Home » Protection Manual for Human Rights Defenders » Chapter 2: Assessing risk: threats, vulnerabilities and capacities

In summary

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Summary:

In order to reduce risk to acceptable levels - namely, to protect - you must:

  • Reduce threats;
  • Reduce vulnerability factors;
  • Increase protection capacities.

Risk is a dynamic concept that changes with time and with variations in the nature of threats, vulnerabilities and capacities. This means risk must be assessed periodically, especially if your working environment, threats or vulnerabilities change. For instance, Vulnerabilities can also increase if a change of leadership leaves a group of defenders in a weaker position than before. Risk increases dramatically with a clear and present threat. In such cases, it is not safe to try to reduce risk by increasing capacities, because that takes time.

Security measures, such as legal training or protective barriers, could reduce risk by reducing vulnerability factors. However, such measures do not confront the main source of risk, i.e. the threats, nor the will to carry them out, especially in situations where perpetrators know they are likely to go unpunished. All major interventions in protection should therefore aim to reduce threats, in addition to reducing vulnerability and enhancing capacity.

An example:

A small group of defenders are working on land property issues in a town. When their :work starts affecting the local landowner’s interests they receive a clear death :threat. If you apply the risk equation to their security situation, you’ll see that :the risk these defenders face is very high, above all due to the death threat. If you :want to reduce that risk it is probably not the moment to start changing the locks on :the door of their office (because the risk is not related to a break-in at the :office), nor the moment to buy a cell phone for each defender (even if communication :might be important to security it is unlikely to be enough if there is someone coming :to kill you). In this case, a more relevant strategy would be to work on networking :and generating political responses to directly confront the threat (and if that is :unlikely to be effective quickly the only way to reduce the risk significantly might :be to reduce the defenders exposure, perhaps by moving away for a while – being able :''to relocate to a safe place is also a capacity).

Vulnerabilities and capacities, as well as some threats, may vary according to gender and age. You therefore need to break down your findings accordingly.

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