|
Reprinted from "Together" Magazine, No. 57, January-March 1998
by Charles Rogers
[As the world's disasters shift from being primarily those of the natural variety to those brought about by human-caused violence, NGOs (non-government organizations) are scrambling to reassess their methods of providing aid to victims. Given the increasingly violent nature of the situations in which relief agencies find themselves, what steps should be taken to ensure the safety of their workers? To what extent should armed guards be employed to protect staff, and how ethical is it to do this if agencies profess non-violence?
NGOs are turning to one another for advice and insight as they struggle with these and other questions. They also are talking with government agencies who have had experience in such matters. In June, as part of a security symposium, Chuck Rogers, director of corporate security for World Vision International, delivered an address on NGO security to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The following is an adaptation of that address.]
The organization "Doctors Without Borders," in its efforts to assist refugees wandering in the forests of Zaire, now Congo, called attention to the alleged atrocities committed by ADFL rebels around Kisingani. Shortly afterward, the aid workers found a box of antitank mines lying in the doorway of their hospital. About the same time, a contingent of rebels armed with machine guns showed up at the group's compound. Their message: Keep quiet or we'll be back.
| The message was not for Doctors without Borders alone. It was a warning to all humanitarian agencies. Most of these rebels are untrained kids, and they make no distinction between Doctors without Borders, World Vision, CARE, ICRC, or UNHCR. What one agency says or does affects everyone else. |  | 
The author, Charles Rogers, is director of corporate security for World Vision International. Reprinted with permission from Together magazine. |
Reality Shifts
Not long ago, relief agencies responded primarily to the needs of victims of natural disasters such as floods, famine and earthquakes. In the past decade, however, there has been a dramatic increase in complex humanitarian emergencies where relief agencies are responding primarily to victims of armed conflict. In the first half of the 1990s, 70 states were involved in 93 wars. More than half of these conflicts lasted more than five years; 40 percent lasted more than 10 years, and 25 percent have lasted more than 20 years.
At the same time, civilians are increasingly the targets of conflict rather than simply hapless victims. Civilian casualties of war have increased from 10 percent at the turn of the century, to 50 percent in World War II, and over 75 percent in contemporary conflicts. Since 1980, the number of refugees has increased from 2.4 million to 14.4 million, while the number of internally displaced persons has risen from 22 million to 38 million. The magnitude and duration of crises has left beneficiary groups reliant on international assistance for extended periods of time. It has also been suggested that the shift from wars between national armies to wars between militia and guerrilla groups has contributed to the loss of the rules of conduct of war.
Finally, as civilians increasingly become the targets of war, those who come to their assistance--ie: the NGOs--are less likely to be perceived as impartial and neutral. The symbols of neutrality and impartiality that NGOs have depended on throughout the post-war years as the primary mantle of protection and security are no longer respected.
In the context of increased exposure, a deterioration in the rules of war and the loss of perceived neutrality, the community of NGOs operating in complex emergencies is facing greater exposure to danger, despite their efforts to maintain their tradition of avoiding political entanglements.
NGOs today often have to assign staff to some of the most dangerous and insecure areas in the world, with little or no protection. These are places were many countries would not consider sending their armies.
Having said that, however, there are agencies that actively engage in advocacy on behalf of people in developing countries, usually the poorest of the poor, who are the victims of government abuse and of the structural causes of poverty. These kinds of activities place both the aid worker and the beneficiary at great risk, and need to be undertaken with extreme caution and sensitivity.
By far the most alarming development is the fact that, for the first time in their history, NGOs are now being targeted. While few statistics are available, there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence clearly indicating that aid workers are increasingly victims of hostage taking, assassination, mine explosions and robbery in addition to the ongoing exposure to vehicular and health threats. Two dramatic examples of this were the murders of six Red Cross nurses in Chechnya last year, and the killing of Red Cross workers in Rwanda. NGOs are also being targeted for intimidation and manipulation by warring factions. They are being used as pawns in regional conflicts. In eastern Zaire, for example, NGOs were used as bait by the rebels to lure Hutu refugees out of the forests. The problem is exacerbated by the commingling of belligerents and legitimate refugees. Aid workers, being unable and unwilling to sort out one group from another, frequently find themselves unwittingly feeding genocidal killers.
All of these scenarios highlight one indisputable fact: Humanitarian aid workers are at serious risk, so much so that it may forever alter the way they conduct their business.
NGO Model
NGOs, therefore, must take a new look at their approaches to security management. Given the nature of our work and mission, the security management model we follow is very different from that of the military or even multinational enterprises. We cannot operate out of secure compounds, protected by the latest high-tech security equipment, and venturing out only under heavily armed escort. We have a different agenda. We must be where the people are, to live among them and to identify with their suffering, if we are to remain true to our calling and organizational ethos.
So, in our approach to security, the accent must be on prevention, not on protection. My organization, World Vision, is a member of InterAction, a consortium of United States-based NGOs headquartered in Washington, D.C. Last year it established a Security Task Force with funding provided by the Office of Federal Disaster Assistance, a branch of USAID. I serve as the chair of the security task force. Our mandate is to develop a comprehensive security training curriculum, which will offer training in security management to aid workers serving in areas of moderate-to-high risk.
In my work as Director of Corporate Security for World Vision, I have discovered that in many of the field security incidents that I have investigated, the root cause was a management problem, not just a security problem. Without formal training in security management, country directors often make decisions that put themselves and their staff at risk, or fail to take proper security precautions in dangerous environments.
