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42Journalists on the Frontline of Human Rights DefenceThe following are the main steps:Analyse main stakeholders´ interests and strategiesAssess the impact of the defender’s work on those interests and strategiesAssess the threat against the defenderAssess vulnerabilities and capacities of the defenderEstablish riskDraw the security planContext and stakeholder analysisTo be able to adequately judge your situation or your current state of security, it is necessary toanalyse the context and identify influencing factors and stakeholders. This encompasses the legal,political and social environment, stretching the personal and public sphere of your direct andindirect interaction with individuals, groups and institutions. It is therefore necessary tofamiliarize yourself with the existing legal context on national, regional and international levels,i.e. international law (specifically related to HRDs and your field of work), internationalhumanitarian law and regional instruments like the EU Guidelines on HRD protection.The force field analysis aims at establishing the forces that support and hinder your work inachieving its objectives. The analysis will allow you to understand how to mitigate or avoid thedetrimental effects of resisting forces and benefiting from the supporting forces. Forces ofunknown direction can be either treated as supporting forces or should be monitored closely inregard to their positive or negative effects. 17A stakeholder analysis aims at identifying who is a stakeholder, what are their “stakes”, i.e.interests and characteristics, and their potential in contributing to protection. PBI categorisesstakeholders into primary stakeholders, duty-bearer stakeholders and key stakeholders.The involvement and strategies applied in a certain context all depend on the interests andpotential of the key stakeholders. Identifying and understanding the strategies employed bystakeholders is challenging as their interests are not always known and their relationships arerarely clear-cut. This holds true for governments, security forces and armed opposition who oftencause and contribute to human rights violations and security concerns of defenders despite theirmandate of protecting them. Competing interests between stakeholders have to be taken intoaccount as well as the fluidity of processes and the multiple levels of interactions and interlinkagesof actors and interest. Tanking into account all these factors leaves you with a highlycomplex picture of your working environment. 1817 The Protection Manual provides a chart to facilitate your force field analysis (p. 12). The manual can beaccessed online via http://www.protectionline.org/article.php?id_article=186.18The Protection Manual provides a detailed description on how to do a stakeholder analysis as well aschart aiming at facilitating the visualisation (p. 15f)
Conference Report: Resources and Proceedings 43Threats, Vulnerabilities and CapacitiesHuman rights work is likely to negatively impact on the interests and strategies of otherstakeholders, which might cause risks to the defender. It is therefore important to be aware of therisks inherent in one’s work. The definition of risk used by PBI is describing it as “possibleevents, however uncertain, that result in harm.” 19However, a risk is not always the same everywhere and for everyone. Vulnerability of a defenderor a group varies. The risk of a defender or a group of defenders is determined by the threats andtheir vulnerability to those threats.Risk = Threats x VulnerabilitiesThreats are the possibility of being harmed physically, morally or materially. Assessing threatsmeans analysing the likelihood of a threat being put into action.Vulnerability describes “the degree to which people are susceptible to loss, damage, sufferingand death” 20 in the event of a threat carried out. Someone’s vulnerability is always relative andunderlies change.Capacities of a defender are determined by the resources and strengths accessed to achieve areasonable degree of security, e.g. training on security issues, access to means of communication,networks with other defenders etc. To protect yourself, you must: reduce threats, reducevulnerability factors and increase protection capacities.The changing nature of risks makes it necessary to assess risks periodically especially if youexperience frequent change in your working environment, threats and level of vulnerability.Interventions should always target the reduction of threats as a source of risks in addition toreducing vulnerability ad enhancing capacity.Defenders use different coping strategies to deal with risks. Many are immediate reactions andtherefore, short-term. Others can be harmful especially when they cannot be reversed. It isessential to reinforce effective coping strategies and reduce harmful ones, taking into accountothers’ coping strategies as well. 21Once the risk assessment has been completed, it needs to be decided how to treat the risks. It istherefore important to understand the level of risk and how all those affected perceive it and wantto react to it.Dealing with security incidentsA security incident can be defined as any fact or event which you think could affect your personalor organizational security.You can deal with security incidents in three basic steps: 2219 Protection Manual for Human Rights Defenders, p. 1720 Ibid, p. 19.21More details on analyzing coping and response strategies can be found in the Protection Manual (p.24f).22 Ibid, p. 37.
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