Home » Protection Manual for Human Rights Defenders » Chapter 5: Preventing and reacting to attacks

Preventing a possible direct attack

‹ Table 3: Establishing the threat level for indirect attacksupTable 4: Preventing a direct attack - different protection outcomes ›

You now know that a threat can decrease with changes in the potential attacker’s capacity to stage an attack, their attitude towards how acceptable an attack is, or how likely s/he is to be caught and punished.

To prevent an attack it is therefore necessary to:

  • Persuade a potential attacker or a person making threats that an attack will involve unacceptable costs and consequences;
  • Make attacks less feasible.

This type of attack prevention is similar to the analysis covered in Chapter 2, which says that risk is dependent on the defenders’ vulnerabilities and capacities. It also said that in order to protect yourselves and reduce risk, you need to take action against the threat, reduce your vulnerabilities and enhance your capacities.

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