Page updated:
Friday, 7 September 2007

SOCIETY - fresh ideas...

Aid workers face increasing risk

Once, the main concern was the avoidance of disease. Today, however, personal security has become the thing to watch out for in many parts of the world.

Ill-prepared for trouble

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), aid workers are ill-equipped to deal with their own safety (physical and psychological health) and security (risk due to crime and ethnic, political or civil conflict, kidnapping and terrorism). They receive insufficient preparation to work in developing countries, said the WHO in July 1998, and this puts them at risk of disease and conflict.

Supporting the WHO warning of increasing danger was a 2001 article in the Guardian newspaper in the UK that reported on the declining safety of aid workers in the field. Journalists Robin Imray and David Brindle reported that: "Last September, three UN refugee workers were killed in West Timor by a machete-wielding mob... at Christmas, Charlotte Wilson, a teacher with VSO, was murdered in Burundi...in April three Red Cross staff were slaughtered in the Congo.

"Disturbingly, there appears to be a trend of rising violence against aid workers. A report by UNICEF... lists 46 deaths among aid workers last year. There is an abundance of anecdotal evidence that aid workers are increasingly victims of hostage-taking, assassination, mines and robbery."

The WHO’s warning was reiterated by RedR, an international organisation that places engineering staff in humanitarian aid and development projects. RedR is one of a growing number of aid organisations now preparing staff through intensive courses in field security. The courses are provided by specialist consultants such as Global Risk Awareness and Safety Programs which also offer training for journalists inbound to hazardous environments.

Small agencies, high risk

Like the freelance reporters and photojournalists who lack the means to take advantage of expensive courses in field security, few if any of the small aid NGOs (non-government organisations) have the funds to put staff through specialised preparation. Such agencies are often shoe-string operations with very limited resources. Sometimes, their expatriate field staff are volunteers with varying levels of worldly experience and risk awareness.

Although the situation may have be changing, little attention has been paid to the security of staff in the field. A few small organisations on the periphery of the aid sector, some of them providing opportunities for volunteers to work in the field but not supplying any support, place people into potentially difficult situations in which they had no experience. An organisation based in northern NSW, for instance, rushed a small number of volunteers to the PNG north coast immediately after the tsunami disaster of the late-1990s. The organisation had no experience in humanitarian assistance, limited capacity to support a team in the field, was unknown to emergency agencies and had skills more appropriate to the later rehabilitation and development phase.

For the field staff of small development assiatance agencies, the best protection from hostility comes from their long-term association with local people with whom they develop a rapport. Rapport, however, does not offer immunity and if aid workers are seen to be too close to particular ethnic or political communities, that can bring its own dangers.

A few years ago, the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) offered a short course in field security for the staff of member NGOs. That is no longer available, said an ACFOA spokesman, but would be considered if member agencies demanded it. Such training could be all that many aid agency staff receive.

Detoriorating situation closer to home

The worsening personal security situation in the Australasian-Pacific region became apparent to the project manager of a small Sydney-based development agency when he attempted to reestablish contact with the manager of a metals recycling project in Lae, PNG. He eventually discovered that the manager, a PNG national, had been attacked by rascals (a PNG term for gangs of armed thugs), beaten with bottles, his vehicle stolen and burned. This happened in the suburbs of Lae, PNG's second largest city. He had managed to talk his way out of a previous encounter with a rascal gang.

Shortly after, while making the road journey from Lae to the PNG highlands town of Mt Hagen with the project manager, the detoriating internal security situation was brought home when they were stopped by assault rifle and shotgun-toting police at three checkpoints along the Hilans Hiway. Their vehicle was searched for smuggled guns, alcohol and drugs.

South-East Asia and the Pacific used to be a region of relative safety for aid workers, but that has changed with the detoriorating crime situation in PNG and the Solomon Islands. The political instability in Fiji, the Solomons, PNG, Papua (Irian Jaya), the recent conflict between Christian and Islamic communities in the Indonesian islands, further instability in Indonesia and violence in East Timor should be factors that Australian NGOs take into account in preparing staff and volunteers for deployment in the region.

Why might people be targeted?

Street crime seldom has any overt political rationale. Nationals in PNG, for instance, are as likely to be attacked as expatriates although Westerners do offer tempting targets because of the perception that they are wealthy.

Politicaly motivated crime varies with changing geopoltical/ military circumstances. This seems to have been behind the murder by Islamic extremists of Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and the assault on a Guardian journalist in the same region last year.

