As Human Rights Defenders, we are exposed to a lot of risks during our public or field engagements and most of these tend to hit us by surprise since we do not adequately prepare to overcome these emergencies.
It could be a kidnap and being stranded in the middle of nowhere, could be an accident, name it.
Field engagement in this case is conducting work in the natural environment other than in office. During field engagements, we tend to be with the general public, known or unknown and new to us because it is our first time to engage with them. Even when the environment is known to us, we can never guarantee the dynamics of people who have been working with and there for, we need to have a number of things ready just in case things happen to go side ways:
- Make sure your phone is charged before going out.
- Be sure to have some cash on you just in case you might need to use some quickly.
- Make your you have an ID on you to easily identify with legal authorities.
- Make sure your phone security is something that only you know (Don’t use fingerprint or face ID) when going for vital field work.
- Have a contact of someone to call in case of emergencies. You can write such contacts somewhere and carry with you.