On the HPN blog: Linking protection and livelihoods in conflict: is it worth the effort?

Sorcha O'Callaghan and Susanne Jaspars

While aid actors often differentiate between people’s protection and people’s livelihoods, this distinction tends not to be as obvious to those affected. The threats that people face are frequently interrelated. In fact, the direct targeting of civilian populations (and their assets) is often a deliberate tactic in war. And even if not intended, violence has major implications for people’s livelihoods because it can disrupt basic services, limit access to employment, markets and farms, and even undermine social networks. Likewise, protection and livelihoods are also connected in the way people respond to destabilising situations. We only have to think of women searching for firewood as a source of income in Darfur – where the risk of rape is preferable to the death of their men – to grasp how closely people calibrate costs to their safety and dignity against their economic status.

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