Community centres play an important role in offering protection for displaced communities, particularly for members of those communities who have specific needs.
This issue’s feature theme, ‘Local communities: first and last providers of protection’, looks at the capacity of communities to organise themselves before, during and after displacement in ways that help protect the community.
The growing criticism of protection actors for neglecting indigenous coping strategies and capacities should prompt a radical, creative re-think of attitudes and approaches.
In parts of Sudan, local NGOs and women’s groups have taken the lead in their own protection, and their considerable achievements have helped change the status of women in their communities.
As Rwandan refugees in Kampala, I and others like me are uniquely placed to help newly arrived refugees find their feet in the city. The work is demanding but vital.
Continuing dependence on aid that waxes and wanes with time and that comes largely from external sources can lead to feelings of powerlessness. It can furthermore undermine family- and community-based initiatives to protect children.
Collaborative, creative initiatives in Nigeria helped protect local communities from much of the impact of Boko Haram violence. When international agencies arrived, however, they ignored these efforts.
Acknowledging the widespread reality of ‘overlapping’ displacement provides an entry point to recognising and engaging with the agency of refugees and their diverse hosts in providing support and welcome to displaced people.
In the absence of international or state assistance and protection, community members in northern Uganda stepped in to fill this vacuum both during displacement and throughout the laborious return process following the conflict’s end.
Local communities will continue to find ways to address the risks that confront them with or without humanitarian support but the international community may be able to enhance these solutions.
A grassroots women’s organisation in Colombia is working to protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence, and to support the healing of survivors.
The ICRC tries to ensure that its activities on behalf of IDPs and those at risk of displacement support, rather than undermine, communities’ and individuals’ self-protection mechanisms and coping strategies.
Oxfam’s work with local communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has prompted the organisation to develop guidance for themselves and for others working in similar situations.
Community Liaison Assistants may be UN peacekeeping’s most effective instrument for community engagement, with the potential to play a critical role in the protection of civilians.
Recognising that process is as important as outcomes, a community development approach can be effective in supporting local communities as providers of first resort.
Community policing has become a popular way of promoting local ownership of security in refugee camps in Kenya and more widely, but it can also fall victim to its ambivalent position at the intersection of refugee communities and state policing.
Community centres play an important role in offering protection for displaced communities, particularly for members of those communities who have specific needs.