Securing the Security of Aid Workers

It is hard to exaggerate the impact of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in which more than 20 people died and scores were injured. As the worst single attack on the United Nations in its history, with the loss of the U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and other leading figures, such as Arthur Helton of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and Jill Clark of the Christian Children’s Fund, it was the September 11 of the humanitarian world.

Now come the consequences, as charities review all options for keeping their staff members safe, from evacuation and abandoning programs to fortifying buildings and even making attacks on humanitarians a special war crime. But armed guards and barbed wire do not remove risk, and dividing humanitarians from those they serve behind legal or physical barricades may actually deepen the dangers. Ultimately, real security for aid workers is won by earning the partnership and protection of those they have come to assist.

Humanitarian charities have started pulling international staff members out of Iraq, and recriminations about security are well under way, with calls for the United Nations to step up its own protection measures, though other nonprofit groups, usually less well financed, sometimes far more vulnerable, do not yet seem to be included in this concern. Yet it is not the United Nations that should improve security but the occupying powers that must protect all civilians, locals and foreigners alike, and allow all aid organizations “humanitarian space” for their independent, impartial, and neutral work.

Despite the rampant insecurity that culminated in the bombing, the much-maligned United Nations, with help from many Iraqis and international nonprofit groups, has probably been doing more good in occupied Iraq than the American and British forces combined. Quietly and efficiently it has achieved a lot, from the World Food Program’s no-fuss delivery of a staggering million tons of supplies to the World Health Organization’s constant support for hospitals and health centers and the personal efforts for peace and rebuilding of Mr. de Mello and his dedicated colleagues.

But it is hard to change an entire country’s perceptions in a few weeks, and after being fed Saddam Hussein’s propaganda for years, many Iraqis blame the United Nations itself rather than its member countries for the sanctions that drove them into poverty and killed their children. Believing the United Nations was complicit in an American occupation, other Iraqis knew that attacking such a “soft” target would offer few risks yet create more military and political chaos inside and outside the country.

Thus the American-British invasion has fostered the terrorism it claimed to fight by creating an unholy alliance of faith and fury from the near-secular remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime and Islamic fundamentalists, whose beliefs could inspire suicide bombers for years to come. Will this be George Bush and Tony Blair’s Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, a war that cannot be won in which aid workers either stay out or take sides?

Amid pervasive crime and violence, the biggest victims are not the military and charity casualties of concern to outsiders but Iraqi civilians, including local staff members of humanitarian groups and their families, who know they will not be protected behind barbed wire or whisked to safety with evacuated international colleagues.

Backing for the view that security goes way beyond physical barriers has come from the release last week of an updated code of practice on humanitarian-aid-worker safety and support from the 50 member charities of the People in Aid coalition, including the Christian Children’s Fund, the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children US. The code’s section on safety highlights the need for advance briefing and comprehensive training of all staff members, local and international, good internal and external communications to spot problems, painstaking risk assessments, and regular security reviews.

For charities that have learned tough lessons in every recent conflict from Kosovo to Kabul and Congo, security is not fundamentally a physical thing but — as Mao talked of his guerrilla fighters being like fish swimming in a sea of the people — about having the kind of commitment to those in need that wins the support and safeguarding of humanitarians by the communities they serve. In certain circumstances, that may mean promising less but having the determination to deliver the promise no matter what.

Camouflage is certainly no disguise for aid workers, as the closer they stand to partisan soldiers, the more they become a target. The U.S. and British military have already used this in reverse in Afghanistan and may try it in Iraq, operating hearts-and-minds programs of rebuilding schools and starting health centers while members of the special forces dress like relief workers and collect intelligence, making themselves safer while putting the real humanitarian workers in danger.

Other steps may also bring unwelcome consequences. Like the death of any civilian in conflict, killing aid workers is already covered by the Geneva Conventions, which still survive despite being undermined by the United States in ways that can only provoke yet more terrorism. But efforts to put attacks on humanitarians into a special category of war crime, as recently discussed by the Security Council, might not only make them a greater target for terrorists but also raise thorny issues about the registration and regulation of those eligible for such status. More important, it would carry the totally unacceptable implication that an aid worker’s life is more valuable than that of the refugee or starving child they are trying to help.

While humanitarians may face threats from all sides whatever the conflict, perhaps one small positive point can be found amid the rubble and grief in Baghdad. As relief and development charities withdraw international staff members, it is indigenous workers who must be given the responsibility, and the authority, to continue their vital work. Ultimately, it is the Iraqis who must solve their own problems and meet their own needs. A good way to start could be by sending in fewer foreigners and investing in the skills and capacities of local people so that Iraqi nonprofit groups can pick up the challenge of helping to rebuild their shattered country.

Nick Cater is a British journalist who writes regularly for AlertNet and The Guardian newspaper’s Society Online section. He can be contacted at cateraiduk@yahoo.co.uk.