3Shielding aid from violence
Security risk management in the aid sector
The relevance of safety and security risk management to the Department for International Development (DFID)
24.The UK Aid Strategy published by the Department for International Development (DFID) and HM Treasury in November 2015 commits DFID to spending at least 50% of its overseas aid budget in fragile states and regions to tackle instability, insecurity and conflict; and promote peace and stability.57 (Figure 4 shows which countries count as fragile states.) DFID exceeded its 50% target in 2016 (59%) and 2017 (51%) after the target was set; and exceeded the target in 2013 (55%), 2014 (55%) and 2015 (57%) before the target was set.58
25.The UK government’s policy to channel aid to some of the most challenging locations in the world effectively pushes aid, and aid workers, into potentially violent settings. The UK should therefore do everything it can to help ensure those working in the humanitarian aid community are as safe as possible. Addressing the safety and security risks faced by humanitarian workers in hostile and insecure environments helps to lower vulnerability; and leads to safer and more effective humanitarian operations.
26.In response to our questions, DFID accepted that, because the UK is such a big donor and because it has put such emphasis on fragile states where a lot of aid worker casualties will arise, there is merit in the UK doing more to put pressure on other donors, the United Nations (UN) and other multilateral agencies to place greater emphasis on the protection of aid workers and health workers. In the view of DFID, our inquiry into this topic was timely and provided an opportunity to air the issues in the House and for the Government to respond.59
Figure 4: Countries classified by DFID as fragile states
Source: Comptroller and Auditor General, The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure, Session 2017–2019, HC 2218, National Audit Office, June 2019, Figure 6
Duty of care in the humanitarian sector
27.Like any other employer, humanitarian organisations are required to meet adequate duty of care standards to protect their personnel from harm or injury in the workplace. In the context of humanitarian action, such a standard can perhaps be best framed as the organisation’s obligation to manage and address foreseeable risks, which will be context-specific.
28.Ignoring or neglecting duty of care can place an aid organisation, its staff and its reputation at risk. Dennis v Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) (2015)—a compensation ruling that found in favour of an aid worker who was kidnapped and injured while employed by the NRC—underlines the repercussions organisations could face in the event they do not meet adequate duty of care standards.60
29.Although the Dennis v NRC ruling involved legal responsibility towards a contractual employee, aid organisations may owe those who are not employees—such as independent contractors, volunteers and those working for downstream delivery partners—an “ethical duty of care”. The EISF told us it is important that aid agencies, whose mission is around human dignity should consider their moral and ethical obligations in terms of duty of care to non-employees working in insecure environments.61 Practical ways of demonstrating this ethical responsibility might include the provision of security training to local delivery partners or allowing sufficient headroom in delivery partner budgets to strengthen security.
Inclusive security risk management
30.We noted in Chapter 2, Aid under attack, of this report that data on sexual violence are weak across the aid sector and incidents are significantly under-reported. As a consequence, strategies to counter those threats can be based on assumptions that lack empirical support. The revelations of sexual abuse in Haiti, where the perpetrators the abuse were aid workers, and the publication of our report on sexual abuse and exploitation in the aid sector in July 2018 were a wake-up call for the sector.62 Since then, the aid sector has started to develop and publish guidelines to tackle gender-based violence as well as other personal identity characteristics such as ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation.63
Specialist risk management organisations
31.To counter rising security threat levels, the international humanitarian community has created collaborative organisations such as the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF), which started in 2006, and the International NGO Safety and Security Association (INSSA), founded in 2008, to strengthen humanitarian security risk management, share good practice and support aid organisations operating in fragile and conflict affected countries. Another organisation, the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), formed in 2011, has a mandate to establish and operate NGO Safety Offices (NSOs) which provide in-country support and advice to humanitarian organisations operating in high risk countries. These organisations are funded through membership fees and contributions from international donors.64
32.DFID provides funding to the EISF and INSO through its ‘Security and Risk Management in Hostile Environments’ (2013–18) and ‘Humanitarian Global Services’ programmes (2018–21). (Paragraphs 36–37 of this Report provide further details about this support.)
Strategies to counter threats to humanitarian workers and operations
33.During this inquiry, we heard that there are various means of countering threats to humanitarian workers. The safety and security triangle within which aid workers normally work can be grouped under three strategies: protection, deterrence and acceptance.65 Protection and deterrence typically mean physical security measures such as personal protection (for example, protective clothing), hardened compounds and armed escorts; while acceptance refers to ‘softer’ strategies designed to build trust and understanding among the communities that aid is intended to help. The weight an aid organisation gives to each strategy will depend on what normally works best for that organisation and the particular setting in which aid is being delivered.
