Risk Mapping as a Participatory Method to Strengthen Protection Analysis: Save the Children’s Approach in Honduras

Humanitarians are masters at conducting needs assessments, but these focus primarily on needs resulting from exposure to abuses and conflict dynamics. Needs assessments are not designed to examine the repeated patterns of violence, coercion, and deliberate deprivation that people experience and the source of these threats. As a result, there is a tendency for humanitarians to come in with preconceived notions of risk that can lead to poorly designed programs that generalize vulnerability across affected communities.

Results-Based Protection emphasizes the importance of breaking risk down into the specific component parts that make up the risk to more comprehensively understand the characteristics of the threats, who are vulnerable to specific threats and why, and the capacities communities have concerning the threat. It is essential to do this— as far as possible—from the perspective of people experiencing the risk. Existing methods familiar to staff can be adapted to undertake a detailed analysis of risk. Risk mapping is a good example of this.

You may be asking-what exactly is risk mapping, and what does it look like? At its most basic, risk mapping is a graphical description of the risks that community members face. Drawing from human-centered design practices, this methodology emphasizes starting from the perspective of affected populations to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and capacities. At its core, human-centered design is a bottom-up approach that is multi-disciplinary, context-specific, community-based, and iterative. Humanitarians can use their findings from risk mapping to deepen their protection analysis and more effectively design programs that achieve protection outcomes.

Risk mapping can be particularly helpful to explore context-specific risks with affected community members to deepen humanitarian actors’ protection analysis and jointly design effective programs that achieve protection outcomes. Risk mapping can allow space for those affected by the risks to share a more nuanced description of the threat, vulnerabilities, and capacities per risk type. This insight provides a solid basis for strong protection analysis and helps to prioritize key risks affecting a community. This case example highlights how risk mapping can be used in a humanitarian setting to engage affected populations on strategies for risk reduction.

Save the Children’s approach begins directly from the perspective of the populations it works with.“Promoting a culture of peace” is the language adopted by Save the Children that mirrors how communities themselves speak about preventing violence. A phrase like “violence prevention” is known to put staff and community members at risk from retribution by gang-affiliated individuals. In implementing the risk mapping tool, Save the Children first worked with community members to explore the key protection risks they faced and what a “culture of peace” looks like for them.Through this approach, Save the Children established informal cooperation agreements with 22 communities where risk mapping was prioritized as an appropriate exercise to address these risks.Ensuring staff is equipped with the soft skills that enable effective communication with community and gang members is especially critical when carrying out a participatory methodology like risk mapping.

Risk mapping is done with different groups of community members—one group of girls and boys; one of men and women; and one of community leaders, which can include teachers, coaches, religious leaders, and other relevant individuals.These groups are invited to participate in a two- to three-day training in a safe space outside of their neighborhood. The training covers concepts of violence, including helping to unpack the components of risk threats, vulnerabilities, capacities. Other critical concepts are also explored, including gender equality, human rights, leadership, and other themes.

Methods and frequency of engagement also vary by group. For example, a more participatory approach is used with boys and girls. Meetings are held only once per year to avoid heightening the risk associated with participating in a sensitive exercise. Workshops with boys and girls also explore their future and create “life plans” that focus on activities that don’t involve violence.

Risk mapping entails groups coming together over the course of one half-day, with each community member pinpointing specific incidents of extortion, homicide, sexual violence, and other risks on a physical map of the neighborhood. This allows the group to see visually, in a holistic way, where incidents are concentrated. They use colored tacks for each type of abuse and arrange the tacks on the map. While doing this exercise, Save the Children staff facilitate a conversation on the risks that the community members raise and explore the characteristics and dynamics of the threat. This allows for a rich discussion on community members’ vulnerabilities to each threat and their existing capacities to address it.

Save the Children uses the risk maps to devise strategies to improve the safety of children in schools and the community.The maps provide a solid basis for analysis of where existing threats are geographically manifested, as well as the community’s vulnerability and capacities to deal with the threats. For example, in one community, the gang operating there prohibited certain haircuts and hair colors and had other elaborate rules and restrictions. The risk maps allowed the community and Save the Children to create an action plan to tackle these problems.The community decided to organize activities to publicly bring together community members to create a safe space—in this instance, a soccer field—to demonstrate public unity against the gangs and their prescribed “rules” for haircuts and hair colors. It was a demonstration of ownership and a collective tactic to “take back” their community.

As well as identifying where incidents occur, risk mapping illuminates safe spaces. Save the Children identifies the areas where girls and boys report the least amount of incidents and invest in building these spaces. These spaces may range from abandoned buildings where children gather to play to makeshift soccer fields.

Risk mapping has strengthened Save the Children’s bonds with the affected population, beyond its work to identify risk and its components. For instance, working directly with affected individuals through the risk mapping exercise has allowed Save the Children to build trusting relationships with the community. Later on, it even recruited staff directly from the community in which it worked, further increasing their acceptance among community members and their understanding of key issues.

Humanitarian organizations can learn from Save the Children’s experience with risk mapping in their efforts to achieve protection outcomes. Risk mapping is but one tool that allows for better continuous, context-specific protection analysis. Above all, starting from the perspective of a community and iteratively building off of their knowledge are the main takeaways of this case example—regardless of the methodology used.

• Facilitators who are trained on the risk mapping methodology and are equipped to guide the process, explore key questions, and unpack the risks further.
• Proper resources and systems in place for staff members to dedicate the time needed to identify community members and train them on fundamental concepts.
• The ability to build trusting relationships with the affected community. Save the Children has learned that having staff members from the affected communities helps facilitate project activities as they may already have or are able to more easily gain the trust of individuals.
• Investing in soft skillsets associated with communicating effectively with communities (and occasionally gang members) is essential. In particular, this includes being aware of and avoiding language that may be perceived as threatening. For example, Save the Children staff avoid the phrase “reducing violence” and instead say “building a culture of peace.” Similarly, gang members should never be referenced by their real names but more generally referred to as “the boys” as this is perceived to be less critical.
• Access to knowledgeable community members who are willing—and safely able—to share sensitive information.
• A physical copy of a map of the neighborhood, community, or region—or blank paper for people to draw their own map—and tacks/markers/post-it papers to document incidents on the map.
• Ability to digitize or otherwise synthesize information from the maps following discussions.