From Compliance to Protection: Rethinking Human Rights in Conflict Response

The First Lesson: Compliance is Not Protection

In Syria, aid convoys ticked every compliance box. Codes of conduct were in place, complaint mechanisms advertised, and vetting procedures signed off by donors. Yet when the 2023 earthquake struck, vast amounts of relief never reached the people who needed it most. Local armed groups diverted supplies, state intelligence services manipulated distribution lists, and activists trying to sound the alarm were intimidated into silence. On paper, the system looked sound. In practice, it failed to protect.

This is not an isolated story. Across fragile contexts, compliance frameworks promise accountability but deliver little when confronted with real power. The gap between paperwork and protection is growing — and it leaves communities exposed at the very moment when resilience is most needed.

Why Compliance Falls Short

For the aid sector, protection has too often been reduced to compliance. Donors and implementers take comfort in visible checklists: safeguarding policies drafted, complaint boxes installed, codes of conduct signed. These measures are necessary, but they are not sufficient. In volatile contexts, the real threats come not from gaps in paperwork but from entrenched power and coercion.

When militias dictate who receives assistance, when government agencies use compliance rules for surveillance, or when armed groups weaponize humanitarian access, no checklist can stop the abuse. The problem is not the absence of compliance — it is the blindness of compliance to the realities of who holds power, who profits, and who punishes dissent.

When Compliance Meets Reality

The gap between compliance frameworks and real-world protection has played out across multiple crises.

In Syria, humanitarian convoys cleared every vetting procedure, but local power dynamics told a different story. Armed factions diverted supplies, state intelligence controlled beneficiary lists, and watchdog reports documented that even U.S.-funded aid ended up in the hands of designated groups. Compliance was intact; protection collapsed.

In Sudan, both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) looted warehouses and hijacked convoys, while the Humanitarian Aid Commission used compliance paperwork to monitor and harass NGOs. Safeguarding mechanisms were present on paper, yet activists and civil society leaders faced intimidation and raids.

In Iraq, return frameworks for internally displaced persons were designed around “voluntary” principles, complete with codes and checklists. But minority communities — Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Turkmen among them — were pressured or coerced into unsafe returns. Militias seized land, livelihoods collapsed, and the systems meant to protect them failed to account for the political economy of displacement.

Reports from UN agencies, Human Rights Watch, and independent evaluations all point to the same conclusion: compliance without foresight does not protect. It reassures donors, but it leaves communities exposed.

From Blind Spots to Foresight

Most sector discussions stop at describing these failures: the convoys diverted, the activists silenced, the minorities coerced. What is rarely asked is why no one saw it coming. The answer lies in the tools the sector relies on. Compliance frameworks are designed to prevent misconduct within organizations. They are not designed to map power, anticipate coercion, or detect the early warning signals of repression.

At IREGS World, we approach protection differently. Our Power & Risk Mapping (PRM) Light is built on the premise that risks are visible — if you know where to look. Instead of producing a dense 40-page political economy analysis that few decision-makers read, PRM Light distills the critical questions: Who holds real leverage? How do resources flow? Where could coercion emerge? What warning signs signal escalation?

Delivered in just ten business days, PRM Light combines open-source scanning, targeted informant inquiries, and network mapping to reveal the dynamics that compliance misses. The output is not a box-ticking exercise, but a decision-ready dashboard: power maps, risk scores, and scenario notes that enable donors, INGOs, and local partners to act before harm occurs.

By reframing protection as foresight, not just compliance, IREGS World turns the “writing on the wall” into evidence that can guide safer, smarter decisions.

Three Shifts for Real Protection

If the sector is serious about protection, it must go beyond compliance and embrace foresight. Three shifts stand out:

1. Shift from checklists to power maps — Protection strategies should begin not with codes of conduct but with a clear-eyed view of who controls access, who benefits from aid, and who has the power to coerce. Without this, compliance is theatre.
2. Integrate rapid risk mapping into program design — Before launching a project in volatile contexts, donors and INGOs should run a ten-day contextual scan, like PRM Light, to anticipate how local power and risk dynamics may undermine protection frameworks. This is faster and cheaper than recovering from a program failure.
3. Fuse compliance with accountability — Safeguarding and due diligence tools must be informed by political economy realities. A complaints box means little if those who complain face intimidation; codes of conduct are hollow if militias control land and livelihoods. Embedding accountability into the actual context — not just into organizational paperwork — is the only way to protect communities.

Taken together, these shifts move the conversation from reassurance on paper to protection in practice.

Closing Reflection

Compliance may reassure donors, but it does not shield communities when coercion and capture define daily life. Real protection demands foresight, the ability to see how power operates, where risks are rising, and what signals should trigger action. That is what the sector has been missing, and what tools like PRM Light provide. At IREGS World, our mission is simple: turning complexity into clarity, so that protection is not a promise on paper, but a reality in practice.