About Protection Approaches

Mobilising grievance, demonising “the other” and wielding division are the staid tactics of authoritarian movements throughout history and across the world. Identity has always been weaponised to advance political projects, secure territory, turn financial profit, and achieve notoriety. These strategies are not new—but they are returning with new force. The playbook is back — modernised and gaining ground.  

Protection Approaches began in 2014 with the knowledge that identity-based violence is a collective harm, felt most acutely by those it targets but ultimately fracturing entire societies. Therefore, our work has always been driven by the conviction that identity-based violence is not inevitable but without early and serious action, its impacts deepen, touching more lives and cutting deeper into our societies

More than a decade later, that conviction has only become more urgent.

As experts in identity-based violence, it is our core responsibility to raise warning of what is coming, work with communities at risk to prepare for worse to come, and advance the solutions that are needed to turn the tide towards an inclusive, safe, and fair democratic sustainable future. 

Authoritarian actors, political extremists, and transnational hate networks increasingly exploit grievance, manipulate difference, and erode trust in democratic institutions in pursuit of power. Enabled by a disrupted information environment and rapid technological change, these dynamics allow division, disinformation, and hostility to spread faster and further than ever before.

Contemporary identity-based violence is changing. Misogyny and hostility towards LGBTQ+ communities are intensifying, from classrooms to the foreign policy objectives of chauvinist states. Migrants and minorities are scapegoated for structural problems they did not create, racialising grievance and legitimising hierarchies of belonging as a new far right resurgence gathers momentum. Foreign governments are reaching across borders to oppress and supress challenge. Unchecked, these lines of social rupture mean trust in governments and democratic institutions is collapsing. Belief in conspiracy and falsehoods is no longer uncommon. People feel more divided, more anxious, and less confident about their future.

These harms are not peripheral to the challenges defining our time; they are central to them.

In an era of aggressive statecraft, democratic backsliding, and growing geopolitical instability, societies are increasingly targeted not only through military or economic means, but through efforts to fracture the social foundations that make democratic life possible. The fastest way to weaken a democracy today is often not confrontation at its borders, but division within it.

This moment demands a fundamental shift in how we understand prevention and security. We cannot meet these threats only at the point of crisis, nor rely solely on enforcement once harm has already taken place. The most credible and cost-effective defence is to strengthen what is being deliberately targeted: the connective social fabric that enables diverse societies to function, sustains trust in institutions, and allows disagreement without dehumanisation or violence.

This is the work Protection Approaches was created to do.

For more than a decade we have worked across communities, governments, and international partners to transform how identity-based violence is understood and prevented. From grassroots programmes in towns and cities across the UK to international efforts to confront the risks of mass atrocities and democratic erosion, we work to strengthen prevention, support those closest to emerging threats, and build the evidence and political momentum needed to act earlier.

We are not neutral observers of these trends. We are part of a growing movement determined to confront them. Our role is to raise the alarm where risks are ignored, amplify the insight of communities experiencing rising threats, and help build the prevention architecture capable of protecting people and democratic societies in the years ahead.

As the world changes, the way in which we uphold our responsibilities of national and international safety must change with it. The scale of this moment demands ambition, courage, and doing things differently.