NGOs need to get serious about security practices such as risk assessment, personal security awareness, security incident briefings and reporting, proper communications networking, contingency and evacuation planning, and other aspects of security management. Over the past 12 months we, along with many other NGOs, have benefitted from actions of the U.S. military in evacuating expatriate staff from hot spots such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. While we are immensely grateful to the U.S. government and the United Nations for their assistance, I make it a practice to insist that all country directors have their own security plan in place, using the U.S. military and the U.N. options as backup.
On an organizational level, NGOs need to think more strategically about security thresholds for their complex humanitarian emergency operations. That is, they must determine what levels of risk to staff are acceptable, and which are not, and have the will to say no to opportunities that present unacceptable risks to staff, even when there are other compelling reasons to respond to the emergency. These other reasons range from the pressure to accept large grants available from donors, to the presence of other competing NGOs already operational on the ground. This has serious implications for how NGOs do business, and represents a radical departure from past practices. It involves serious risk-and-benefit analysis, weighing the corporate advantages of responding to the emergency against the moral and legal considerations of committing staff to high risk areas.
In a World Vision survey taken last year, country directors serving in areas of moderate-to-high risk were asked to list and rate the various threats to their staff and operations. They listed seven specific threats and rated them in order of their relative impact on program security. At the top of the list was the threat of criminal activity. In sub-Saharan Africa, this usually involves roving bands of drunken teenagers brandishing AK-47s, and RPGs, or demobilized soldiers, who have not been paid and have nothing to do. That is the number-one threat. Of all the incident reports I receive involving attacks on our staff in Africa, this is the primary cause. Other threats on the list include civil unrest, ethnic violence, warlord-ism, corruption, active war zones and religious tensions.
Because of the nature of our work, we cannot provide absolute safety and security for our staff. We believe, however, that we can and must reduce risk to staff by providing comprehensive security management training to our program managers so that security management becomes an integral and required component of a field manager's professional development portfolio.
The Issue of Arms
A subject of hot debate in the NGO community today is the use of armed guards or private security firms to protect NGO staff and operations in areas of conflict. It is not uncommon for NGOs to use unarmed guards hired locally for both their private residences and service centers, but these usually amount to nothing more than first alert gatekeepers. There is even precedent for the use of armed guards, such as the technicals in Somalia who were very effective in protecting relief commodities and personnel during the crisis there.
But given the widespread increase in violence in sub-Saharan Africa, which will get worse before it gets better, NGOs face an agonizing moral dilemma over the issue of arming themselves. It raises some profound ethical questions which strike at the heart of their purpose and mission. I will cite a few of those questions, and defer from answering them only because they are still a matter of some controversy.
1) If we say we are using weapons for a "good" cause, which is the saving of lives, are we then saying that we accept the terms on which conflict is fought? After all, all warring factions make similar claims, since they purport to be resorting to weapons only to accomplish some "good."
2) Are we sending a message that it is legitimate for weapons to determine who gets access to aid and how aid is received? Some aid agencies justify doing this as necessary to ensure delivery of goods to populations who truly need them. It is understood that aid commodities may be stolen and thus put to the direct support of belligerents, and aid agencies will sometimes hire armed guards to prevent this direct support.
3) Does the use of armed guards give the perception that NGOs are just another faction in the fighting, either by other factions or by the local military? In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, NGOs operate with either the overt or tacit consent of local authorities. These authorities vary from clan leaders to legitimate government officials. Does the use of armed guards jeopardize that consent?
4) Does the use of armed guards make NGOs a target and thus heighten risk to staff members? Armed guards usually shoot first and seldom ask questions later. Are the aid agencies prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences of those kinds of actions?
5) Does it send mixed and conflicting messages to the people when NGOs publicly call for peace, justice, reconciliation and a negotiated settlement to conflict, while at the same time hiring armed guards to protect their staff and property? Hence, do our actions contradict our words, and make us no better than the participants in the armed conflict themselves?
A few agencies are actively considering the use of private security firms to provide protection for their staff and operations. But this raises the ante even higher. There are problems associated with this option as well. The first is cost. Private security firms are expensive, and NGOs lack the deep pockets of the multinationals to pay for these services. Since NGOs are non-profit and depend on grants and private funding for their programs, are donors willing to absorb these costs?
Another problem is availability. Private security firms are not available in many places where NGOs are present. An example of one location where they are available is Kigali, Rwanda. Numerous private security firms have sprung up, offering their services to NGOs, and several NGOs have taken up that offer. Their services are built around the installation of a panic button on the NGO premises, with a guaranteed armed response in two minutes. Are the aid agencies prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences of a shoot-out? Will the local authorities view the presence of a private security firm as a threat to their authority and an intrusion on their national sovereignty? What terms and conditions apply to the use of private security firms, and does their use shift the perception of intent from self-defense to interventionism?
Conclusion
These and many other questions are at the heart of the debate in the NGO community today. The security crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has raised the stakes for future NGO operations that can only be addressed at the highest levels of strategic, organizational decision-making. There is a growing conviction that only a radical departure from past practices can save humanitarian aid programs from disaster. In some instances, NGOs might simply have to learn to say no, especially in those situations where their intervention might exacerbate and perpetuate the causes of the humanitarian emergency. An article in a recent U.S. News and World Report summed up the situation this way: "If aid groups have learned that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road back may be paved with political savvy."
|