By Min Hung Cheng
9 September 2026
In risk resilience work, it is easy for human consequences to become technical categories.
Loss becomes a number. Vulnerability becomes a segment. Resilience becomes a KPI. Insurance becomes a product. Fiscal exposure becomes a budget item. Implementation becomes a work plan.
These categories are necessary. Without them, we cannot assess risks, design solutions, allocate capital, regulate markets, plan public expenditure, or measure progress.
But they are not the reason the work matters.
The reason is people.
When a disaster happens, the harm is not experienced as an actuarial estimate or a fiscal exposure. It is experienced as the loss of loved ones, homes, livelihoods, health, safety, continuity, and confidence, and sometimes as the loss of ‘their everything' built over many years.
Insurance plays an important role. It can help individuals, families, businesses, communities, and governments recover financially after a risk event occurs. Claims payments can provide financial relief and liquidity when needed most. Insurance can support rebuilding, protect balance sheets, and reduce some of the financial distress that follows a risk event.
But insurance cannot undo grief.
It cannot remove trauma. It cannot replace the emotional and social loss that follows a severe shock. It cannot fully restore the sense of safety that may be lost when a home, business, neighbourhood, or community is damaged.
That is why risk resilience cannot begin and end with financial protection.
It has to begin with risk reduction.
Prevention, mitigation, adaptation, preparedness, implementation, and enforcement are not secondary to insurance. They are central to resilience. The best protection gap solution is not always the one that pays after harm has occurred. Sometimes it is the one that prevents the harm, reduces its severity, or ensures that people are not left exposed in the first place.
This is also why the human aspect of protection gap work matters.
A protection gap is often described as the difference between economic losses and insured losses. That is a useful measure. But it is not the whole story. Behind every protection gap is a human gap: the distance between the risks people face and the protection they can actually access, understand, afford, trust, use, and benefit from when something goes wrong.
This is where humanity-centred design principles are useful.
Humanity-centred design looks beyond the individual user or immediate product. It focuses on people and humanity within societies, communities, systems, and environments that face complex, deep-rooted problems. The Interaction Design Foundation describes it as an approach that works with populations, addresses the right problems, performs systems analysis, and co-designs interventions that make gradual progress. It identifies five principles: focusing on the entire ecosystem, solving root issues, taking a long-term systems point of view, continually testing and refining solutions, and designing with the community rather than merely for it.
These principles are highly relevant to protection gap work.
The GAIP Integrated Protection Gaps Framework is also aligned with them. The framework's logic reflects many of the same instincts. It starts with motivation and problem framing, then moves through risk understanding, stakeholder and target group identification, solutions development, and implementation planning, including mandates, governance, KPIs, and reporting.
That sequence matters.
It helps ensure that protection gap work does not begin with the solution most familiar to one institution. It begins with the harm, the risk, the affected people and systems, the actors who must be involved, and the practical conditions required for implementation.
In that sense, the GAIP framework helps translate a humanity-centred instinct into an institutional process.
1. Focus on the entire ecosystem
The first principle of humanity-centred design is to focus on the entire ecosystem of people, living things, and the physical environment. The point is simple but important: everything is connected. There may not be a single source of the problem, and actions in one part of the system can have effects elsewhere.
This is directly relevant to protection gaps.
A disaster is rarely only one kind of loss. A flood may damage homes, but it may also interrupt schooling, transport, healthcare access, business activity, household income, and public services. A drought may affect crops, but it may also affect food security, debt, migration, household welfare, and government support.
People experience risk through systems.
That is why a protection gap cannot be understood only by asking whether insurance exists. Protection is shaped by many things outside the insurance contract: land-use planning, building standards, early warning systems, public health, infrastructure, household income, social protection, claims systems, fiscal capacity, trust, and enforcement.
This is where the early steps of the GAIP framework matter.
The framework starts with aligning motivations and framing the problem, before understanding and quantifying the key risks. These steps help prevent the issue from being defined only through the lens of the institution asking the question.
An insurer may see a product gap. A regulator may see a market or conduct issue. A finance ministry may see contingent liabilities. A development partner may see vulnerability. A community may see whether support arrives quickly enough and whether it actually helps.
Each view may be valid, but none is complete.
The ecosystem principle, therefore, reinforces one of the central disciplines of the GAIP framework: do not reduce the problem too early. Before deciding what instrument is needed, understand the wider system in which the gap exists.
