This study has sought to bring clarity to the increasingly popular concept of “Protection”, by studying it from the bottom upwards. The idea of agencies preventing suffering and engaging with the political factors that cause it rather than always picking up the pieces is an attractive one, but in interviews conducted for this study, local people felt aid agencies were failing to provide them with the kind of protection they needed. Despite the clear desirability of preventing suffering, aid agencies simply do not have the capacity to provide the security that people crave.
The process of carrying out the study showed how difficult it is to capture genuine local voice. Calling a research study “participatory” or using aspects of PRA is rarely enough to change the fundamental power dynamics and communications gap that exist between global and local actors. Most humanitarian enquiry carries substantial baggage – often due to the assumption that, as part of the humanitarian project, local people and global actors share a universal agenda and that “humanitarian concerns” are also the concerns of local people. This study has tried to provide a bridge between the local and the global – for example trying to equate the rights that local people have as a member of a family and a local community with a rights model in the western sense.
Policies towards protection must be built upon the most commonly-experienced scenario – that outsiders are usually only goaded into reacting once violence has already erupted – rather than the more optimistic scenario of being pro-active enough to anticipate and prevent civilians from suffering. This is not the place to question why this is so, but to create policies that, while not falsely claiming to “protect” nonetheless advocate for a better protective environment for south Sudanese. To that end:
- Political and peace-keeping actors need to develop a better understanding of the drivers behind south-on-south violence and work with the government on addressing it as a vital contribution to State-building and creating national rather than local identity
- Aid agencies need to address the livelihoods needs of armed and under-employed youths that see cattle-raiding as an economic opportunity and an easier way to progress and marry than investing in farming or commerce.
- Aid agencies need to “sell” livelihoods interventions as legitimate to the donor community to build up the resources, options and resilience of local communities in the face of donor-fatigue and unwillingness to take on recurrent costs and long-term commitments
- Pilot stock patrols were only set up in April 2011 as a UNDP pilot project in Kolnyang Payam, Bor. They must be rapidly expanded and UNMIS must be prepared to contribute aerial reconnaissance after large raids.
- The study has shown how the internal management of aid agencies and UNMIS encourages accountability to headquarters rather than local populations. This management culture needs to be reversed
- Co-ordination between agencies involved in protection would be easier with fewer agencies involved and clearer lines of responsibility and accountability. As South Sudan is huge no one agency (including UNHCR) has the capacity or willingness to cover it all; the work needs to be divided clearly between agencies with legally-mandated responsibilities to protect with reporting and co-ordination mechanisms radically improved and made more accountable and transparent, but formal protection activities should not become key activities of all agencies (especially those with no institutional experience of protection work) under pressure from donors.
