Human rights defenders working in hostile environments

Too often, defenders work in hostile environments. There are many reasons why. Most relate to the fact that defenders’ work may lead them to confront powerful actors who are violating international human rights law, be it government or state authorities, security forces, opposition armed groups or private armed gangs. These actors may retaliate by trying to stop defenders doing their work, through anything from subtle repression of attempts at free expression to declared threats and direct attacks. The actors’ level of tolerance depends on the defenders’ work - some activities might be deemed acceptable, others not. Often this uncertainty is also deliberate.

Two important considerations should be made here: In many cases, it is only certain elements within complex actors (such as those mentioned above) who are hostile towards defenders. For example, some elements within a government may be relatively serious about protecting defenders, while other elements want to attack them. Defenders may also experience more hostility during times of political upheaval, such as elections or other political events.

Defenders’ socio-political work space

This manual focuses on the protection and security of human rights defenders working in hostile environments and measures which are focussed on improving their security. There is of course action which can be taken at the socio-political level to improve respect for human rights and the environment for human rights defenders. The campaigning and promotion activities of human rights defenders are often aimed at securing a broader acceptance of human rights within society or more effective action from political actors to ensure human rights are protected. We don’t usually think of such activities as about security but when successful they can have a positive impact on protecting human rights defenders’ socio-political work space.

This socio-political work space can be defined as the variety of possible actions the defender can take at an acceptable personal risk. In other words, the defender perceives “a broad array of possible political actions and associates a certain cost or set of consequences with each action”. The defender perceives some of these consequences as “acceptable and others as unacceptable, thereby defining the limits of a distinct political space”.

For instance, a defenders´ group may pursue a human rights case until one of the members of the group receives a death threat. If they perceive they have enough socio-political space, they may decide to make public that they have been threatened, and eventually go on with the case. But if they perceive that their political space is limited, they may reckon that denouncing the threat will have unacceptable costs. They might even decide to drop the case for a while and improve their security capacities in the meantime.

The notion of “acceptable” risk can change over time and varies greatly between individuals or organisations. For some, torture or the death of a family member might be the most unbearable risk. Some defenders believe that being imprisoned is an acceptable risk, as long as it helps to achieve their goals. For others, the threshold might be reached with the first threat.

This political space of activity, in addition to being subjectively defined by those who move within it, is very sensitive to changes in the surrounding national political environment. You therefore have to look at it as a relative and changeable space.

Security and defenders’ work space

All security strategies can be summarised in a few words: You want to expand your work space and sustain it in that way. Speaking strictly in security terms, defenders’ work space requires at least a minimum level of consent by the main actors in the area - especially by political and military authorities and armed groups who might become affected by defenders’ work and decide to act against them.

This consent can be explicit, such as a formal permit from the authorities, or implicit, for example, in the case of armed groups. Consent will be more solid if the actor can see some benefit resulting from the defenders´ work. It will be lower if the actor perceives related costs. In this case, their level of consent will depend on the political costs carried by an attack on defenders. These issues are especially relevant in armed conflicts where defenders face more than one armed actor. One armed actor might see defenders´ work as helpful to their opponent. Another actor’s open acceptance of defenders´ work may therefore lead to hostility by their opponent.

Defenders’ work space can be represented by two axes:

• one representing the extent to which the actor will tolerate or accept your work based on the extent to which your work impacts on the actor’s objectives or strategic interests (the tolerance-acceptance continuum)
• one representing the extent to which you can deter attacks, because of high political costs, expanding to when you can dissuade the actor on rational/moral grounds or even persuade them of political benefits to not attacking you or violating human rights (the deterrence-dissuasion continuum).

The expansion of your work space can be achieved over time. Achieving acceptance of defenders´ work through a strategy of dissuasion should take into account working for the needs of the population, your image, procedures, integration etc. But in areas of armed conflict the space usually remains limited to just that which follows from the armed actors’ consent, partially generated as a result of the costs of attacking the defenders (dissuasion).

