some experts warn of the danger of over-promising what cannot be delivered.
The top five humanitarian NGOs include protection as a core activity, a UNHCR-led protection cluster has been formed as part of the humanitarian reforms, and protection is included in most humanitarian appeals.
Problematically, the term means different things to different agencies: UNHCR and ICRC protection mandates are defined by international law; other humanitarian agencies tend to focus on protecting people from harm, abuse and exploitation, or take a wider approach of protecting all civilian rights, including shelter, water or education; some embrace both. IRIN interviewed various humanitarian protection specialists to discover the differences.
Marc DuBois, head of the global medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières, in Britain, has written and debated extensively on the dangers of humanitarians over-promising how much protection they can deliver, perhaps masking the responsibility of the perpetrators of violence and abuse in crisis situations.
He recently expressed his views on the "fig leaves and other delusions of protection" in the Humanitarian Exchange magazine, published by the UK Overseas Development Institute.
Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF's Senior Advisor on Child Protection in Emergencies, guided the organization's approach in Haiti and Darfur, among other locales, and has written extensively on the subject.
Bill Forbes, Associate Director of Protection at World Vision International, the world's largest relief and development NGO, runs their programmes for street children, those affected by armed conflict, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, and child trafficking.
Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, Deputy Director of International Protection Services at UNHCR, coordinates the global protection cluster of 40 agencies in the emergency protection response, which has been active in Côte d'Ivoire, Colombia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa and Haiti.
QUESTION: How do you define your organization's protection role and where its protection limits lie?
ANSWER: Marc DuBois, MSF UK - We struggle even with the word, 'protection' – different people in MSF have different approaches to it and there is no consensus. Responding to humanitarian crises requires more than the sterile distribution of goods and services; if a population is being abused, it requires more than assistance, and humanitarians should pat themselves on the back for breaking through the 'aid alone' barrier.
MSF's protection limits are not hard and fast. We can try to stop people at checkpoints from harassing patients crossing in search of healthcare; we can design our own programmes to minimize violence, [like] delivering tents to Haitians in a way that will not end up in a riot, but we cannot go out and stop physical violence and abuse – that is a clear limit.
ANSWER: Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF - The way we define protection varies a lot. UNICEF's [2008] child protection strategy states [that it] is 'preventing and responding to violence, exploitation and abuse to ensure children's rights to survival, development and well-being,' but UNICEF also signs up to a broader, rights-based inter-agency definition of protection through the protection cluster.
Whenever you engage with governments or non-state actors on protection of civilians against harm or abuse, you always have to have in mind their accountability. You are there to assist them, to see how they will protect people from abuse.
You can't ... be the agency taking on those responsibilities. In Haiti, when there was no police force up-and-running, and displaced people were experiencing abuse, we could not just stand by and do nothing, but we tried to build the capacity of remaining police forces to address it.
We helped them establish police brigades. It was then the police who started monitoring airports to make sure children had appropriate documentation so they weren't trafficked out of the country.
In Sri Lanka we advocated for the release of children in the LTTE [Tamil Tigers rebel group], but we wouldn't start sending supplies to strengthen police forces, or hand out money that could be used to fuel conflict. It's a thin line we tread.
It can be more difficult to get ... non-state actors to address violations ... for instance, the LTTE in Sri Lanka was an organized rebel group, [so] the government of Sri Lanka would not accept if outsiders try to build up the LTTE's capacity to protect.
ANSWER: Bill Forbes, World Vision - World Vision is committed to doing everything possible to ensure that our activities do not put children at risk. We define this as being a 'child-safe organization' ... [which] includes efforts at prevention, responding and protecting related to abuse, neglect, exploitation and other forms of violence against children.
We do not promise that children in our target communities will be safe. We do not take on the responsibility for security, other than ensuring all efforts to not put people at risk of harm through participation in activities. However, since we work in volatile environments, even this must be spelled out in each crisis.
ANSWER: Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, UNHCR - We define it both [in terms of] content and the people we cover, which includes refugees, stateless people, returnees, and internally displaced persons [IDPs]. We don't have a generic protection definition.
For refugee protection we follow the gamut of rights in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and for stateless people the 1954 and 1961 Conventions are applied. With IDPs there is no internationally binding legal treaty, but our work is mainly based on the 1988 guiding principles.
The protection cluster's 40 or so members have adopted a definition, which defines protection as "all activities aimed at respecting the rights of the individual in accordance with letter and spirit of all relevant bodies of law, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law or international refugee law."
QUESTION: Since few agencies have the same notion of what 'humanitarian protection' means, should it be scrapped altogether? Should agencies just label the activities that make it up - mental health support, documentation of human rights abuses, and the like?
ANSWER: DuBois, MSF UK - There is no need to scrap it. The term works internally for us, and we do break protection into projects. We know what we mean by humanitarian protection, it is just not what the public understands by it. They think it is mainly provision of physical safety: when the armed forces stop bad people doing bad things to good people.
