Toolkit: Responding to Violence against Humanitarian Action on the Policy Level

Violence against humanitarian action poses an increasingly critical challenge for the delivery of assistance and protection in complex environments. Attacks against humanitarian actors and operations, including healthcare missions, endanger lives, violate international norms, and jeopardize the effective delivery of emergency assistance to populations in need. Such attacks also pose an acute operational dilemma between humanitarian organizations’ ability to maintain access to populations in need, and their ability to ensure the safety and security of their staff. While humanitarian organizations find practical, field-based ways to “cope” with such contexts, however, these adaptations often fail to address the overall deteriorating environment for humanitarian action, or the prevailing impunity for such violations.

In response to practitioners’ strongly identified need for inter-agency dialogue and capacity building on professional practices related to the protection of humanitarian action, ATHA has been engaging in original research, convening advanced practitioner discussions, and developing professional tools and materials.

The Toolkit was produced as part of these efforts, through a series of consultations in 2017-2018 with members of the Working Group on Protection of Humanitarian Action, an initiative gathering more than 20 partners and organized by ATHA and Action contre la Faim (ACF). The Working Group aims to mobilize a community of practice and foster cooperation through peer-to-peer professional exchange and information sharing, research, and advocacy. Members of the Working Group involved in producing this Toolkit include representatives from ATHA, ACF, CARE International, the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, and the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF), in consultation with other leading international and humanitarian organizations.