Relief organisations have found it easier to measure the impact of their interventions in relation to material needs than activities geared to enhancing protection. This study, commissioned by DFID, undertakes a review of the literature to summarise what we know about what works in protection and to suggest further areas for research.
The review studied 173 documents including academic works, evaluation reports, how-to handbooks, guidelines, protection standards, and policies. Within the scope of protection activities implemented by humanitarian and human rights organisations, the study identifies three different types of protection interventions with different criteria for success: interventions aimed at providing remedy to individual victims of harm, interventions aimed at reducing risk exposure, and those aimed at changing harmful behaviours by organisations with a duty of protection (national state authorities, international state actors, and non-state authorities with control over territory).
The review reveals three main limits of the current literature: the quantity of information is low, as current studies focus on practical issues rather than the impact of interventions; the quality of research is low, with many studies lacking explicit discussion of research design and methods; and comparing current studies is difficult because they lack a common conceptual framework.
Further research is recommended in three areas: common protection problems and modes of action across different contexts and organisations; appropriate methods for determining the impact of different types of protection interventions; and the common external factors that enhance or limit the success of different protection interventions.
