About the author(s):
Marc Linning is the Senior Protection Advisor for Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), and a member of the Beyond Compliance Consortium. He provides technical and strategic support on the Protection of Civilians to CIVIC programs across the globe. Focus areas of his work include the operationalization of civilian harm mitigation efforts by armed actors as well as the support and engagement of conflict-affected communities to better self-protect. Marc developed CIVIC’s application of a community-based protection approach and has been accompanying its application in contexts, such as Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Yemen, Kenya and Somalia. He also authored CIVIC’s guidance on navigating armed opposition groups. Prior to joining CIVIC in 2018, he was a Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for almost 15 years, in contexts, such as Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Persian Gulf region, the U.S., and Colombia.
Editors’ note: This post forms part of the Beyond Compliance Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict, featured across Articles of War and Armed Groups and International Law. The introductory post can be found here. The symposium invites reflection on the conceptualisation of negative everyday lived experiences of armed conflict, and legal and extra-legal strategies that can effectively address harm and need.
“There are still many immobile people in the villages. They don’t want to go anywhere. Elders help them, girls from the social service help them, but this is not enough. In the event of evacuation, these people are unlikely to go anywhere, so they are at the greatest risk.” A community leader in Kharkiv oblast, April 2024
This recent quote from a Ukrainian community leader encapsulates the mindset of many conflict-affected civilians worldwide as they try to protect themselves and their loved ones from the consequences of violence and war. On the one hand, based on experience by the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) when working with affected communities across the globe, civilians display active readiness to themselves do everything they can to protect those most vulnerable and at risk
In parallel, however, they also seek additional support and are eager to engage relevant outside entities, e.g., local authorities, and armed actors (state and non-state) , and demand that they do more to protect them (see: Humanitarian Practice Network 16 January 2023, “Not just victims, CIVIC’s community based protection approach and practice”).
Whatever course of action (or mix of actions) civilians take to try to increase their safety and security, CIVIC’s experience has been that they are not waiting for anyone before starting to try and do something, and they do not necessarily look at whether their calls for better protection correspond with applicable legal obligations or not. In other words, they look beyond legal compliance. When trying out, exploring, and innovating to do something within their power and with their local expertise to address harm (and threats thereof), they look to make use of every possible avenue they can, including every normative framework.
Unfortunately, however, armed actors (state security forces as well as armed groups) do not (yet) sufficiently recognise, support, and integrate independent civilian self-protection efforts. Consequently, they risk missing vital opportunities to maximise protection of civilians’ outcomes, including to bring the protective aspirations of applicable law, such as International Humanitarian Law (IHL) – and the different obligations it puts on them as armed actors – more to life.
Bearing that gap and challenge in mind, I below seek to explain three different dimensions of how civilian self-protection efforts can look in practice and where there are touchpoints and linkages with efforts by armed actors to protect civilians. They are:
- Civilian self-protection without external support
- Civilian self-protection with external support to improve protection from harm by others
- Civilian self-protection with external support to change behaviour of armed actors perpetrating harm
My reflections are primarily based on CIVIC’s experience working with affected communities and armed actors in Ukraine but also incorporate best practices from our work in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Kenya, and Somalia.
By doing so, I also hope to contribute to setting the stage for the Beyond Compliance Consortium’s research into what interventions work best to address conflict-related harm and need (especially based on everyday lived experiences by affected civilians). This research promises to shed important new light onto what civilian self-protection efforts in a wide variety of contexts with varying types of warfare look like, and how they can best improve protection of civilian outcomes, including also when these efforts are much more incorporated into the thinking, planning and conduct of armed actors.
Civilian self-protection without external support
While some civilians at the very outset of a new conflict or escalation of violence might temporarily freeze – being at a loss for what to actively do, many, if not most, very quickly transform and become pro-active, expert agents in their protection (see: CIVIC 28 March 2023, SELF-PROTECTION IN PRACTICE, Ukrainian Efforts to Avoid Harm During the Russian Invasion, pp.9-10). For example, in Ukraine, many civilians have developed an ability to identify different types of incoming fire by the varying sounds of the weapons used, and they thus adapt their reflexes and courses of actions to reduce their exposure. They also tape windows and have adopted mitigation strategies for electricity outages, such as by storing drinking water and trying to keep electronic devices fully charged.
Also, in crises, accurate information is extremely important for civilian self-protection, but mis- and disinformation are often rampant rendering it difficult to know what information sources to trust. In these contexts, communities in front-line areas sometimes establish informal intra-communal information ecosystems built on their direct personal relationships. In Ukraine, we found that such networks have been useful, e.g., to let neighbours who stay in an affected area know where others who have displaced left them food, water, or gas. We have also seen communities at the ultra-local level organising purely amongst themselves to deliver life-sustaining essentials, such as food and medicine to those with debilitating illnesses and mobility impairments. Such grassroots exchange mechanisms can make a big difference leading to better decision-making with better protection outcomes.
