Protecting aid workers as civilians

In April 2013, the militant group Al-Shabaab detonated a series of explosive devices in Mogadishu, Somalia, including a car bomb that exploded as an aid convoy passed. The attack killed at least 19 people, among them two Turkish aid workers from the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA). The event highlights two elements that characterize the contemporary context of aid delivery: the increasing importance of non-OECD DAC aid actors and the rising numbers of attacks using explosive weapons that kill or injure aid workers.

In our report “Operating in Insecurity: Shifting patterns of violence against humanitarian aid providers and their staff (1996-2010),” we document the phenomenon of the increasing and detrimental impact of explosive weapons upon aid workers. For example, whereas in the 1990s landmines posed a significant risk to aid workers, the number of security events involving landmines has decreased to below 5% of events involving explosive weapons. According to our dataset, by contrast, between 2006 and 2010 explosive weapons, including shells and bombs, killed approximately one-third of all aid workers who sustained their injuries during active fighting. The use of explosive weapons, particularly in populated areas, is associated with high levels of harm to civilians. The blast and fragmentation effects of explosive weapons kill and maim without distinction and damage vital infrastructure. Explosive remnants left behind by explosive weapons also prevent aid workers from accessing populations in need of assistance.

Although the Turkish aid workers were international staff, the vast majority of the absolute numbers of aid workers who are killed, injured, or kidnapped are national staff, a number that continues to grow. Together, the grave risk of harm to civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and the burden of insecurity on national staff underline that the protection of aid workers can and should be framed more broadly in terms of the protection of civilians. At present, for many agencies, operational security management is separate from aid programming, where both operate in effective silos and the protection of aid workers is often divorced from advocacy and operational strategies to protect civilians more generally. Casting the protection of aid workers in terms of the protection of civilians offers two related advantages.

First, aid workers often complain about security restrictions that prevent them from accessing vulnerable populations, while security managers struggle to ensure the safety of staff members without securing them behind fortified compounds and in armoured vehicles. Their different goals serve to divide them. While recognizing that the specific risks for the general population and individual aid workers are often different, framing the protection of aid workers in terms of the protection of civilians offers a common language and goal that can unite security management and aid programming. More dialogue between those working on the protection of civilians and those working on the safety and security of aid workers could yield new and effective strategies to protect both groups.

Second, international law offers protection for civilians in armed conflict, even though the most dangerous operating environments for aid workers are fragile states or situations of armed conflict where states are unwilling or unable to protect their citizens, or where governments and opposition forces actively target civilians. Clearly a gap exists between the capacity of weak states to protect all civilians, whether aid workers or not. The affiliations and identity of aid workers, and particularly of national staff, may make them targets or offer them some insulation from attack. Aid workers, as international and national staff, are first and foremost civilians. The framework of the protection of civilians offers a more inclusive way of thinking about ways to protect all aid workers, and particularly for national staff. Human rights, humanitarian, and advocacy organizations often make the link to the protection of civilians in international law in their advocacy campaigns, but less so in their daily operations. Advocacy efforts on specific issues of concern for both groups can provide significant benefits. As our data illustrate, the international ban on landmines is both a victory for the protection of civilians and for the protection of all aid workers.

Larissa Fast is Assistant Professor at the Kroc Institute and Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame. She is co-author, with Christina Wille, of the Insecurity Insight report “Operating in Insecurity: Shifting patterns of violence against humanitarian aid providers and their staff (1996-2010)”.