Expanding your work space: Increasing tolerance and acceptance

Your work may affect the objectives or strategic interests of someone who does not care much about human rights, leading to a hostile working environment for defenders. In order to gain acceptance, or at least consent, for your work, it is important to limit the confrontation to a necessary minimum. Some suggestions for how to do this:

• Provide information and training about the nature and legitimacy of defenders’ work. Government officials and other actors may be more inclined to cooperate if they know and understand your work and your reasons for undertaking it. It is not enough just for higher officials to be aware of what you do, because defenders’ daily work usually involves many levels of officials in different government bodies. You should make a continuous effort to inform and train officials at all levels.

• Clarify the objectives of defenders’ work. In all conflicts it is useful to clarify and limit the scope and objectives of your work. This will reduce misunderstandings or unnecessary confrontations that can stop defenders achieving their aims.

• Limit your work objectives to match the socio-political space of your work. When defenders’ work affects an armed actor’s specific strategic interests, the actor may react more violently and with less consideration for his image. Some types of work make defenders more vulnerable than others, so make sure your objectives match your risk situation and protection capacities as much as possible.

• Allow space in your strategies for “saving face”. If you have to confront an actor about human rights abuses seek to leave them a way to gain credit for taking action to address the situation.

• Establish alliances widely with as many social sectors as possible.

• Find a balance between transparency in your work, to show that legitimate defenders have nothing to hide, and the need to avoid giving out information that could compromise your work or security.

• Finally, remember that the legitimacy and quality of your work are necessary conditions for keeping your work space open, but it may not be enough. You may also need to be able to dissuade potential attackers (see below).

Expanding your work space: Increasing deterrence and dissuasion

Human rights defenders working in hostile environments should be able to conjure up enough political costs to frighten an aggressor into not attacking them: This is called deterrence.

It is useful to distinguish between “general” and “immediate” deterrence. General deterrence consist of the combined effect of all national and international efforts at protecting defenders, i.e. anything which helps to create a general understanding that attacks against defenders will have negative consequences. This can happen through wide thematic campaigns or training and information about protecting defenders. On the other hand, immediate deterrence sends a specific message to a specific aggressor to keep their attacks away from a specific target. Immediate deterrence is necessary when general deterrence fails or is seen to be insufficient, and when protection efforts are focused on specific cases.

Dissuasion is a more inclusive concept. It can be defined as the result of acts which induce an opponent not to carry out a contemplated hostile action. Rational argument, moral appeal, increased cooperation, improved human understanding, distraction, adoption of non-offensive policy and deterrence may all be used to achieve dissuasion. Each of these tactics are used at different times by defenders at the national or international levels. Defenders cannot of course use direct “threats” very often: The strategy is more about reminding others that, depending on their decisions, a series of consequences could occur.

Putting deterrence to work

In order to measure whether we have been effective in deterrence, a series of conditions must be met:

1. Defenders must clearly specify and communicate to the aggressor what types of actions are unacceptable. Deterrence will not work if the aggressor does not know which actions will provoke a response.

2. The defenders’ organisation must articulate its commitment to deterring the aggression in a way that makes the aggressor aware of it. The organisation must also have a strategy in place for accomplishing the deterrence.

3. The defenders’ organisation must be capable of carrying out the deterrence, and make the aggressor aware of this. If a threat of mobilising national or international reaction is not credible, there is no reason to expect it to have a protective effect.

4. Defenders must know who the aggressor is. Hit squads often work in the dark of night and rarely claim responsibility. This therefore often boils down to analysing who might benefit from an attack. In order to improve the effectiveness of a national or international reaction, an assumption of “state responsibility”, although correct, requires more specific information about which factions within the state apparatus are behind the attack.

5. The aggressor must have seriously considered attacking and then decided not to carry it out because the costs - due to the defenders’ commitment - would be greater than the benefits.

It is difficult for defenders to dissuade an aggressor who will remain unaffected by a commitment to deter: This happens when governments can be punished by the international community, but cannot in turn punish the actual human rights violator. For example, private armies can be outside the government’s reach or don't share its interests. In such cases, the aggressor may even benefit from attacking human rights defenders, because attacks will put the government in a difficult position and harm its image.

Defenders will never know in advance if their “deterrence commitment” is strong enough to dissuade a potential attack. The aggressor may expect benefits that defenders are not aware of. Assessing the situation as carefully as possible is a permanent challenge and may even be impossible due to lack of critical information. Defenders’ organisations must therefore develop extremely flexible fallback plans and the ability to respond rapidly to unexpected events.