The reasons behind attacks on Western expatriates includes their ethnicity (because they are Westerners), their nationality (especially if their country is in conflict in the region), their gender (women are particularly at risk in some places) and non-political reasons such as robbery.

What can aid workers do?

The threat to aid workers varies with region. In many places no perceptible threat exists.Yet, hidden just below the surface may be ethnic and political tensions not obvious to outsiders. In the Solomon Islands in late 1998, for instance, Honiara was tense with the expectation of trouble. At the time, nothing came of it though there was a fear that the town's Chinese merchants might be attacked. The trouble erupted later with the ethnic conflict between immigrants from Malaita island and the local Guales.

To avoid trouble, RedR advises aid workers to adopt a methodical approach to safety and security by gathering and assessing information to identify patterns and trends in crime and security, by developing effective communications within agencies and by " ...preparing for the worse, just in case".

"Get as much information as possible before making a decision about going", writes RedR member Tom Nickalls in the agency's newsletter.

"Find out what the current situation is. What are the facts? What have been the most important recent security incidents... is the situation perceived as getting better or worse? Find out how the organisation you will be working for manages security... what are the security procedures?"

RedR proposes that aid workers adopt the 'security triangle': acceptane by the local community, protection against threat and the deterence of malvolents. Good information, says RedR, is critical for risk assessment.

Personal precautions

Where there is a risk to security, aid workers should maintain an awareness of their surroundings as they go about their business, monitor the local media and share what they learn with the staff of other agencies. Maintaining good relations with local people is clearly a benefit.

Personal arrangements in areas where aid workers and Westerners might be or have been targeted could include varying daily travel routines, dressing and behaving in a manner consistent with local customs, checking in with the agency office, notifying travel plans, introducing effective security arrangements in the office and residence, avoiding the use of signs bearing national flags or symbols and, finallly, maintaining contact with consular offices if tensions become acute.

If the situation moves towards instabilty or emergency, agencies might organise an alternative meeting place to the office. Staff might put together a 'grab it and run' pack containing a change of clothes, money, personal toiletries, first aid kit, travel tickets and passport in case evacuation at short notice becomes necessary.

When government is a hazard

It is not only rebel groups, criminal gangs and angry religionists that complicate aid delivery. National governments and their instrumentalities can be just as difficult.

This was discovered by CARE Australia when two of its Australian staff and a local CARE worker were arrested by Serbian authorities during the conflict over the breakup of Yugoslavia. It was alleged that CARE staff were collecting intelligence.

Aid agencies routinely collect information about the security situation for safety reasons. Certainly, this practice is easily confused with gathering intelligence of military value, yet such information is also collected by journalists and news photographers. The difference seems to be that it is the aid agencies that come under suspicion.

Perhaps there is good reason for this. The suspicion was lent credibility when, following his banishment from the territory pre-independence, Australian aid project manager Lansell Tauvedin went public with the news that he had supplied reports on the situation in East Timor to Australian consular officials in Jakarta. Tauvedin claimed that he did this as part of his agreement with AusAID, the federal government agency supporting his work. The Australian government denied his allegations.

Writing in his book The Big Breach (HarperCollins 2001) following his dismissal from the British foreign intelligence agency MI6, Richard Tomlinson mentioned how the agency used aid as a cover for intelligence gathering.

"Another officer, who had qualified as a veterinary surgeon before joining MI6", Tomlinson claims, "...had just returned from an ODA (Overseas Development Administration) sponsored tour of Iran... As our tour passed through most of the veterinary research sites which were suspected to hide biological weapon production plants, MI6 has slipped a suitably qualified officer into the training team." Tomlinson also alleges that he posed as a journalist as cover during the Balkans conflict. This, too, is credible because the use of journalism as a cover has been reported by media workers and is of concern to media organisations who say that it endangers the safety of authentic journalists.

In future, information collection by aid agencies could become even more muddied because increased emphasis is now being placed on the use of publicly-accessible sources of data. Known as ‘open source intelligence’ (as opposed to intelligence obtained through clandestine sources), it consists of the interpretation of media and research reports to compile useful intelligence on a place, person or situation. While media reports have long been used for this purpose, publicly-available reports by aid workers and aid agencies are likely to find their way into the mix.

Not a bleak picture

The aid scene is not devolving into a situation of universal danger to aid workers. Apart from places plagued by rampant crime, the areas of danger coincide for the most part with zones of political, military and ethnic tension and conflict.

With the recent unveiling of the world’s first memorial to aid workers in Canada, the time has come for all aid agencies to heed the warnings of the WHO and RedR - that danger is increasing - and provide guidelines and training for people going into the field.