Information and Risks: A Protection Approach to Information Ecosystems

Individuals are constantly making decisions about the risks and benefits of accessing services, and access to information is no different. People affected by crises need to have safe and meaningful access to accurate information to know and exercise their rights and entitlements and participate in decisions that affect them.

As a result of denial of access to information, communities affected by crisis can be deprived of services and foster negative coping mechanisms. This can exacerbate other protection risks including gender-based violence, discrimination, trafficking in persons, or restriction of movements. Despite the recognition of the centrality of information needs for people affected by crises, the lack of a common, systematic, and structured approach among humanitarian actors and other information actors results in information gaps or practices that create or exacerbate protection risks for the affected communities, humanitarian workers, and other information providers. 

A man could film an attack on his neighborhood in the hope of justice, a youth community group could publicly share a social media post that provides the location of a shelter for women and children, a member of a minority group could enquire about safe roads to leave a contested area, a family might decide to remain in a disaster-prone area based on information received by a trusted source. All those interactions within an information ecosystem could have a positive impact on those individuals, helping them remain safe or supporting them to claim their rights. However, these interactions could also generate new protection risks, or exacerbate existing ones. Some information can be sensitive when shared and could lead to the man or the people filmed being targeted. If digital literacy is low, the youth group could inadvertently reveal the location of the shelter to perpetrators, putting the women and children living there at greater risk. Or by sharing unverified or out of date information, could encourage women to take refuge in an unsafe place. Members of a minority group may unknowingly reveal identifying information to a hostile party when discussing safe routes for movement. A family may choose to stay in the path of danger and ignore official emergency warnings based on information from a trusted, but ultimately unreliable, source.

To address information-related protection risks, we need to understand what the threats are, who are the most vulnerable to those threats, and what capacities exist to reduce the likelihood of those threats. These Guidelines provide knowledge and tools to identify protection risks related to information, and, most importantly, to engage the community to identify solutions to mitigate those risks.