Protecting People in Conflict and Crisis- Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World (22-24 September 2009)
Exchange of thoughts and recommendations
Some “reflections” (PDF file) on the key themes that emerged from the conference have been developed by Simon Addison, Senior Research Officer & Policy Programme Manager at the Refugee Studies Centre.
We invite you to share your thoughts and reflections on what were for you the most relevant and innovative themes and issues presented and discussed. We would also welcome receiving your suggestions and recommendations on how to move the protection debate forward at a research, policy and practical level. Please add your thoughts, suggestions and recommendations to this page.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:59 am
The Oxford conference overview was hugely helpful and arguably leads to this inference: For once we should have a protection conference built around the premise that we cannot always be the protectors. As the conference confirmed, the all-too-common truth is that our beneficiaries as well as local staff and partners one day come to face violence alone. That’s the reality of our ephemeral presence, tenuous access and limited influence. If we as would-be protectors are so often incapacitated then it makes considerable sense to hold a conference for once focused on local, cultivable, capacity for self-preservation. Who will help make this happen?
The conference overview credibly speaks of “tightening asylum”, “seemingly intractable crises”, and “continuing failure of international legal, political and military instruments to enforce states’ responsibilities to protect their citizens…” If the standard instruments of our responsibility to protect are not working, then should we not give far more attention to the capacity of those who always are the first and last to shoulder that responsibility-locals themselves?
The overview concludes that we “may be entering a new era in which ‘protection space’ becomes ever narrower, bringing into question the sustainability of the current protection regime.” If our protections have been and will continue to be frequently unsustainable, then what is “Plan B”?
The overview notes that such space often disappears, saying “in many locations where strong protection programming is most urgently needed, international protection actors are notably absent.” Nevertheless key protection actors are indeed present-our former beneficiaries, local staff and partners themselves! A protection approach centered on supporting their capacity will be the last one standing when our own efforts fail. It is the “last one standing” because it rests upon the very people who are left standing alone as violence shuts the world out. In the prior months and years that we work with them we have a duty to anticipate violence and possibly help locals brace for it before the situation becomes so “urgent” that any support would be ineffectual.
Given the frequency with which host national institutions fail to provide protection or redress for civilians and outside states fail to respond effectively, aid agencies have often assumed the role of protector. Many at the conference felt we might be overreaching (and over promising). The overview says that “the serious question is raised of whether or not the time is ripe for humanitarians to consider limiting their aspirations with regard to protection.” This of course does not need to be a call for retreat but rather for a humility that redirects our energies to supporting those who have astonishing latent resilience and capacity.
That may entail supporting local capacity to prevent conflict (as many agencies do)-or to prepare for the failure to prevent conflict (as the Cuny Center proposes). It may entail supporting local capacity to “engage” the powers-that-be and shield civil society, advance human rights, and attain legal redress (as many agencies do)-or to be ready for the utter collapse of all such statist and jurist notions and civilities by planning for mere survival (as the Cuny Center proposes). Raw survival, the conference overview repeatedly notes, is often civilians’ singular concern.
The attached paper by the Cuny Center might represent the only systematic effort at the Oxford conference to describe how locals survive and serve amid conflict alone; the one effort to state how they typically pursue self-preservation whether in terms of physical safety, raw economic survival, or life-sustaining service delivery. All are welcome to read and comment on this paper. The greater need, though, is for a prominent forum, for once, built around the premise that we cannot always be the protectors. Who will help make this happen?
Mr. Casey A. Barrs
Protection Research Fellow
The Cuny Center
November 27th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I personally, strongly believe that most of the issues reflected during the conference were interesting and innovative. Based on my areas of responsibilities, personally, I am impressed in and learnt a lot from the following issues:
1. The concept of protection and
2. Effective protection
Apart from general issues which attracted my attention, specific presentations, for instance, on the issue of livelihood as a self-reliance strategy interested me since that is a programme we need to realize both as preventive and response mechanism for various protection issues. Furthermore, this is an area by which we can empower people of concern to enable them respond to the problems they are facing, which in turn makes response a bi-lateral: humanitarian actors and the people of concern them-selves.
As a suggestion for future conferences, it is very much helpful to get research papers and presentations from practitioners in the deep field as the field is the area in which we implement and test the effectiveness of various policies and strategies.