Module 23: Completing Your Personal Protection Plan

When planning and facilitating this session, it is important to consistently apply an intersectional lens to each participant's identity and experiences, and their protection needs. Overlapping systems of discrimination and privilege, such as gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, racial and/or ethnic origin, economic status/class, marital status, citizenship, age and physical appearance, can have a profound impact on human rights defenders' and their communities' perception of and experience with risks and protection.

Introduction: 5 mins

* Facilitator refers to all the modules which have gone before, in particular Protection Plans for Different Threats, and Role Play on Threat Situations

* everyone is unique and needs to customise the protection plans created here to relate to their own contexts and intersectionality, eg in some cultures older women are treated with more respect, so it may be less dangerous for them to go to the police station enquiring about a defender who is detained, than it is for a younger male defender

* most of the elements of the personal protection plan should have been covered. This session is to complete it

Individual work - 10 mins

Each participant to re-consider which are their top 2 or 3 risks, and fill in the Personal Protection Plan

Plenary identification of gaps:

• Facilitator checks if participants face threats not so far identified (defamation is a common one – sometimes so common that WHRDs in particular don’t see it s unusual). Also ‘hidden’ risks and threats should be brought into the open here, eg sexual violence and domestic violence

Group work and help with personal protection plans 30 mins

In groups, each participant is asked to share a section of their personal protection plan where they are stuck and don't know what to do. Other group members offer suggestions, and all agree what topics to take back to the plenary.

Discussion - 10 mins

The groups return with their key issues for discussion.

Closing remarks - 5 mins

• A plan in only as good as the actions it prompts
• A plan will need to be reviewed and changed when the context changes or your knowledge increases
• A plan doesn’t guarantee your safety, but it does guarantee your preparedness for most situations.

Related sessions:

Protection Plans for Different Threats

Creating an Organisation Protection Plan