Protection

People inclreasingly need protection in the many conflicts, natural disasters or protracted social conflicts that come to dominate their lives. There is much that humanitarian agencies can do to help them and to mobilize authorities to be held accountable in implementing politics of exclusion to create a vacuum for robbing people of their possessions. There need to be a new determination to develop truly practical programming that protects people from all forms of violation, exploitation and abuse. Initiations to spread democracy also needs a new determination to develop policies that protects people if we are serious about freedom and dignity of people. Aid workers are expected to know about protection and be able to train others to do so too. This involves an active concern for people’s personal dignity as well as for their safety and material needs. A person’s ability to maintain a strong sense of personal identity and self-respect can hold them through extreme physical suffering.

Ensuring people’s protection is the legal responsibility of de jure or de facto authorities in a given situation. These authorities are usually governments, international peacekeeping forces or armed groups. Humanitarian agencies are rarely in a position to protect anyone directly from the violent assaults, terror tactics, displacement and dispossession that cause so much suffering and destitution to the victims of war and disaster. As a result, and particularly in war, humanitarian agency personnel have often felt like bystanders to atrocity.

Agencies work hard to ensure that the humanitarian assistance programmes they design and deliver do not thoughtlessly expose civilian populations to yet more dangers from raiding, exploitation, rape, isolation, permanent displacement or corruption, and so inadvertently supporting those pursuing war or personal enrichment.

Politically, humanitarian agencies can also work to influence the responsible authorities, and so play their part in important local, national and international efforts to ensure respect for the norms, rights and duties set out in international law. Holding the appropriate authorities responsible and accountable is critical in protection work. A great part of this involves putting pressure on and working with those with legal responsibility for protection – state authorities, international peacekeeping forces and de facto authorities like armed groups. Perpetrators must be made aware that there will be consequences to their abusive acts of violence. Much of it also involves liaising closely with other international organisations with protection mandates.

Finally, humanitarian organisations can work long-term to influence the deeper values of violent prone societies so that the principles of human dignity and protection are more broadly embraced by the hearts, minds and institutions of a society. Protection needs arise in situation such as in armed conflicts, post conflicted areas, protracted social conflicts and natural disasters which in all these main contexts of humanitarian action, people are exposed to extreme levels of risk and can be forced to engage in equally perilous and exploitative coping or survival strategies.

Violations and deprivations that cause protection needs

• Deliberate killing, wounding, displacement, destitution and disappearance.
• Sexual violence and rape.
• Torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
• Dispossession of assets by theft and destruction.
• The misappropriation of land and violations of land rights.
• Deliberate discrimination and deprivation in health, education, property rights, access to water and economic opportunity.
• Violence and exploitation within the affected community.
• Forced recruitment of children, prostitution, sexual exploitation and trafficking, abduction and slavery.
• Forced or accidental family separation.
• Arbitrary restrictions on movement, including forced return, punitive curfews or roadblocks which prevent access to fields, markets, jobs, family, friends and social services.
• Thirst, hunger, disease and reproductive health crises caused by the deliberate destruction of services or the denial of livelihoods.
• Restrictions on political participation, freedom of association and religious freedom.
• The loss or theft of personal documentation that gives proof of identity, ownership and citizen’s rights.

Direct personal violence in conflicts or protracted social conflict is a common cause of suffering and death. The deliberate murder, abduction, disappearances of civilians – women, men and children – has been central to the policies of belligerents in most situations.

The vicious use of sexual violence against civilians has also been central to the policies and practices of many of those pursuing war. Beyond the immediate humiliation, outrage and social impact of sexual violence, the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is an increasing and frequently deliberate result of such strategies of personal violence.

Children have been murdered routinely in recent wars just as they have been throughout history. They have also been brutally coerced into becoming child soldiers and prostitutes or forced into circumstances so terrible that taking on such roles emerges as the best choice open to them.

In addition to killings and sexual violence, hundreds of thousands of people have experienced the most vicious personal injuries which ended up to disability. Families have been coerced to give up their belongings to the belligerents. Millions of women, men and children have been left emotionally wounded and economically and socially vulnerable as widows, widowers or orphans.

The extent of these atrocities means that humanitarian action focused primarily on assistance can fall well short of protecting people’s dignity and integrity or meeting their urgent need for safety. People obviously require personal protection as well as food aid and healthcare if they are not to become the ‘well-fed dead’

it is most of all impoverishment, dispossession, destitution, disease and sheer exhaustion that are responsible for people’s suffering . Throughout the 1990s, most civilians died from war rather than violently in war. This is true of most wars that do not involve the mass slaughter of civilians.

The deprivations caused by war – what people have taken away from them –often become the determinant factor in people’s suffering. Deliberate assaults on economic assets and livelihoods plunge people into poverty and threaten them with destitution and disease. In cities, fear can force people into siege conditions. Maintaining or recovering people’s access to key social and economic services is one of the biggest challenges in protection work.

In many cases, force and fear may impel people not to restrict their movement but to extend it dramatically by becoming refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs). Extreme movement of this kind creates similar problems of access, as people are usually forced to flee to areas where services are limited, congested or non-existent. In such situations, ensuring safe access to basic services becomes a major protection challenge.

When we are cut we bleed and when we cannot drink we thirst; but beyond our material needs, we also feel and care – about ourselves and others. This sense of self-worth, and the deep value of being together in family and community of some kind, are as important to protect and assist as are our physical needs. We live emotionally, socially and spiritually as well as physically, and so we suffer emotionally, socially and spiritually too. So for those who are excluded and detached there is additional sense of insecurity since there seem to be no one to turn to. Many violations, deprivations and restrictions degrade a person and are often designed to do so. They make people feel less than human by shaming them, tormenting them, disregarding them, dispossessing them or reducing them to inhuman conditions.

This most basic insight of humanitarian action makes clear that preserving a person’s dignity and integrity as a human being is as much a goal in humanitarian work as ensuring their physical safety and providing for their material needs. The principle of humanity recognises human beings as much more than physical organisms in need of the means of survival. As such, humanitarian work extends beyond physical assistance to the protection of a human being in their fullness. This means a concern for a person’s safety, dignity and integrity as a human being. These deprivations are all deliberate violations and abuses of a person’s right to property, livelihood, education and health, as well as to free association, freedom of religion and cultural autonomy. Ultimately, they can prove socially devastating and individually fatal, which is frequently the intention.

Protection: An ALNAP guide for humanitarian agencies, ODI, 2005

Website: www.alnap.org