About the author(s):
Gemma Davies is a Senior Research Fellow for the Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI. She has extensive experience working with a range of international humanitarian and human rights organisations, as well as the Department for International Development, in several conflict and fragile affected states, predominantly in Sub-Saharan (East, Horn and Western) Africa. With considerable experience in development and implementation of humanitarian programmes; policy development, and advocacy, Gemma specialises in a range of issues including protection of civilians, forced displacement and humanitarian negotiations. Gemma was previously a researcher with Amnesty International focusing primarily on the impact of conflict and forced displacement on civilians.
Leigh is a Senior Research Officer within ODI Global Risk and Resilience programme and a fellow at the Centre on Armed Groups. He is an experienced researcher in conducting practice orientated research focused on policy and programming in fragile and conflict-affected situations. This work covers a range of topics including the protection of civilians and armed group governance.
This post forms part of phase two of the Beyond Compliance Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict, hosted by the Armed Groups and International Law blog. 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.
Far too often, the focus of humanitarian action responds to the aftermath of violence, rather than taking proactive actions to reduce risks of violence at the outset. However, there is current momentum within the protection community to strengthen approaches that reduce the risks of violence communities face, including through more preventive action. Approaches to reducing civilian harms would be strengthened through greater complementarity between humanitarian, protection and peace actors. However these opportunities can be missed. Differing modes of action, terminology, working cultures and competition over resources, are common barriers to greater collaboration across these sectors.
So how can we seize this momentum to ensure it doesn’t become another missed opportunity – now even more urgent in the face of drastic cuts to international aid, and an already busy marketplace of aid sector reform amidst a humanitarian reset?
As part of ODI Global Humanitarian Policy Group’s research on community engagement, protection and peace, we explored what measures communities undertake themselves to reduce the risk of violence they face during armed conflict. This included research conducted in the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Northern Ireland, identifying how civilians engage with state and non-state armed actors to reduce exposure to civilian harms and strengthen their safety and security. The research also focused on how international actors can support community-led engagement, including through greater complementarity between humanitarian, protection and peacebuilding actors.
After wrapping up over two years of research at the end of 2024, we identified several key lessons.
- Rather than viewing civilians simply as vulnerable recipients, see them as having agency.
Our work contributes to the growing body of evidence which demonstrates that civilians are not passive actors during conflict, but actors who take proactive steps to protect themselves, including through seeking to influence the behaviour of armed actors. Civilians are strategic about who represents the community during dialogue and will look to use any leverage they have in order to secure the best outcome.
This is not to say that there isn’t a role for external actors. External actors can support, complement and reinforce community capacities, at times strengthening networks and pathways which communities may not be able to achieve alone. But the critical lesson is to recognise what communities are already doing and build from there – in line with the purpose of the localisation agenda, which recognises communities and local actors as frontline responders.
- Reducing the threat of violence requires engagement with its source.
Engaging both the perpetrators (those directly involved in violence) and instigators (those calling for and supporting violence) of violence towards civilians is critical to promoting restraint in the use of violence. However too often humanitarians consider directly engaging armed actors as too risky, fearing it could legitimise armed actors (especially those not formally parties to conflict) and undermine the humanitarian principle of neutrality. However, conflict is highly complex and compromises to humanitarian principles are inevitable.
When thinking about these trade-offs, humanitarians need to recognise that communities face significant risks when it comes to the inaction of humanitarian and other international actors. Refusing to engage with the perpetrators of violence risks undermining other key humanitarian principles: the principle of impartiality, which prioritises the most significant risks and needs of communities, and importantly humanity – the core goal of humanitarian action – to reduce human suffering.
- Protection action needs to reflect the reality of armed conflict.
Conflict is complex and dynamic, with “stages” of conflict overlapping or occurring simultaneously. Yet when it comes to the phasing of external interventions, conflict is often approached as if it were linear. Escalations of violence see the prioritisation of humanitarian action as a front-line “life saving” response – while protection action is deprioritised. Peacebuilding action, too, is often not viewed as critical and often lacks the support to remain when violence escalates.
Livelihoods interventions too, are often not perceived as feasible during the escalation of violence. However, our research documented good examples of how the use of livelihoods programming contributed to de-escalating the immediate risk of violence, by providing alternatives to some of the economic drivers of conflict. All of this demonstrates that ultimately, greater complementarity is required between humanitarian, peace and protection actors. However, positive examples are too often ad-hoc, driven by individuals willing and able to take the professional risk to overcome systematic barriers to greater collaboration.
The pathway to greater complementary requires different sets of actors to be humble, to recognise shared interests and the added value of their modes of action. Throughout our research, humanitarian, protection and peace actors saw great value in us convening joint discussions, which helped breakdown misconceptions and created a greater awareness of different roles and how these can complement one another towards strengthening a shared objective in reducing the harms and needs of civilians.
- Conflict and conflict sensitivity analysis are not “nice to haves”.
To ensure that humanitarian action does not risk escalating existing conflict dynamics, it needs to be designed in relation to the context it is being implemented. This requires having access to quality analysis that understands conflict dynamics at the micro level and how external interventions interact with these dynamics. To achieve longer term impact, it should not only aim to “do no harm” but also consider how interventions can contribute to promoting peace, in line with ‘full protection of civilians’ approaches called for by the UN Secretary General.
However, humanitarian conflict analysis can fall short of achieving this. Cost, capacity, and a reticence to incorporate political framings of violence into analysis, can lead to a lack of nuance, which can fail to connect the dots across different levels of violence across within a conflict system.
However, good analysis in itself is not enough. Analysis is only as good as its ability to inform programming and decision making. Rigid design, working to time bound outputs and top-down demands, means that programming is often not flexible enough to respond to real time analysis. Along with proposed response, analysis needs to form part of a system that informs decision makers. It also needs to be part of wider (honest) conversations with donors on how incompatible time bound approaches are when it comes to strengthening the protection of civilians.
- We need to reconsider what constitutes success and how it is measured.
The aid sector and donors that fund it have an overwhelming focus on quantifiable metrics focused on results, which offer of comparability across different contexts. These measurements are often decontextualised and designed to prioritise delivering at scale regardless of whether or not it achieves impact towards reducing the harms that civilians face.
There is also a need to go beyond results. Dialogue is a process, which can include setbacks. But even in the event of setbacks, dialogue can delay or reduce violence and the harms civilians face. The process of dialogue can also equip communities with the capacity to resolve conflict and lay the ground for future dialogue. These may not be as easily quantifiable as traditional metrics of success, but they are critical when it comes to understanding the impact of interventions that mitigates civilian harm and strengthening the safety of communities.
Concluding remarks
There is momentum around the need to change approaches to mitigate civilian harms and strengthen civilian protection. However, organisations need to consider whether they have the systems, structures and cultures in place to enable this and what it would take to do so. To systematically do so requires new partnerships, clear action, and complementary across humanitarian, protection and peace action and addressing the barriers which prevent collaboration. It also requires listening to civilians on what it would take to reduce their suffering and be willing to act on it.
The current context of aid cuts presents both risks and opportunities. While it may encourage more competition over resources and a return to simplistic approaches to assistance, it could push the sector to approach protection challenges more holistically, to achieve more with less. It is up to the sector to demonstrate whether the will is there.