Results-Based Protection starts with a question: What is driving the protection risk people are experiencing?
Protection risks are complex and context-specific. Understanding them requires looking at the broader conflict, the actors and behaviors causing harm, the factors that make some people more exposed or susceptible, and the capacities people and communities already use to protect themselves. This analysis is essential for addressing the causes of risk, but it can be challenging.
The protection risk equation provides a practical and intuitive framework by breaking risk into three interconnected components:
- Threat: the perpetrators causing harm.
- Vulnerability: the factors that increase people’s exposure or susceptibility to that threat.
- Capacity: the resources, strategies, and strengths that help people prevent, mitigate, or respond to the threat.
The equation provides the basis for building a protection strategy: identifying what must change to reduce threat, reduce vulnerability, and strengthen capacity. It is a simple heuristic for developing holistic, multidisciplinary, and measurable strategies to reduce protection risk.
On this page, you will find a short explainer video, a key tool for translating the risk equation into a protection strategy, and examples of how the approach has been applied in practice.
The Risk Canvas
The Protection Risk Analysis Canvas helps turn the risk equation into an actionable protection strategy. It guides teams to identify the specific threats, vulnerabilities, and capacities shaping a protection risk, then determine what needs to change in each component to reduce that risk. The canvas supports a more holistic, context-specific, and measurable approach to strategy development.
The Risk Equation in Practice: RBP Case Examples Expand All
This Syria case uses the risk equation to examine when explosive ordnance should be understood as a protection risk rather than simply a humanitarian hazard. By identifying the actors, behaviors, vulnerabilities, and capacities involved, the analysis clarifies where protection actors can intervene and highlights the importance of addressing the source of harm alongside its consequences.
When Is Explosive Ordnance a Protection Risk?Drawing on experiences in Colombia and Somalia, this case explores the threat component of the risk equation in greater depth. It shows how protection strategies can go beyond vulnerabilities by also seeking to influence the behaviors, incentives, relationships, and operating environment of the actors responsible for creating the threat.
Threat Reduction for Protection Outcomes in Constrained Humanitarian EnvironmentsThis example shows how the risk equation can structure analysis of child recruitment. It distinguishes the actors and practices driving recruitment from the factors that make particular children more susceptible and the capacities families and communities use to protect them. This creates multiple entry points for prevention, rather than focusing only on assistance after recruitment has occurred.
Opportunities and Barriers to Preventing the Recruitment and Use of Children by Armed Forces and Armed GroupsIn Somalia, the risk equation helped unpack the drivers of conflict-related sexual violence and identify complementary pathways for reducing risk. By examining threat, vulnerability, and capacity together, partners developed a broader strategy addressing harmful behaviors and social dynamics, women’s exposure to violence, and the community mechanisms available to prevent and respond to abuse.
A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Reducing GBV in Somalia