Drafting a security plan

It should not be difficult to draft a security plan. Here is a process in just a few steps:

1.The components of the plan. A security plan is aimed at reducing your risk. It will therefore have at least three objectives, based on your risk assessment:

• Reducing the level of threat you are experiencing;
• Reducing your vulnerabilities;
• Enhancing your capacities.

It could be useful if your security plan also includes:

• Preventive plans or protocols, to ensure routine work is done within security standards, for example, how to prepare a public allegation or a visit to a remote area;
• Emergency plans for dealing with specific problems, for example, a detention or a disappearance.

2. Responsibilities and resources for implementing the plan. To ensure that the plan is implemented, security routines must be integrated into daily work activities:

• Include context assessment and security points routinely in your agendas;
• Register and analyse security incidents;
• Allocate responsibilities;
• Allocate resources, i.e. time and funds, for security.

3. Drafting the plan - how to begin. If you have done a risk assessment for a defender or organisation, you might have a long list of vulnerabilities, several kinds of threats and a number of capacities. You can’t realistically cover everything at the same time. So where to begin? It’s very easy:

• Select a few threats. Prioritise the threats you have listed, be it actual or potential ones, using one of these criteria: The most serious threat - clear death threats, for example; OR the most probable and serious threat - if organisations similar to yours have been attacked, that is a clear potential threat for you; OR the threat which corresponds most with your vulnerabilities - because you are more at risk of that specific threat.

• List the vulnerabilities you have which correspond with the threats you have listed. These vulnerabilities should be addressed first, but remember that not all vulnerabilities correspond with all threats. For example, if you receive a death threat, it may not be very useful to start securing the cupboards in your office in the city centre (unless you can be easily attacked in the office, which is usually not the case). It may be more useful to reduce your exposure while commuting from home to the office or on weekends. Securing the cupboards isn’t unimportant, but that in itself probably won’t reduce your vulnerability to the death threat.

• List the capacities you have which correspond with the threats you have listed.

You are now in a position to address the selected threats, vulnerabilities and capacities in your security plan, and can be reasonably sure that you will be able to reduce your risk from the right starting point.

Please note that this is an ad hoc way of drafting a security plan. There are more “formal” ways to do it, but this method is straightforward and makes sure you take care of the most urgent security issues - provided your risk assessment is correct - and end up with an “alive” and “real” plan at the end, and that’s the important part of security.

Coping with security challenges: Step by step security management

Security management never ends and is always partial and selective. This is because:

1. There are limits to the amount of information you can deal with - not all factors affecting security can be grouped and treated simultaneously;

2. It is a complex process - time and effort are necessary to create awareness, develop consensus, train people, deal with staff turnover, implement activities, etc.

Security management is pragmatic:

Security management can rarely attempt a comprehensive, long-term overview. Its contribution lies in the ability to prevent attacks and highlight the need for organisational strategies to cope with these. This may not seem very ambitious, but we must not forget that too few resources are usually allocated for security!

When reviewing a defender’s or an organisation’s security practices you may discover some sort of guidelines, plans, measures or patterns of behaviour already in place. There will be conflicting forces involved, ranging from stereotypical ideas about security practices to a reluctance to increase existing workloads by incorporating new security activities.

Security practice is typically a fragmented and intuitive work in progress. Security management should aim to make step by step changes to improve performance. Security rules and procedures tend to emerge from parts of an organisation covering specific areas of work, such as logistics or a field team especially concerned with its security, a manager under pressure by donor concerns about security, etc.

Step by step security management opens the door to informal processes and allows space for new practices to take root. Sudden events, such as security incidents, will prompt urgent, short-term decisions that, if properly managed, will shape longer term security practices for the whole organisation.

Implementing a security plan

Security plans are important, but they are not easy to implement. Implementation is much more than a technical process - it is an organisational process. This means looking for entry points and opportunities, as well barriers and problems.

A security plan must be implemented on at least three levels:

1. The individual level. Each individual has to follow the plan in order for it to work.
2. The organisational level. The organisation as a whole has to follow the plan.
3. The inter-organisational level. Some level of cooperation between organisations is usually involved to maintain security.

Examples of entry points and opportunities when implementing a security plan:

• Several minor security incidents have taken place in your own or another organisation and some staff members are worried about it.