34.As set out above in paragraph 22, the use of hard security measures, while appearing to solve the immediate issue, come at a cost. They can undermine the acceptance and understanding that an aid organisation has been trying to build; and make it more difficult to reach out to potentially hostile communities. Reflecting on his experience of being kidnapped in 1998, Vincent Cochetel told us that:
“[T]he main area of reflection afterwards for me was to ask: ‘how do they see us?’ I mean both the militant groups out there, which we may have to work with because they control part of the territory where we work, and the war-affected population more generally. We proceed on […] lots of assumptions that are wrong. One of [the assumptions] is that humanitarian aid and the delivery of aid itself will protect you and your staff, because the people know what you are doing. […]
“We are still often viewed as having western values, being western-funded, with high suspicion regarding our motives. […] “You need to compensate that by engagement, by knowing the people, by being extremely modest, and by not being too candid about the interaction that you have. Build that mutual interest and maintain a high quality of service, because people will value the service you provide as long as we are culturally sensitive to the environment in which we operate.
“My main takeaway from those 11 months of captivity on the professional side is to invest more time in the perception of who we are vis-à-vis the affected community and what the threats out there are, knowing that they are very different from one situation to another.”66
35.On gaining acceptance, DFID told us that:
“… I suspect part of the issue is a failure to appreciate some of the cultural sensitivities, which very often leads to misunderstanding. There is a piece of work to be done to better explore that and perhaps get it right in the future, but there is also a piece of work about education of the host population, so that they better understand what is being done for them, to try to dispel some of the suspicion that can lead to the hostility of the sort that we have seen.”67
36.There is little direct evidence available about the effectiveness of different safety and security strategies or combinations of those strategies.
UK Government policy to support aid worker security
37.The UK Government’s ‘safety first’ and Humanitarian Reform Policies commits it to upholding international humanitarian law to help protect civilian workers in conflict situations. At the same time, DFID’s Due Diligence Framework requires DFID to assess bids for programme and project funding to confirm that measures are being put in place to counter risks to the safety and security of bidders’ staff. DFID also provides funding to organisations that support humanitarian organisations’ security capabilities.
‘Safety first’
38.We welcome the thrust of the ‘safety first’ policy outlined to us by successive Ministers. In relation to the situation in Syria, for example, former Minister of State, Alistair Burt MP, told us:
… the first and most immediate thing is you do not put people into situations where they are at maximum risk. It is essential to use any information we have to feed back to agencies and keep people protected from going into certain areas. … The most important thing, and the best thing, is to make sure that if the risks are too great then they do not go. That then involves consultation with those on the ground in order to say, “The people that you have a responsibility for now under humanitarian law cannot be supplied by us because of your actions or actions of those connected with you. This must stop”.68
Mr Burt’s successor Dr Andrew Murrison MP, told us:
It is a bit like aviation safety, where aviation companies would say, “Safety is just what we do day to day and, therefore, it is difficult to strip it out as a work strand”. I would very much hope that this would run through the stuff that we and our agencies do—those that we pay to do work—in a similar kind of fashion, with a total-safety approach.
…
I like to think of this in a three-pillared way. We discharge all of this through advocating [IHL]; providing direct funding; and doing all we can to protect our own staff.69
UK government’s Humanitarian Reform Policy
39.DFID’s UK Government’s Humanitarian Reform Policy published in 2017 sets out the UK’s overall position on humanitarian aid. It stresses the UK government’s adherence to international humanitarian law (IHL) and humanitarian principles. In particular, that certain groups, including humanitarian workers, should be afforded special protection in conflict situations; and humanitarian space should be maintained in armed conflicts to allow aid workers to access those in need safely, and support them regardless of any political or other discriminating factors.70 (The protections afforded under IHL are covered in paragraphs 44–47 of this Report.)
DFID’s Due Diligence Framework
40.DFID’s Due Diligence Framework requires the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) of a DFID funded aid programme to carry out a due diligence assessment to gain assurance that a potential delivery partner has the capacity and capability to deliver aid.71 Among other things, delivery partners should demonstrate that they have put, or are putting, measures in place to counter risks to the safety and security of their staff.7273 DFID told us that its Due Diligence framework extends beyond assessing a delivery partner’s capacity and capability to ensure the safety and security of its own staff to the due diligence a partner carries out further down the chain if it chooses to subcontract.74
41.Ensuring the safety and security of humanitarian workers and facilities means that humanitarian organisations are having to make difficult choices between safeguarding staff, facilities and equipment and providing aid. We were told that smaller humanitarian organisations could be disadvantaged compared to their larger counterparts when bidding for aid funded programmes and projects as they do not have the same resources or economies of scale to safeguard their staff in insecure environments.75 DFID told us that organisations bidding for aid funded programmes and projects are not required to identify the additional costs of protecting aid workers in a separate line in their bid. Normally, safety and security are treated as running costs and consolidated into overheads.76 Currently, there is no way of disaggregating the costs of doing protection of aid workers from the general budget.77
DFID funding and support to humanitarian sector security capabilities
42.In recent years, DFID has invested in two programmes designed to strengthen and support security capabilities in the humanitarian sector.
