Aid Worker Safety Threatened by Military Agenda

Along with a Dec. 13, 2010 New York Times article, two reports find the blurring of aid and development work with foreign policy agendas has led to a spike in violence toward aid workers and threatens to shrink the amount of humanitarian activity in places of armed conflict. A Nov. 2010 report released by the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF) and a June 2009 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) call for promoting and protecting the independence and neutrality of humanitarian organizations as the best means of protecting aid workers in the field.

Compared to previous periods, the number of aid workers killed or abducted between 2006 and 2009 has increased substantially. According to the ICRC report, humanitarian work “has become more dangerous and every humanitarian organization is affected by serious security problems, constituting a threat to their staff and hampering much-needed activities on behalf of the victims of armed conflicts.”
 
The escalation of violence, according to the EISF report, can be attributed to “the perceived association of aid with foreign policy agendas and ‘foreign interference’ has been further encouraged by military forces engaging in humanitarian and reconstruction work…. and it becomes hard to convince skeptical observers that those providing aid are really ‘neutral’ or ‘impartial’.”

Completely eliminating security risks is an unrealistic goal. Both reports call for aid groups to mitigate risk factors by anticipating dangers, keeping “abreast of developments” at home and in the field and projecting “an unchanging and coherent image” based on the core humanitarian principles, including humanity, neutrality and independence.