• General security concerns exist because of the situation in the country.

• New staff arrive and can be trained to start good security practices more easily.

• Another organisation offers you security training.

Examples of problems and barriers to implementing a security plan:

• Some people think more security measures will lead to an even greater workload.

• Others think the organisation already has good enough security.

• “We haven’t got time for this stuff!”

• “OK, let’s make extra time to discuss security on Saturday morning, but that’s it!”

• “We need to take better care of the people we intend to help, not ourselves.”

Ways of improving the implementation of a security plan:

• Take advantage of opportunities and entry points to face problems and break through barriers.

• Proceed step by step. There’s no point in pretending that everything can be done at once.

• Emphasise the importance of security to core work on behalf of victims. Stress that the security of witnesses and family members is critical to the effectiveness of core work and that this can best be managed by integrating good security practices into all areas of work. Use examples in training/discussion that demonstrate the potential negative impact of lax security on witnesses and victims.

• In security, participation is key. A plan drafted by two “experts” and presented to a whole organisation is likely to fall flat on its face.

• A plan must be realistic and feasible. A long list of things to do before every field trip will not work. Keep to the bare minimum necessary to ensure security. This is another reason to involve those who really do the work - for example, people who usually go on field trips.

• The plan is not a one-off document - it must be reviewed and updated all the time.

• The plan must not be seen as “more work”, but as “a better way to work”. People must be made to see the benefits, for example, by avoiding duplicate reporting. Make sure field trip reports have a security dimension, make security issues part of normal team meetings, integrate security aspects into other training, etc.

• Emphasise that security is not a personal choice. Individual decisions, attitudes and behaviour that impacts on security can have consequences for the security of witnesses, family members of victims and colleagues. There needs to be a collective commitment to implementing good security practices.

• Time and resources must be allocated to implementing the plan, as security cannot be improved by using people’s free time. In order to be seen as “important”, security activities must be placed alongside other “important” activities.

• Everyone must be seen to follow the plan, especially managers and those responsible for other people’s work. There must be consequences for individuals who persistently refuse to abide by the plan.

Possible elements to include in a security plan

This “menu” lists detailed suggestions for elements to include in a security plan. After doing a risk assessment, you can pick and mix these ideas to complete your security plan.

• The organization’s mandate, mission and general objectives.

• An organizational statement on security policy.

• Security should cut across all aspects of daily work: Context assessment, risk assessment and incident analysis, as well as security evaluation.

• How to ensure that all staff are properly trained in security to the necessary level and that people’s security responsibilities are passed on when they leave the organisation.

• Allocation of responsibilities: Who is expected to do what in which situations?

• How to handle a security crisis: Setting up a crisis committee or working group, delegating responsibility for handling the media, communicating with relatives, etc.

• Organizational security responsibilities: Planning, follow-up, insurance, civil responsibility, etc.

• Individual security responsibilities: Always reducing risk, how to handle free time or leisure activities, reporting and recording security incidents, sanctions (some of these points could be included in work contracts, if applicable).

• Organizational policies on:

1. rest,free time and stress management;
2. serious incidents, such as kidnapping, disappearance, personal injury, etc;
3. the security of witnesses;
4. health and accident prevention;
5. links with authorities, security forces and armed groups;
6. information management and storage, handling confidential documents and information;
7. your own image in relation to religious, social and cultural values;
8. security management in offices and homes (including for visitors).

• Prevention plans and protocols on:

1. Preparing field trips;
2. Handling cash or valuables;
3. Communication means and protocols;
4.Vehicle maintenance;
5. Landmines;
6. Reducing the risk of getting involved in common crime, armed incidents or sexual attacks;
7. Reducing the risk of accidents when travelling or in risky areas.

• Plans and protocols for reacting to security crises, such as:

1. Medical and psychological emergencies (also in the field);
2. Attacks, including sexual attacks;
3. Robbery;
4. Reacting when a person does not show up when supposed to;
5. Arrest or detention;
6. Kidnapping;
7. Fire and other accidents;
8. Evacuation;
9. Natural disasters;
10. Legal or illegal searches or break-ins into offices or homes;
11. If a person comes under fire;
12. If someone is killed.
13. If there is a coup d´etat.