1. Integrating protection into humanitarian responses– basic guidance [DRAFT]
October 2010
The purpose of this basic guidance is to provide ECHO and its partners with suggestions
regarding the designing of humanitarian responses with a protection entry point. OHCHR, as the
Protection Cluster Lead, suggests that ECHO encourage its partners to also use the attached
Agency Checklist for Integrating Protection into Humanitarian Responses when designing their
projects and to study the resources listed in the attached Humanitarian Protection bibliography.
Both this document and the Agency Checklist are still drafts, and OHCHR intends to revise
them in the coming months, with the aid of the other member organisations of the Protection
Cluster as well as the other Clusters.
Definition of protection
Protection is about seeking to ensure the safety of civilians from harm. It is increasingly
recognized that the vast majority of humanitarian agencies have a role to play in seeking to
ensure the protection of civilians. In particular, they have a responsibility to understand the
nature of the risks that affected populations face, and to consider the positive and negative
impacts of their work on these risks. It is imperative to ensure that humanitarian interventions
do not undermine or jeopardize the dignity or integrity of affected populations.
There are many definitions for protection, but the most commonly accepted in the humanitarian
field is the definition applied by ICRC:
“All activities aimed at ensuring full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with
the letter and the spirit of the relevant bodies of law, i.e. human rights law, international
humanitarian law and refugee law.”
Thus, protection work refers to a wide range of activities and strategies carried out by UN
agencies, NGOs and affected communities to ensure respect for rights.
However, many humanitarian agencies find this definition quite theoretical and prefer to use the
Oxfam definition of:
“Safety from violence, abuse, coercion and deliberate deprivation”
There are many protection principles that can be applied by all sectors and clusters among
which the most important are1
:
• Focus on the safety, dignity and integrity of affected populations
• Think about law, violation, rights and responsibilities and accountability – there is a need
to recognise that much of prevailing humanitarian need or civilian suffering in situations of
armed conflict or occupation is often a result of violations of international law.
• Aim to ensure respect as well as providing assistance – this is part of the ‘rights based
approach’. Respect for the dignity and integrity of affected populations is essential.
• Build on people’s own self protection capacity – it is essential that people are involved in,
and often take the lead on, decisions concerning their own protection and thus targeted
populations should be systematically engaged as informed partners in responding to
protection concerns, at every stage of programme development and implementation.
• Do no harm - Humanitarian response programmes should be based on a comprehensive
analysis of the context that includes analysis of protection issues and risks.
Humanitarian responses with a protection entry point – what does it mean?
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Adapted from the ALNAP guide to protection for humanitarian agencies, (2005)
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2. If a humanitarian response is presented as having a “protection entry point”, it basically means
that the humanitarian needs being addressed by that response arise within the context of
protection problems and/or protection risks, and that these protection problems and/or risks
are addressed in various sections of the articulated response (project).
First, the protection problems and/or risks should be acknowledged as major factors in causing
or compounding the humanitarian needs in question. This would normally be reflected in the
problem statement or needs assessment part of a project document, in a ‘cause-effect’
analysis that explains what the underlying or root causes of the existing humanitarian needs are
and how these root causes are actually protection problems.
Second, the response to the identified humanitarian needs should seek not only to meet those
needs (i.e. alleviate the suffering caused by the identified protection problems), it should also
seek to address the root causes. Examples include monitoring, documenting and reporting on
human rights violations, advocacy and lobbying, accountability initiatives (using domestic and
international legal and administrative mechanisms to challenge a specific policy or practice that
is preventing your targeted population from meeting their needs or to establish legal
responsibility for a serious human rights violation and seek an adequate remedy), legal defence,
and protective presence (includes accompaniment of civilians). Counselling and other psycho-
social support activities are also usually considered ‘protection activities’, although it needs to
be clarified that often these activities do not address the root cause of the protection problem,
rather they seek to ‘protect’ victims of human rights violations from further harm by mitigating
the negative consequences on their mental health and psycho-social wellbeing.
In the OPT, human rights violations occur on a daily basis. The fact that the violations can take
place with impunity indicates that there is a huge ‘protection problem’ in the OPT in general.
For example, a Bedouin herder family living in the seam zone in the West Bank may be food
insecure, meaning in essence that their right to food is being infringed or violated. A
humanitarian response may be to provide food assistance or cash subsidies in order to allow the
family to eat enough (nutritious) food on a daily basis. However, if we analyse why the Bedouin
family is food insecure, the identified causes would be linked to the restriction on their
movement and access to grazing lands and markets, leading to an inability to carry out their
livelihood. Providing food/cash assistance to a family may stop it from starving but it will not
change anything about the context, which allows the protection problem to persist and the
humanitarian need persists. Only by challenging the different aspects of the protection problem
itself, would the Bedouin family have a chance to escape this vicious cycle of food insecurity.
How can humanitarian agencies in the OPT start integrating protection into their
responses?
• Using the draft agency checklists for integrating protection into humanitarian responses
(attached) when designing a project.
• Adding what are considered conventional ‘protection activities’ as complementary
activities to your project(s): advocacy and lobbying, legal defence and litigation,
accountability initiatives (e.g. use of complaint mechanisms), protective presence,
psycho-social support, counselling [provided that your organization has the qualified
personnel and the organization has the appropriate institutional infrastructure and
capacity to implement such activities in a professional and appropriate manner].
• Coordinating with other organizations/bodies providing protection activities (the
Protection Cluster can assist in suggesting relevant and appropriate partners) so that you
may work in synergy in one particular community and they may complement your
project work with other protection approaches.
• In relation to advocacy and lobbying, organisations can either opt to
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3. o conduct advocacy activities or participate in a wider advocacy campaign as a
complementary activity to your relief activities; or
o link into existing or planned advocacy initiatives on the protection issue that
your project is addressing/ responding to by providing data and contributing to
the development of advocacy messages and asks/demands.
• Having a mechanism and policy so that staff members report violations witnessed in the
course of the project implementation and which affect the project beneficiaries or the
project implementation itself to a specialized human rights organization for follow up
(OHCHR, local human rights organizations such as Al Haq, BTselem, DCI, Al Mezan,
PCHR, etc.). The policy should include referring cases to receive legal aid.
• Including responses/activities that help to create community-based protection
mechanisms (see Safety with Dignity manual listed in the attached bibliography).
• Integrating protective measures to protect livelihoods (see Losing Ground: Protection
and Livelihoods in OPT listed in the attached bibliography)
• Integrating a mechanism into your project to refer beneficiaries in need of ‘legal
protection’, psycho-social support and other protective mechanisms and services to the
relevant service providers, specifically in relation to child and women beneficiaries.
• Integrating a coordination channel with existing community-based or governmental or
non-governmental child protection mechanisms.
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