Across safeguarding and protection systems, a recurring assumption persists: that better outcomes require more data. More forms, more reporting channels, more numbers. Yet what we see across organisational assessments, safeguarding reviews, and governance advisory work is different.
The issue is rarely a lack of information.
The issue is the interpretation of information.
Organisations often collect substantial qualitative and quantitative material, but read it through narrow, behavioural, or technical frameworks that fail to grasp the full meaning of harm. As a result, evidence becomes fragmented, decontextualised, or diminished.
This blog reflects on why strengthening interpretation is essential to strengthening systems.
🌱 Rethinking What Counts as Evidence
Evidence does not appear only in structured tools. It also emerges through:
- everyday conversations
- emotional and relational disclosures
- subtle shifts in tone and trust
- informal community knowledge
- the way people describe power, fear, or exclusion
When institutions rely solely on formal reporting systems, they overlook these forms of insight — even when they point to patterns of vulnerability or harm.
People produce evidence constantly; systems are not always designed to recognise it.
🧩 When Language Shapes Harm
Many safeguarding systems rely on predefined categories that may not match how people describe their experiences. A single word or phrase can refer to different forms of misconduct depending on context, tone, and relational dynamics.
When practitioners interpret disclosures using imported or rigid distinctions, two risks emerge:
- misclassification of incidents
- misunderstanding of what survivors are actually saying
Interpretation is not a technical step.
It is part of protection itself.
⚠️ The Limits of “Cultural Sensitivity”
Organisations often frame their approaches as “culturally sensitive,” but this can unintentionally obscure deeper realities. Cultural explanations sometimes replace structural analysis, turning systemic issues such as gender inequality, class hierarchies, or legal constraints into “cultural norms.”
This shift can:
- excuse harmful practices
- silence survivors
- prevent accountability
- misdiagnose the roots of misconduct
A structurally sensitive approach asks:
What systems of power make this harm possible — and invisible?
💜 Affect and the Emotional Architecture of Harm
Affect — how harm is felt — shapes disclosure, trust, and agency. Yet emotional experience remains largely absent from safeguarding tools.
Affect influences:
- whether someone reports
- whom they trust
- how they interpret what happened
- their ability to act, speak, or seek support
Two people may face the same incident but experience it differently depending on their position, risks, and history.
A survivor-centred system must ask:
How is this person affected — emotionally, socially, materially?
🌍 Why Structural Interpretation Matters
Harm is rarely an isolated event. It emerges from intersecting structures:
- economic precarity
- organisational hierarchies
- gendered and racialised inequalities
- dependency on services, contracts, or aid
- fears of retaliation or reputational damage
When evidence is read only as behaviour — “what happened” — systems fail to understand why it happened, or why it continues to recur.
Structural interpretation deepens understanding, strengthens prevention, and aligns safeguarding with justice rather than compliance.
📘 Strengthening Evidence Ecosystems
To improve safeguarding outcomes, organisations can:
1. Treat diverse forms of knowledge as evidence
Value relational, contextual, and emotional insights alongside formal reporting.
2. Prioritise interpretation, not just collection
Ask not “Do we have enough data?” but “Are we reading what people are telling us?”
3. Embed structural sensitivity
Situate incidents within broader organisational and social dynamics.
4. Integrate non-positivist approaches
Use feminist, relational, and qualitative methods to complement quantitative tools.
5. Build survivor-defined accountability
Let interpretations of harm be guided by the people directly affected.
📩 Closing Reflection
Safeguarding systems often invest heavily in mechanisms for gathering information. But the real determinants of protection are the frameworks used to read that information.
Evidence is not only what people report — it is what organisations are able to understand.
When institutions expand their interpretive tools, they uncover insights that have always been present.
Interpretation, not quantity, is what transforms information into accountability.
🌍 At the Centre for Transnational Development and Collaboration
We support organisations to:
- strengthen evidence ecosystems that capture relational, emotional, and contextual forms of knowledge
- embed structural sensitivity into safeguarding, MEAL, and governance systems
- build interpretation frameworks that reflect justice, power analysis, and survivor-centred practice
- enhance organisational capacity to read harm beyond behaviour and understand its deeper impacts
- create cultures where knowledge, language, and affect inform prevention and accountability
Reach to Us
Have questions or want to collaborate? We'd love to hear from you.