2. Solve root issues, not only the problem as presented
The second principle of humanity-centred design is to solve root issues, not only the problem as presented. Humanity-centred design treats the presented problem as a possible symptom, not necessarily the underlying cause.
In the case of our protection gap work, the problem as presented may be low insurance uptake, but the root issue may lie elsewhere.
People may not buy insurance because they do not trust the provider. They may not understand what is covered. The product may not respond to the loss that matters most to them. The premium may be too high. The claims process may be too difficult. The risk itself may not have been sufficiently reduced. Governments may repeatedly provide ex-post support after shocks, weakening incentives for ex-ante protection. Insurers may withdraw because the underlying risk has become too concentrated, too uncertain, or insufficiently mitigated.
In these cases, low insurance penetration is the visible symptom. The deeper issue may be affordability, trust, risk quality, public policy, institutional design, risk behaviour, data, or enforcement.
The GAIP framework does not begin by asking what product should be launched. It begins with motivation and problem framing. It asks why the gap matters, to whom, and which broader public policy objectives are being undermined by the gap's persistence.
That sequencing is important.
If the root cause is weak risk reduction, a product response may be insufficient. If the root cause is mistrust, financial literacy alone may not be enough. If the root cause is poor claims usability, broader distribution will not solve the problem.
This is one of the most important human lessons in resilience work.
Protection is not created by having rules on paper. It is created when rules, plans, standards, and systems are implemented in ways that actually reduce harm.
Humanity-centred design reminds us to ask whether we are solving the real problem. The GAIP framework provides a way to make that question part of the institutional process.
3. Take a long-term, systems point of view
The third principle is to take a long-term, systems point of view. Humanity-centred design recognises that the consequences of decisions may take years, or even decades, to appear. It therefore asks us to look at systems, interdependencies, and knock-on effects.
Protection gap work needs this discipline.
A protection gap is rarely fixed once and for all. Climate risks may increase. Health costs may rise. Populations may age. Cyber risks may become more systemic.
This means the question cannot only be whether more coverage can be provided today.
The question is whether the solution remains credible, affordable, trusted, and effective over time.
This is where Step C and Step D of the GAIP framework become important.
Step C develops the solutions menu. The framework does not start and end with insurance. It organises solutions around three interrelated areas: risk reduction, increased insurance penetration, and sovereign risk financing. These are not separate boxes. Risk reduction can make insurance more available and affordable. Insurance can support faster recovery and incentivise risk mitigation. Sovereign risk financing can reduce fiscal shock and improve response. Public-private partnerships may be needed where private markets cannot carry the risk alone.
Step D then develops the implementation plan, including mandates, governance, KPIs, and reporting. This matters because long-term systems do not manage themselves. A solution that is launched but not governed, monitored, adapted, or financed over time may not remain a solution.
A long-term systems view also helps avoid false trade-offs.
Risk reduction, insurance, and fiscal risk financing should not be treated as competing ideas. They reinforce one another. Risk reduction can prevent or reduce harm. Insurance can help with financial recovery. Fiscal risk financing can help governments respond more predictably. Together, they provide a more complete approach to resilience.
This matters because the human consequences of risk are not limited to the moment of loss. They continue through recovery, debt, disrupted education, delayed rebuilding, lost business income, health effects, mental stress, and weakened trust. A short-term solution may address the immediate financial gap while leaving the longer-term human gap unresolved.
4. Continually test and refine proposed solutions
The fourth principle is to continually test and refine proposed designs to ensure that they meet the concerns of the people and ecosystems for whom they are intended. Humanity-centred design emphasises learning from feedback and making gradual improvements.
In protection gap work, this principle needs to be translated into institutional practice.
The question is not only whether a product, scheme, partnership, or financing arrangement can be designed. The question is whether it works when people need it.
A product may be technically sound but poorly understood. A claims process may be efficient from the institution's perspective, but difficult for households or SMEs. A subsidy may exist but fail to reach the intended group.
This is why testing and refinement matter.
Step C of the GAIP framework develops a solutions menu rather than selecting one answer too early. That creates space to compare options, assess trade-offs, and consider how different tools may work together.
Step D then asks how implementation will be governed and measured. KPIs and reporting should not be treated as administrative details. They are part of the learning system.
