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It is often people’s immediate community that provides the first, last and perhaps best tactical response for many people affected by or under threat of displacement. However one defines protection or community, external actors will struggle to provide appropriate support…

In recent years, there has been growing evidence of the effectiveness of locally led protection strategies and actions… A local women’s association in Sudan advises communities on how to seek protection in foxholes or mountain caves to escape aerial bombardments.…

In 1977 Pierre Bourdieu wrote that “every established order tends to make its own entirely arbitrary system seem entirely natural”.[1] In the case of humanitarian protection, that established order has been made up since 2005 of the cluster approach, with…

One of the main obstacles to communities organising to protect themselves is a lack of funding. Often they have a better understanding than outsiders of what the challenges may be, and have innovative ideas for overcoming them, but they lack…

Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the civilian population has experienced intense aerial bombardment and ground attacks. At least 4,082 bombs and missiles have hit predominantly civilian targets including villages,…

The ‘communities’ at the heart of community-based protection are not predetermined. Communities can cohere around any number of shared characteristics, and be more or less inclusive or exclusive depending upon their own internal social norms and power dynamics. Ensuring that…