Abstract
In the face of deliberate violence against civilians, communities often have no one to rely on for protection but themselves. These communities may pursue a wide variety of activities to counter, mitigate, deter or avoid threats. A diverse range of actors has recognized the importance of considering a community’s self-protection strategies before intervening. These actors advise that external protection providers should ideally enhance these strat-egies as appropriate, or at least avoid undermining them. However, protec-tion providers such as United Nations peacekeeping operations are still grappling with how best to accomplish this goal and, as a result, run the risk of endangering the communities they seek to protect.