Protection and peace in conflict-affected contexts: understanding the intersections

In conflict-affected contexts, addressing people’s vulnerabilities before, during and after crises requires stronger complementarity across and between humanitarian relief, human rights, development programmes and peacebuilding. Despite several initiatives to enhance complementarity between the various actors, limited attention has been given to the intersections between protection and peace writ large. Given the common goals that bind them, what are the opportunities and challenges for protection and peace actors to jointly leverage their work, including their resources, tools and influence to enhance opportunities for reducing violence and sustaining peace in conflict-affected contexts? To answer this question, this study combines a review of the literature with a series of in-depth interviews with protection and peace actors to capture an understanding of conceptual and practical areas of convergence and divergence. The paper shows the various ways through which peace and protection operations complement, intersect and contradict one another in terms of how they are understood and practiced. It also identifies a number of important policy insights at the intersection between both spaces.