Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) hinges on relationships: building them, sustaining them, and using them to generate protective outcomes with and for at-risk civilian populations. Despite a common focus on the power of relationships among UCP organizations and methodologies, different UCP actors take very different approaches to these relationships, particularly whom they seek to build them with. For some UCP actors, building connections with all parties to a conflict is a central goal. Others are much more selective, and deliberately eschew close relationships with particular parties, such as the police or armed groups.

In this chapter, I map these differentiated strategic approaches and explore why different UCP actors gravitate toward these different relational strategies. I argue that this stems from three primary factors. First, how principles of nonpartisanship and solidarity are understood and implemented; second, the positionality of the UCP actor vis-à-vis the at-risk civilian population; and, third, variations in the broader political contexts in which UCP actors operate. Understanding how and why strategic relational choices are made provides new and important insights into UCP approaches to protection and their relevance to different conflict contexts.

This chapter predominantly focuses on formally constituted UCP organizations – mostly non-government organizations (NGOs) and activist groups, that are implementing UCP for the protection of civilians. These ‘upper-case’ UCP organizations are those that have organized around this term and operate within this particular institutional framework. However, it is essential to note that this is a narrow definition of UCP. Throughout history, communities and organizations have implemented less technocratic ‘lower-case’ UCP strategies, evident in a range of self-protection and mutual aid activities that have protected the lives of friends, families and neighbours, even amid the most egregious violence. In so doing, they have implemented their own strategies of relationship and connection, along with other social, political and economic tactics (Baines and Paddon, 2012; Kaplan, 2017b; Krause, 2018). The work of these communities, many of them experiencing marginalization and oppression in different ways, underscores and predates the work of the organizations I focus on in this chapter.