ReliefWeb

Introduction

In recent years, few issues have focused the attention of the humanitarian aid community more than the growing problem of insecurity. The last decade has seen aid workers increasingly targeted by armed groups and in 2012 alone, 187 humanitarian workers were victims of security incidents worldwide. A significant proportion of these incidents have involved NGO partners. Irish-based aid NGOs have not been immune to such difficulties, operating as they do in some of the most volatile and insecure environments in the world, including in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Sudan.

Against this challenging backdrop, the guidelines presented here have been designed to help our NGO partners to fulfil their duty of care responsibilities towards their own staff, most especially through an enhanced implementation of their own existing governance processes and in view of their legal obligations as employers. They have been drafted with the active input of the Dóchas Humanitarian Aid Working Group and are based on extensive research carried out by Mr. Christopher Finucane and Mr. Maarten Merkelbach, two leading experts in the field of aid worker security, on behalf of Irish Aid.

A conceptual shift in our overall approach to safety and security underlines the approach taken within the guidelines presented below. Safety and security are not only an ethical and moral concern but are also an explicit legal obligation. This requires the recognition and acceptance of responsibility and accountability under the law, through a top-down approach driven by the organisation’s governing bodies. As a result, institutional policy should not be a condensed version of amalgamated field practices. Finally, the guidelines also emphasise the interdependence between efforts to deliver programme objectives effectively and the development of a safety- conscious and competent workforce to help achieve these objectives.