- Security and Risk Management in Hostile Environments programme, 2013–18. To counter rising security threats to aid workers, the UK government provided financial support amounting to £1.6 million between 2013 and 2018 on projects designed to reduce the risks faced by humanitarian organisations and their staff in fragile or conflict affected regions of the world. The support was provided through grants to organisations dedicated to the safety of humanitarian aid workers such as the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF) and the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO). The funding has supported additional training programmes for aid workers, the setting up of humanitarian safety offices and the strengthening of security risk management. (Figure 5).
- Humanitarian Global Services programme, 2018–21. Following the completion of the Security and Risk Management in Hostile Environments programme, DFID launched the Humanitarian Global Service programme. This programme brings together new and existing workstreams–covering safety, security, early warning, advice and risk analysis–into a single programme to improve accountability, avoid duplication and maximise impact. The Humanitarian Global Services programme will allocate up to £7 million of funding to six projects over three-years, 2018 to 2021 (Figure 6).
Figure 5: Breakdown of DFID spend for the Security and Risk Management in Hostile Environments programme, 2013–18
|
Partner |
Support provided |
Budget (£000) |
Spend (£000) |
|
European Interagency Security Forum (EISF) |
Improved NGO security management and awareness through the development and sharing of good practice, and the delivery of training events. |
- |
250 |
|
International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO) |
Building global capacity in humanitarian safety through the setting up and operation of humanitarian safety offices (NSOs) in fragile and conflict-affected states; and the provision of in-country information, analysis and advice on security and risk management. |
- |
989 |
|
Red UK / Digital Training Solutions |
Accessible and effective training. Through, e.g. the development and delivery of training to humanitarian aid workers. The training will be co-funded through an arrangement with the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). |
- |
270 |
|
Overseas Development Institute (ODI) |
To help support a memorial for humanitarian aid workers. |
- |
61 |
|
Total |
1,819 |
1,570 |
Source: DFID, devtracker (IATI Identifier: GB-1–203978)
43.At the time of our inquiry, neither of these programmes had been evaluated to assess their impact on aid worker safety and security. The EISF told us that it was difficult to assess the impact of humanitarian worker protection interventions as “you cannot prove a negative”. Nevertheless, the EISF is working with an organisation at the moment to see if it can develop some impact measurement tools to look at this.78
Figure 6: Breakdown of DFID projected spend for the Humanitarian Global Service programme, 2018–21
|
Partner |
Support provided |
Budget (£000) |
|
European Interagency Security Forum (EISF) |
See Figure 5 |
300 |
|
International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO) |
See Figure 5 |
975 |
|
Assessment Capacity Project (ACAPS). |
Assessment Capacity Project (ACAPS). Through the provision of up-to-date needs assessments and information on key crises around the world. |
975 |
|
Index for Risk Management (INFORM) |
Index for Risk Management (INFORM). Through the provision of scientifically validated risk analysis to help inform the humanitarian community operating in fragile and conflict affected countries. |
450 |
|
The Humanitarian 2 Humanitarian Network (H2H) |
The ‘Hard to Reach’ (H2H) Network. Through the provision of stand by capacity from a network of humanitarian organisations that provide specialist products and services to the humanitarian system during humanitarian crises. The products and services include response specific early warning and risk information. |
3,300 |
|
Monitoring & Evaluation |
Monitoring & evaluation. £1 million will be set aside to cover monitoring, evaluation and learning. |
1,000 |
|
Total |
7,000 |
Source: DFID, devtracker (IATI Identifier: GB-1–205255)
International law and humanitarian assistance
The protections afforded under international humanitarian law
44.Wars have rules. International humanitarian law (IHL) provides the basis for the protection of humanitarian workers in armed conflict and gaining access to conflict-affected areas to deliver humanitarian aid. IHL, with additional support provided by international human rights law and international criminal law, is the body of rules which, in armed conflict, protects persons who are not participating in the hostilities. Deliberate targeting of ‘protected persons’ is contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Protected persons include civilians, authorised medical staff, and humanitarian aid workers deemed to be working for impartial, neutral and independent humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross.79 The International Criminal Court (ICC) considers attacks against humanitarian workers as international crimes.80
45.In 2016, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2286 reaffirming the relevance of IHL in conflict.81 The UK co-sponsored Resolution 2286 and is committed to showing leadership in supporting it.82
Dealing with transgressions of International Humanitarian Law