They help decision-makers ask whether the solution is reaching the intended groups, whether claims are working, whether risk reduction is happening, whether fiscal exposure is better managed, whether vulnerable groups are being left out, and whether resilience has actually improved.
This is another place where the human aspect can be lost.
Institutions may measure what is easiest to count: policies issued, premiums collected, capital mobilised, schemes launched, workshops held, or reports completed. These may be useful indicators, but they do not tell the whole story.
The harder question is whether people are better protected.
Did the solution reduce harm? Did it help people recover faster? Did it reduce distress borrowing or the sale of productive assets? Did it reach those who were most exposed?
A humanity-centred approach keeps those questions alive.
5. Design with the community, not for them
The fifth principle is to design with the community, not for them. The Interaction Design Foundation describes this as the most important principle of humanity-centred design. The point is that professionals should not impose solutions on communities, but should support community members to meet their own concerns. Solutions are also more likely to be accepted when they come from within the community rather than from outside.
This is the most important principle for protection gap work.
It is also the one that requires the most care.
Many protection gap initiatives cannot be designed only at the community level. They often require national policy decisions, fiscal authority, regulatory judgment, actuarial analysis, market capacity, public-private coordination, and implementation infrastructure.
But that does not mean communities should be absent from the design process.
The people affected should not be treated only as beneficiaries, customers, policy targets, or data points. Their lived realities should shape how the problem is framed, how solutions are tested, how delivery is designed, and how success is measured.
This is where Step B of the GAIP framework becomes important.
Step B identifies public-sector partners, stakeholders, and target groups. This should not be treated as a simple mapping exercise. It is the point at which decision-makers should ask who is affected, who understands the risk as lived, who has influence, who has authority, who is trusted, and who needs to be involved for the solution to work.
Step D is also relevant because community realities affect implementation.
A solution can look coherent from an institutional perspective and still fail in practice. It may not be trusted. It may be too hard to claim. It may not fit household cash flows.
It may solve the problem as seen by the institution, but not the problem as lived by the people exposed to the risk.
Designing with the community may mean engaging local governments, community organisations, cooperatives, farmer groups, women's groups, employers, healthcare providers, SMEs, or trusted intermediaries. It may mean testing whether the product language is understood. It may mean checking whether the claims documentation is realistic. It may mean understanding whether people believe the promise of protection will be honoured.
This is not a soft addition to technical work. It is part of whether the solution will work.
A protection solution that is not understood, trusted, usable, or relevant may close a gap on paper while leaving the lived gap largely unchanged.
Keeping the human purpose in view
Humanity-centred design says: look at the whole ecosystem, solve root issues, take a long-term systems view, test and refine solutions, and design with the community.
The GAIP framework says: align motivations and frame the problem, understand and quantify risks, identify partners, stakeholders and target groups, develop a solutions menu, and build an implementation plan with mandates, governance, KPIs, and reporting.
These are different languages. But they point in the same direction.
Both resist narrow problem definitions. Both caution against premature solutions. Both recognise that complex problems require attention to systems, root causes, affected groups, feedback, and long-term consequences. Both understand that good intentions are not enough.
The GAIP framework provides a practical sequence for protection gap work. It does not reduce protection gaps to insurance penetration. It does not assume that the market alone can solve the issue. It does not assume that government alone can solve it either. It asks decision-makers to move through motivation, risk, actors, solutions, and implementation in a disciplined order.
That discipline matters because protection gap work can otherwise become fragmented. Each institution may see the part of the problem closest to its mandate. Each may move towards the solution it can most easily fund, regulate, launch, or explain.
The framework helps slow that process down.
It asks decision-makers to begin with the harm, understand the risk, identify who is affected and who must act, consider a broader set of solutions, and build the conditions for implementation.
That is not only a technical discipline. It is a human one. Because behind every protection gap is a human gap.
The purpose of this work is not simply to increase coverage, launch schemes, mobilise capital, or produce better frameworks. These are means. The purpose is to reduce harm, improve resilience, and ensure that protection is meaningful, usable, trusted, and sustainable.
Decision-makers need to ask the right questions in the right order.
For protection gaps, that may be the difference between designing an intervention that appears coherent from the institution's perspective and one that actually protects the individuals, families, communities, businesses, and governments it is meant to serve.
