Efforts to create a shared definition

There have been, however, a series of concerted efforts to address this confusion and get closer to a common understanding of protection. Such efforts, spearheaded by the ICRC, are paramount to creating an environment more conducive to the protection of civilians in armed conflict. This norm entrepreneurship materialised in a series of workshops held at the organisation’s headquarters in Geneva, between 1996 and 2000.

According to ICRC’s Danielle Coquoz, this initiative sprung from the lack of discussion

between human rights and humanitarian organisations on their respective practices in helping the victims (2004: 178-79). It is in response to that gap that the ICRC decided to convene a meeting between representatives of “humanitarian and human rights organisations, to explore a concept of protection […] to talk over differing practices and compare similar ones – or at least achieve a better understanding of the way their organisations work” (Ibid.). Bringing together these different actors to promote shared principles and improve the level of professionalism and effectiveness, these working groups eventually produced the following definition of protection:

“all activities aimed at ensuring 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. Human rights and humanitarian organizations must conduct these activities in an impartial manner (not on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, language or gender)” (in Caverzasio, 2001).

This very broad definition identifies IHL, IHRL and refugee law as relevant normative frameworks for protection activities.¹³ It reiterates the centrality of the principle of impartiality but does not posit that protection activities must exclusively be carried out by neutral actors, on the contrary. Most importantly for our purposes, the definition is rights-based. Quite surprisingly, the ICRC itself sees that definition as having “helped to establish a greater understanding between humanitarian and human rights actors, and prompted the former to increasingly adopt a rights-based approach” (ICRC, 2013a: 12).

This statement, apparently welcoming the increased adoption of a rights-based approach by humanitarians seems to be at odds with the institution’s traditional reluctance with                                                                                                                

13 While the inclusions of refugee law/refugee protection perspectives would be interesting and valuable, this study being primarily about the convergence of human rights and humanitarianism, I have taken the decision to exclude these perspectives.

regards to rights-talk. Hopgood notes this paradox when he writes that the ICRC contributed to creating a human rights based definition of protection when it has itself

“survived precisely by not speaking out about human rights” (2013: 168) [emphasis in original]. Furthermore, the ICRC’s statement reinforces the centrality of ‘protection’ in understanding the dynamics of the convergence of human rights and humanitarianism.

Rapidly, this norm cascaded, with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), UN agencies, Red Cross/Crescent societies and NGOs taking it on as the standard definition of protection (Ferris, 2011: 17). The adoption of that terminology by the UN system, which plays a central role in humanitarian norm evolution, has undeniably contributed to the term’s prominence in humanitarian discourse. Beyond defining the concept, this initiative also outlined three types of activities that make up the protection framework (commonly referred to as ‘the egg framework’): responsive action, remedial action, and environment-building action (Ibid). These discussions around protection were folded into the Sphere Project initiative (1997-2011) that sought to develop a humanitarian charter and protection principles, setting minimum standards for actors in the field. Culminating in the publication of a ‘handbook’, first published in 2000 and re-edited in 2004 and 2011, the Sphere Project also divided protection into three areas of action: preventive, responsive, and remedial (Sphere Project, 2011: 32). As we understand ‘environment-building’ activities to be of primarily ‘preventive’ nature, the two frameworks are considered essentially identical. These three sets of activities are not intended as a chronological sequence of actions but rather can be carried out simultaneously as well as sequentially (Hoven, 2007: 40). By conceiving of protection as translating into such a broad set of activities, to be carried out across temporalities, this

framework clearly reaches beyond ‘emergency humanitarianism’ – and arguably challenges some of the central tenets of humanitarianism at large.

The ‘Humanitarian Charter’ contained in the Sphere handbook is “an explicit call to a rights-based humanitarianism” (Slim, 2001: 18), notably as it associates human rights techniques such as “violations monitoring, accompaniment and presence” to more

“traditional humanitarian assistance work” (Slim, 2004: 161). Furthermore, it presents the three core humanitarian principles as being “the right to life with dignity, distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and the refugee principle of non-refoulement”

(Ibid.). Humanitarian work is thus defined in terms of humanitarian law but also of human rights law and refugee law; directly echoing the conception of protection presented above, rooted in these three same bodies of law. This suggests that by (re)defining ‘protection,’ a concept so central to both humanitarianism and human rights, these successive initiatives indeed participated in unsettling humanitarianism’s foundations, challenging our understanding of it. In that human rights-infused definition, with added justice-oriented inflexions, the “urgency of need is no longer the sole consideration in setting the agenda” (Leebaw, 2007: 228).

In that context, the questions of “means rather than ends,” of “strategy and complementarity of action” are crucial (Darcy, 2004: 3). The definition provided above is indeed far too broad and all encompassing to offer any operational guidance. Addressing Darcy’s comments, The Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) Active Learning Network on Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) produced a protection “guide for humanitarian agencies” [emphasis added] in 2005 (Slim & Bonwick, 2005). In that document, the ODI presented protection with “an emphasis on safety, personal dignity,

integrity and empowerment,” understood “in terms of rights” (Ibid: 33). But more importantly, it set out to “identify the key elements of basic programming that enable agencies to be more protection-focused in their work,” and “alert agencies to the risk of pursuing protection objectives” (Ibid: 15). With the declared goal of operationalising protection, the ODI thus offered important insight into what activities are commonly understood as ‘protection,’ and helped us better understand some tensions susceptible to arise from a broadly defined –rights-based– protection. Adopting the ‘egg framework’ the document then presented five “modes of action”: denunciation, mobilisation, persuasion, capacity building, and substitution (Ibid: 83). By using this model, it reaffirms its conception of humanitarian action as rights-based, acting much beyond its traditionally defined boundaries. The now widely accepted definition of protection is thus very broad.

As such, it allows for enough leeway for individual protection actors to elaborate their own distinct definitions, within that overarching framework. Turning now to some of the more targeted and specific conceptions of that term, we will notably look at the ICRC’s conception of protection and the impact its reframing has had on the organisation’s discourse and action. As the ICRC is often construed as the ultimate bastion of

‘traditional’ humanitarianism, it is particularly interesting to see how the Geneva institution acted, and reacted in the face of these evolutions.