Analysing changing structures and processes

Stakeholders are not static actors. They relate to each other at multiple levels, creating a dense web of relationships. In terms of protection, it is important to highlight and pay attention to relationships which shape and transform people’s protection needs. We can talk about structures and processes.

Structures are interrelated parts of the public sector, civil society or private bodies. We will look at them from the point of view of protection. Within the public sector, we could look at a government as a set of actors with either one unified strategy or with confronting internal strategies. For example, we could find strong discrepancies between the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when discussing policies related to human rights defenders, or between the Ombudsman’s office and the military. Structures can have mixed components; for example, an inter-sectoral commission (members from the government, NGOs, the UN and diplomatic corps) could be created to follow up on the protection situation of a given human rights defenders organisation.

Processes are the chains of decisions and actions taken by one or more structures with the goal of improving the protection situation of a given group. There can be legislative processes, cultural processes and policy processes. Not all processes are successful in achieving improvements in protection: On many occasions protection processes are in conflict or render each other ineffective. For example, people allegedly being protected may not accept a policy protection process led by the government, because they see it as having an implicit aim of displacing people from an area. The UN and NGOs may support people in this process.