Charley Howman challenges us to rethink what we mean by ‘protection’ in situations of urban protracted displacement, calling for a better understanding of needs and in particular the importance of personal safety.
We’ve been talking about protection in crisis response for 75 years – protection principles, protection mandates, protection activities. Yet, when we strip it back, what do we really mean by ‘protection’ within humanitarian and development programming, or when crises become protracted and bridge the two? What is the protection within social ‘protection’? As we witness the ever-increasing scale and severity of crises while aid budgets dwindle, do we need to rethink ‘protection’ within contexts of protracted displacement*?
Presenting at the IDS Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) conference, 16-18 September 2025, I proposed a reconceptualisation of ‘protection’ in situations of urban protracted displacement. Rather than centring on the ‘how’, whether through state-led or humanitarian channels, or how to bridge the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, we instead need to re-start with ‘what’ needs are the most fundamental for people facing protracted displacement, and protection from what or whom. Here, I posit that protection must, at its core, be about personal safety.
Protection in humanitarian response
The 1949 Geneva Conventions established the international conventions for the protection of civilians in armed conflict; keeping civilians safe. Protection meant reducing exposure to violence, abuse, coercion, exploitation, deprivation and related threats, as a prerequisite for all other rights and needs (ICRC, 2008). In humanitarian contexts today protection should be mainstreamed across all relief operations (IASC, 2024), with protection broadly defined as “all activities aimed at obtaining full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the relevant bodies of law i.e. human rights law, international humanitarian law, and refugee law” (Sphere, 2018). Definitions focus on all activities and legal entitlements at once.
The Humanitarian Charter places protection from violation and abuse as being central to humanitarian response. Yet, in practice, there is a lack of clarity over protection definitions, roles and mechanisms (O’Callaghan & Pantuliano, 2007; Jackson, 2014). As the protection definition is increasingly broadened, ‘mainstreamed’ across all activities and rights, does that mean all humanitarian activity can now be branded as ‘protection’, without it being tangibly defined? Yet, if not tangibly defined, how do we know people are being protected from the most pressing threats? Specifically, if having fled from armed conflict, where does responsibility lie for displaced people’s continued protection from violence, coercion, exploitation, neglect and abuse?
Protection in social protection
As crises become ever-more protracted, social protection is increasingly being called to fill the gap in meeting needs. Social protection is a fundamental right and core responsibility of the state. Devereux & Sabates-Wheeler (2004: 99) describe social protection as “all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised”. The building blocks of social protection systems consist of social assistance, social insurance, labour market policies and social care/services (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Author’s own annotations overlain on Sabates-Wheeler et al (2022: 9) taxonomy of social protection instruments
Analysing the protective role of each component: social assistance in the form of cash transfers protect from poverty. Social insurances protect from loss. Labour market policies not only try to protect against poverty but protect against unfair treatment and discrimination in the workplace and protect workers’ rights (Schüring & Loewe, 2021). However, insurance and labour market benefits usually only apply to those formally participating in and contributing to such schemes. Working informally, especially if not citizens, displaced people seldom experience such protections. And, where accessible, the protections provided for only relate to economic, material matters.
Social care and services are there to protect against risks such as violence, abuse, discrimination and social exclusion. These services are particularly essential for displaced people. However, “social services are often forgotten as an essential part of social protection instruments” (Rohregger, 2021, p.38). Moreover, where they exist, displaced people are often excluded. In the meantime, without long-term humanitarian or social assistance, displaced people fall through protection gaps.
Protection in protracted displacement contexts
Displacement originates from risk to and continued fear for personal safety. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”. Refugees seek protection in the form of safety. Safety is not however guaranteed in displacement.
Through my doctoral research with displaced Syrians, exploring lived experiences in urban Lebanon, participants referenced needs of rent, water, electricity, internet, food, alongside medication and physical and emotional needs including from pain, stress, injury, trauma. Yet, participants shared significant personal safety incidents experienced in displacement, with feelings of insecurity and lack of safety underlying and affecting abilities to meet all other needs. This includes safety in public space, private space, at work, online and in transportation, requiring protection from physical and verbal abuse and discrimination to be able to go out and conduct daily activities. Displacement therefore poses significant risk, with personal safety as the most important need.
UNHCR holds a mandated protection role, legally responsible for refugee protection, delivering a broad range of protection services and activities. Increasingly, the focus is on cash-based interventions to be able to pay for daily expenses, to reduce protection risks linked to economic hardship (UNHCR, 2022). Yet, what about non-economic risks? What about non-material needs? Humanitarian responses continue to focus on ‘basic needs’, usually uncritically referring to food, water, warmth and rest. Yet, this fails to account for what needs participants themselves considered the most important.
The forgotten focus – personal safety
Drawing upon my research with displaced Syrians in Lebanon, the above questions how protection is conceptualised if it is not, at its core, about the protection of people from direct harm. It presents personal safety as the most fundamental need. While NRC has recently initiated activities for violence prevention and response for displaced communities, personal safety is absent from dominant humanitarian ‘basic needs’ and social protection discourse and programming in situations of protracted displacement, outside of child and/or gender-based violence considerations. ‘Protection’ within humanitarian response is too broad, while protection within social ‘protection’ centres on material, economic protection of livelihoods and assets. Instead, protection needs to be recentred back to first focus on preventing and mitigating direct threats to life, as threats to displaced people don’t end with fleeing conflict, they continue throughout displacement journeys.
However, as people remain displaced, protection services seemingly shift away from immediate physical protection. Over time, they focus on legal, social and economic vulnerabilities in displacement, without maintaining baseline services centring on personal safety. Protection needs reconceptualising within social protection to ensure displaced people are protected from the greatest threats. As Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) posited; without protection from harm, as security from violence, all other human needs and rights become meaningless.
*Protracted displacement: situations where at least 25,000 people from the same country of origin have been in exile for at least five years in a given low- or middle-income country