46.In the view of the EISF, IHL affords sufficient protections to humanitarian workers. The problem is that it is not being enforced.83 According to Vincent Cochetel, accountability for perpetrators of attacks remains almost non-existent and attacks on humanitarian workers and facilities have continued with impunity.84 In the view of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this sends a direct message to the perpetrators; that violence against humanitarians is permissible, and that fighting parties can flout their obligations to respect IHL with virtually no consequence. So few people have been held to account that no official recorded statistics exist.85 In Sir Stephen O’Brien’s view,86 “the UK has an opportunity here to demonstrate leadership”.87 In earlier evidence, Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, had recommended that the UK “call for an independent investigation into violations of international humanitarian law” not least as a preventative measure against further transgressions.88
47.During the course of our inquiry, on 20 June 2019, an Appeals Court judgement declared that the UK government’s decision to allow UK arm sales to Saudi Arabia was unlawful because they contributed to civilian casualties in Yemen and could breach IHL. We asked DFID how the selling of arms to countries that potentially do not fully respect international humanitarian law fitted with its commitment to Resolution 2286. In the view of DFID, the UK government takes its obligations under the Act passed in 2002 (the Export Control Act) very seriously and those obligations are rigorously applied.89 DFID was not convinced of the need for it to play a bigger role in arms sales decisions, for example, commenting on the potential humanitarian implications of a sale, as advice is taken from across government when decisions are made.90
The UK Aid Strategy and the politicisation of aid
48.The ‘politicisation of aid’ refers to the linking of humanitarian aid to a country’s foreign or security policy goals.
The potential impact of the politicisation of aid
49.Vincent Cochetel told us that the politicisation of aid can impact negatively on levels of acceptance from local communities, potentially leading to reduced humanitarian access in fragile and conflict affected regions. As a consequence, it can also adversely affect the safety and security of aid workers. For example, if the aid is perceived as favouring or supporting the aims of one warring party over another.91
50.Recent examples of denials of access to people or regions in need where aid is seen as a tool to support a foreign power’s political aims include Venezuela, Syria, South Sudan and Myanmar.92
The 2015 UK Aid Strategy
51.The UK Aid Strategy published by HM Treasury and DFID in 2015 situated overseas aid as a tool to tackle global challenges alongside the promotion of the UK’s national interests.93 Subsequent UK government statements reaffirm the emphasis that the Strategy puts on overseas aid serving the national interest.94
52.The Strategy and subsequent government statements could be interpreted by the wider world as politicising aid and therefore pose a threat to the safety and security of humanitarian workers. However, Sir Stephen O’Brien told us that the real danger of the politicisation of aid is when that is abused. It is very important, for example, that the UK has a separate DFID; and it is very important that the UK has untied aid.95 DFID reinforced this point in its evidence to this Committee on the situation in Venezuela. In particular, that DFID’s bottom line remains a non-politicisation of aid and a determination to ensure that aid goes towards those most in need.96
57 HM Treasury and Department for International Development, UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest, November 2015, para 3.8
58 Comptroller and Auditor General, The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure, Session 2017–2019, HC 2218, National Audit Office, June 2019, Figure 6
60 European Interagency Security Forum, Duty of Care: A review of the Dennis v Norwegian Refugee Council ruling and its implications (2nd Edition), 2016
62 International Development Committee, Sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector, Eighth Report, Session 2017–19, HC 840, 31 Jul 2018
63 For example, EISF (2018), Managing the Security of Aid Workers with Diverse Profiles. European Interagency Security Forum (EISF); and EISF (2019), Managing Sexual Violence against Aid Workers: prevention, preparedness, response and aftercare. European Interagency Security Forum (EISF)
64 Sources: European Interagency Security Forum (EISF), International NGO Safety and Security Association (INSSA)and International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO) websites. Accessed on 1 Jul 2019
70 DFID, UK government’s humanitarian reform policy, Oct 2017. Accessed 29 Jun 2019
71 DFID Due Diligence Guide–Risk and Control, DFID July 2018, Accessed 23 July 2019
72 Ibid.
82 Q58, Q61; DFID, Business Case, “Building an evidence base on humanitarian protection of people affected by conflict”, devtracker (IATI Identifier: GB-GOV-1–300484)
86 Sir Stephen is the former UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator
88 HC 1505, Humanitarian situation in Yemen (Q21)
92 The Committee covered issues around the politicisation of aid in Venezuela in its oral evidence session on the Humanitarian situation in Venezuela, HC 1928
93 HM Treasury and Department for International Development, UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest, November 2015
94 Telegraph, “Trade for aid? UK development must serve the ‘national interest’, says May”, 29 Aug 2018. Accessed 1 July 2019; and see Secretary of State for International Development, statement of priorities
96 HC 1928, The humanitarian situation in Venezuela (Q24 and Q25)
Published: 6 August 2019