Risk in conflict situations

Working in conflict areas exposes human rights defenders to specific risks, especially in armed conflict situations: Many of the current killings of civilians are due to indiscriminate war making practices, and many others are due to the fact than civilians are directly targeted, and we need to recognized this as such. Political action is always needed to highlight this and try to put a halt to it.

Although you cannot exert any control over ongoing military action, you can adapt your behaviour in order to prevent being affected by the conflict or to react appropriately if something happens.

If you are established in an area where armed action occurs regularly, you will probably have developed many of the contacts necessary to protect yourself, your family and the people you work with while you try to continue working.

However, if you are working in an armed conflict area where you are not based, you must keep three things in mind from the start:

1. What level of risk are you prepared to accept? This also applies to the individuals/organisation you are working with.

2. Do the benefits of you being in the area outweigh the risks? Long-term human rights work cannot be sustained at the cost of greater exposure to high risk.

3. Simply ‘knowing the area’ or ‘knowing a lot about weapons’ will not protect you if you are fired at or come under mortar or sniper attack.