[In the Humanitarian Exchange magazine, DuBois cited the following question: "If you were walking in the street and saw a group of people beating a child on the ground, which of the following activities would you consider protection?"
- Run across the street and stop the attacker.
- Keep walking. Lobby for better street lighting.
- Run home and write down everything you witnessed as a report for publication.
- Visit the family of the victim to offer replacements for torn clothing.
He said humanitarians considered all the responses as examples of humanitarian protection, whereas the public overwhelmingly thought only of the first.
ANSWER: Nylund, UNICEF - The risk [of scrapping humanitarian protection] would be that the 20 years we have spent trying to get coherence on what ... [it] means would be lost. We each feel a bit differently about what protection means, but hopefully we complement each other in the field. If we all did the same thing, our services would not be wide enough.
ANSWER: Menikdiwela, UNHCR - Whatever category of assistance you use relates to fundamental human rights, which is protection. You can't scrap it. Each agency interprets the parameters through their own lens: UNICEF through child protection, OHCHR through human rights protection, UNHCR as refugee protection. The value of these mandates lie in their diversity.
We are clearly a long way from being perfect entities, but there are merits to diversity. The challenge is to ensure all protection responses encompass different aspects ... [and] displaced people, women at the risk of sexual violence, and unaccompanied children are all covered in a crisis.
QUESTION: DuBois said humanitarian agencies define protection too much in terms of what they can or cannot deliver, and blame is shifted away from perpetrators. What do you think?
ANSWER: Forbes, World Vision - I think he makes a good point in that NGOs can take on too much responsibility for the situation as it exists, as though their lack of effectiveness causes the situation, which is delusional and misplaced.
However, I also think that the dichotomy between what NGOs can deliver and the situation in the community is a false one, since the focus of much protection work is to strengthen the protective environment in communities, or to advocate against root causes of violence.
NGOs doing good protection work are actually strengthening the capacity of communities and stakeholders to address protection issues, including responding to and stopping perpetrators.
ANSWER: Menikdiwela, UNHCR - I don't agree [with DuBois]. If you look at what humanitarians are doing in Democratic Republic of Congo, eastern Chad, Darfur, South Sudan, these are all complex political situations, but no humanitarians are saying, 'this is what we can do to solve the crisis'.
They are just doing what they can to their best ability. Bringing perpetrators to justice is beyond the gambit of any humanitarian agency. If we do that, we compromise the humanitarian mandate. We still need to maintain a strategic humanitarian space from the political wings of the UN – that is a concern for all humanitarian agencies – but getting more involved in protection is not a bad thing.
QUESTION: Some argue that donors are funding a growing protection bureaucracy rather than engaging in other types of protection, letting them off the hook, to a degree. What are your thoughts?
ANSWER: DuBois, MSF UK - States with duties to act are constrained by real-world politics. In that dynamic, being able to say they're funding protection can shield them in the same way that they once were able to say they were giving humanitarian aid to address a political crisis, as opposed to addressing it as a political problem.
Funding protection is no bad thing – advocates and human rights organizations who can speak up on abuses are needed – but it is only part of a bigger puzzle.
ANSWER: Forbes, World Vision - I think both security-related funding and bureaucracy-related protection [the growing administration surrounding protection work, including the protection cluster, protection departments at NGO headquarters] are underfunded. Perhaps NGOs focus available funding on the bureaucracy because there has not been enough funding to move beyond that? The onus is partly on NGOs to demonstrate evidence, based good practice, for scale-up.
ANSWER: Nylund, UNICEF - I have not seen studies analyzing how much is spent on security-related protection [such as peacekeeping operations] versus humanitarian protection activities, but I do advocate that our child protection work is not just about software, and it can be expensive. In Sudan we supported police to establish child and family protection units; these are now set up in every state and the police have invested in it more than UNICEF has, and that was a hefty investment.
Agencies need to approach donors in a coherent way to say what would be a reasonable proportion of funding that should be directed to protection, and should figure out how we can advocate for more. It is not yet seen as a strategic priority for the UN.
QUESTION: What do you see as being the biggest protection gaps?
ANSWER: Forbes, World Vision - From a child protection perspective, I would say that exploitation through labour, violence in the home, and harmful traditional practices are the most critical.
ANSWER: Nylund, UNICEF - The biggest protection gap relates to scale. The scale of UNICEF's and others' protection programmes ... is not sufficient. While some donors are more forceful about making sure funding goes to protection, in humanitarian appeals protection is almost always underfunded.
ANSWER: Menikdiwela, UNHCR - There are no gaps that are being completely unaddressed at the global level. Ten years ago governments wouldn't be talking about "responsibility to protect"
In some cases where states are not living up to their duties ... the gap is more about translating concepts at a [UN] policy level in Geneva and New York into the field of operations; transitioning from concepts to reality on the ground.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
