This research affirms that there are distinct and important continued protection roles for national, local and international actors in the Pacific. National and local actor roles are identified in the research as “core”, recognizing their ongoing, mandated and indigenous engagement with protection issues in context. International roles are identified in the research as “complementary”, recognizing their potential to support on particular technical and capacity issues. However, this research finds that in current protection programming actors are not consistently recognizing and respecting each other’s roles, which is undermining complementarity and protection outcomes for communities.