<p>Developing countries tend to address poverty by prioritizing community empowerment programs as the primary instrument, while the role of structural social protection in reducing the economic vulnerability of poor households receives relatively little attention. Consequently, poverty is often understood as a matter of individual capacity rather than systemic risk. This study aims to analyze the dominant pattern of empowerment approaches in poverty reduction policies and to evaluate the extent to which these approaches are integrated with protective and sustainable social protection mechanisms. The method used is a qualitative approach with a comparative study design based on secondary data, which includes analysis of policy documents, government budget reports, and empirical studies related to empowerment programs in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Data were analyzed through thematic coding to identify policy orientations, institutional designs, and the relationship between empowerment and protection against socio-economic risks. The results show that despite institutional variations across countries, empowerment policies in all three contexts consistently emphasize increasing economic capacity and market participation, but have not been balanced by strengthening structural protection against income risks, job insecurity, and policy uncertainty. This condition encourages poor households to allocate aid to short-term needs not from a lack of understanding or capacity, but is a rational strategy to cope with uncertainty, which in turn explains why empowerment programs often fail to produce long-term results. This research contributes conceptually by developing a protective governance framework in community empowerment programs that places social protection as a prerequisite for empowerment, and practically provides a basis for formulating more resilient, integrated, and long-term-oriented poverty alleviation policies.</p>