Civilian self-protection with external support to improve protection from harm by others
Despite the extraordinary local expertise, individual innovative actions, and intra-communal mechanisms that civilians develop to meet their needs and address harm (or threats thereof), there are natural limits to the extent and scope of such efforts. The reverberating effects of today’s warfare, especially in urban contexts, can create a range of harms and corresponding needs that communities and their individual members can only tackle on their own to a certain degree. In Ukraine, we have seen that authorities and their security forces for example need to add to civilian self-protection efforts, e.g. to do more to provide air raid sirens, other technology-based early warning mechanisms, adequate and inclusive shelters, and evacuation avenues. If not, grass-roots civilian efforts on their own and amongst themselves risk being insufficient.
At the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), we very frequently see that civilians will thus seek access, coordination with and support of local government authorities and security forces that control and/or have influence over their communities to further strengthen their self-protection efforts. In such scenarios and provided there is a minimum willingness also by the relevant authorities and/or armed actors to engage with civilians, CIVIC offers its support to help bring the two sides together and facilitate community-led civ-mil dialogues in which the civilians can put forward their most pressing needs and harms and what they concretely think that authorities and armed actors should do, change, or not do to increase their protection.
While the examples provided here focus on civilian dialogues with state actors the same logic (and often also practise) applies to civilian dialogues with non-state actors that wield influence and/or are controlling communities affected by non-international armed conflicts.
Once initial trust barriers are overcome, communities then might ask for positive actions, such as the provision of military patrols to allow civilians to more safely move around, e.g. to collect firewood, or, they might want security forces to NOT do something, such as to not locate a checkpoint or military base in too close proximity to their homes (out of fear that these military objects could attract hostile fire putting them at risk also as a result).
Whatever actions or omissions civilians ask from armed actors, these demands are based on their civilian perspectives about their immediate local situation and are intended to build on and/or add to their already ongoing self-protection actions. If they are serious about the protection of civilians, armed actors need to listen to these requests much more than is often the case today, always bearing the individual and collective community expertise and agency of affected civilians in mind. Such civilian input should not be a secondary ‘nice to have’ when thinking about how to best protect civilians. Civilian perspectives and their already ongoing self-protection efforts should become a primary point of departure (early on) and an integral part of operational decision making. To the extent feasible and bearing in mind do no harm considerations, armed actors should thus reach out to civilians much more (and in a timely manner). They should seek to understand and learn from the civilians as well as openly offer their perspectives (as an armed actor (state or non-state) with its respective military objectives and necessities) and discuss if/how and to what extent they can build on ongoing civilian self-protection efforts (or at the very least not undermine them).
The more armed actor’s civilian protection efforts integrate civilian perspectives and support self-protection activities, the more they can make a difference to the civilians’ safety and security. And even if such efforts are not necessarily based on any legal obligations, such as IHL, they can certainly help armed actors to provide a higher level of protection to civilians in line with the spirit of the law, e.g., to do everything to spare the civilian population.
For example, understanding better how civilians, 1) move around to shield themselves from attacks, 2) displace themselves on their own more permanently in the face of escalating conflict, and 3) how these practices correspond with the armed actors’ evacuation of civilians procedures and planning algorithms can be crucial when planning where, when, and how to conduct their next operation. This understanding should also inform where to open shelters for civilians and how to equip them. Well-established and tested interaction platforms between the communities and local armed actors are crucial here. In Ukraine, CIVIC has for example seen that civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) units can play the connecting role between the civilians and the operational military elements with the latter subsequently in charge to integrate and operationalise the protection needs raised by the communities as well as the communities’ already ongoing self-protection mechanisms and behaviours (see: CIVIC, October 12, 2023, ‘The role of civil-military cooperation in the protection of civilians: The Ukraine experience’).
Civilian self-protection with external support to change behaviour of armed actors perpetrating harm
A third dimension of civilian self-protection is community outreach to armed actors to discuss the latter’s own perpetration of harm (or threat thereof) and to try to change such behaviour. This is probably the most sensitive and thus challenging effort while often the most important and effective one since it aims at tackling the root causes of harm directly with the perpetrator in whose hands it is to take the required actions leading to lasting reductions of protection risks. Hearing it straight from their civilian compatriots experiencing conflict-related harm in communities they might themselves come from (or have loved ones residing in), armed actors (state and non-state armed actors or forces, and/or de facto authorities) often take protection of civilian issues more seriously than they otherwise would.
Community representatives often know best what cultural and social currency their armed audiences react to and thus what arguments might have the biggest persuasion power. They can adapt their advocacy accordingly thus increasing the chance that armed actors cease, reduce or mitigate their infliction of harm on civilians. Having the expertise and legitimacy to argue for the protection of civilians along local norms, customs, and values that the armed actors from the same area (or cultural background) often also respect, these local representatives are more likely to be successful in their civilian protection advocacy–provided the armed actors see at least some value in trying to gain and/or maintain the support of the community, be it for political, military, or other reasons. Such direct community-led advocacy can thus be the best way to instil a culture of preventing or reducing civilian harm (and threats thereof) and humanitarian need amongst relevant armed actors. Self-protection as a behaviour change tool can shift protection of civilian incentives on armed actors from temporary, external (often international) attention, to local, long-term, sustainable change.
But to be clear, even if civilians are less active self-protecting or are not (yet) themselves advocating to armed actors for behavioural change, the legal protection obligations for the parties to the armed conflict remain the same. They do not diminish one bit. The parties to the conflict always remain the primary duty bearers to protect civilians independent of how active or successful civilian self-protection efforts are.