Another year has passed, and we look at 2010 in the sense of AAR, After Action Report: what can we learn for what will come next?
The suicide bombing in Pakistan on the 25/12 (see previous post) seems now have led to the local government shutting down four food program offices. The decision might be based on actual risk – the region has currently a higher activity of fighting, and more bombings might be more wood to the fire – but bombs can be set off anywhere for any reason chosen for PR. Removing food programs will hit the local population badly, and suggest to insurgents or terrorist that they can affect things.
NGO´s have had a busy year. A lot has happened, and both field activity and financial activity has been high. You can read a brief summary here:
Kidnappings of aid workers have continued to rise during 2010. It seems likely this trend will continue, and an interesting trend to watch is whether NGO´s and aid organisations will start to have a higher awareness and training for staff on this subject. Which organisations will take their responsibility and fulfill their duty of care? Working as aid worker in the field will always carry some threats with it, but the question of how much these become an actual risk is partially contingent on how well the organisation trains staff in security, how well it updates policies, and how well the trainers are allowed to train the staff.
One of many kidnappings in 2010 was the three latvians who worked for the World Food Program and who recently were released safe and unharmed:
Another was the Save the Children security consultant, released very rapidly due to good pre-work in accepteance anchoring with local elders:
Eight Red Cross workers were kidnapped in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Kongo, and released quite fast.
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/mb/hostage_freed_in_sudan
And first kidnappning, then later fatality, of scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove was one of the tragic events of 2010.
She later received an award for her work and life:
Kidnappings of aid workers seem to be one of the clear, likely trends to continue. Again, an interesting question is how fast organisations will adapt to this and step up to the plate with training and responsibility for their staff, both international staff and local. You can read some of the advice on kidnapping management and K&R for NGO´s from negotiator and specialist Suzanne Williams, from the NGO Security Conference 2010:
There have also been other deaths than Linda Norgrove, as there always are: the even sadder part is that many of those who die while volonteering to help humanity through aid work usually never get any recognition or medals. They might not ask for it either, but the amount of aid workers who get hurt or killed while doing incredible work is often overlooked.
Another of those horrible events in 2010 was the murder of ten medical aid workers in Afghanistan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/doctor-karen-woo-not-religious
This is primarily a blog on NGO security so many items will be as grim as this, but it´s important to remember what they stand for: all the help and brilliant, courageous work that was done all over the globe in 2010.
Other trends this year has been the buzzwords remote management, which is becoming more common. Remote management means international organisations keeping contact and support, and sometimes training, with local staff on the ground through e-mail, phones or texts. The GPR 8 Revised, which was published in December 2010, has updated to a whole section aimed at remote management.
Acceptance, one of the three pillars of NGO security – acceptance, deterrence and protection – was also the theme for the NGO Security Conference 2010, and some in the field are trying to lobby hard for deeper studies and skills within Acceptance itself, rather than follow the knee-jerk reaction to build higher walls, add more barbed wire or armed guards that some organisations look to when risks seem to increase around them. Larissa Fast and Michael O´Neill presented their paper on this at the NGO Conference, later published by ODI. You can read it here:
What are you and your organisation doing to increase security awareness? Better security awareness leads to aid workers being able to do their jobs better, safer, and for longer. It should cover 1) getting clear outcomes of what you or your organisation actually need for the areas you work in, 2) training aimed at filling the gaps, preferably training tailored to make the information percolate through the organisation in a viral way, and 3) making sure that the policies are changed and enforced. If your organisation hasn´t had any incidents deemed big enough it´s just a matter of time before you do. Please make sure of duty of care for your employees, and look at these three points and how they can be slowly changed to being more aware of security and trained to implement that both in the field and in the office, and in the links between them.
You can read this older post from SC Blog on Before: what do you do before an incident to prepare for avoiding it?
We hope you have a really good year, with more awareness on security and more help getting out to the people who need it.
Happy New Year
Daniel
