How to Project Humanitarian Aid Workers

How to protect humanitarian workers? | Conor Foley | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Recent Discussion

This entry came about from a conversation with a friend that I had on facebook in response to the following article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/humanitarian-workers-united-nations-afghanistan

Query: How about the UN recruiting local workers in the country(ies) of origin and try and involve them in the work that the UN is doing in that area? The theory being that the presence of the indigenous population with the aid workers from elsewhere could make the UN’s involvement seem less like an outside force, allow the locals to see what processes are going into the various operations and train them up in sustainable and transferable skills that will be useful for them way after the UN has left. Just a suggestion.

Reply: Well the vast majority of UN staff in most countries are locals, indeed actually the vast majority of all staff working in the international development sector (in developing countries) are locals. The point though about ensuring that the interventions and trainings are sustainable is valid. However in order to do this training you need to have the people with the relevant skills. Often the best way of doing this is to use international staff with many years experience of the sector. Sustainability is a key aspect of what the international development community says it does.

However most organisations are not aiming to ensure that they essentially do themselves out of a job. Therefore I think we can legitimately question the extent to which organisations including the UN have a real commitment to sustainability, in the sense that they wish to do themselves out of a job by improving local conditions. I think this latter point is a good one for discussion, but back to the original point there is a conflict between giving people the skills they need and having the people on the ground to provide these skills

On the point about allowing locals to see what work is being done. I agree 100% on this! And yes organisations such as the UN can be very opaque. But for an example of some real good work ensuring that humanitarian organisations are accountable to the people they serve have a look at http://www.hapinternational.org/ The Humanitarian Accountability Partnership, who I am a huge supporter of.

Query: OK - if the assumption is that the UN doesn't want to "do themselves out of a job" then there's the problem! If the organisation is not looking to leave then it will probably structure its activities to prolong its involvement in a given area. If the UN stays for too long it could be seen as an imperial (western) force and there is where resentment might grow in the local populous. If this is the case then shorter missions with a tighter mandate could be a solution.

Reply: The first part of your statement, yes I agree with (btw I am not a great fan of how the UN operates or its opaqueness or the fact that its labyrinthine bureaucracy means it takes for ever to get things done, but I do though think that a lot of what is does is necessary).

I am not sure that the solution is shorter missions, because then there is an accusation of cutting and running, and the other thing to remember about the UN, is that it is an international civil service. Its job is to give often long term support to government, and basically help government rebuild after war.

So short term missions would run contrary to what the UN exists for in many countries. However I do think that accountability, working to make the UN an open institution and making it much more accessible and approachable especially to the man on the street, to government, to everyone involved is important.

Helping children reduce the risks of disasters in Bangladesh

Monday 28 March 2011

I’m working on a pilot project for Save the Children in Bangladesh, which involves young people in reducing the effects of disasters. During the field work we found that there were a number of key issues specific to Bangladesh that we could really use to help people.

One of the most important findings was that women are particularly vulnerable to the effects of disasters and that their reactions are often misunderstood by men, putting them at risk. One event really brought this home to me. We were conducting a community focus group in a remote village in the southern coastal belt, which is highly vulnerable to Cyclones and other hazards. A group of about 20 community members had gathered, women on one side, men on the other, and I was between them with some Save colleagues.

The focus group was going well, and then one of the men said: “The thing is, women just don’t care about disasters, and they don’t care that their children aren’t protected”

Knowledge is power

This seemed odd so we dug further, and it turned out that women simply hadn’t been told about the cyclone early warning system. The signals run from one to seven, and at signal four community members are expected to go to cyclone shelters. But women weren’t told about the system, so were understandably reluctant to pack up their kids and all their belongings and leave the house on the basis that the men of the village had seemingly lost their collective minds and were running around shouting “Number four! It’s a number four! Pack up your stuff it’s a number four!”

The women in the community had no idea what a number four was, or that it had any relation to cyclones. Nor did they know where they were supposed to go. It turned out this was just one of many examples of how women were were left with a lack of knowledge, and this was exacerbated by cultural restrictions on women questioning traditional male authority.

Overlooked young voices

It became clear that the most marginalised women were newly married and young mothers, because their social standing was lower and also because, as young people, their views were less likely to be considered.

The other major influence on the project was a visit to a local partner organisation, who worked with their youth group to indentify and map all of the hazards in the local area. These young people not only knew more about the dangers in the their local area than the organisation and the local government (something that I see time and time again with children’s and youth groups looking at what we call ‘disaster risk reduction’) but had also identified marginalised groups that needed extra assistance. They saw that Bihari groups (minority ethnic Pakistanis stranded on the wrong side of the border when Bangladesh became independent in the 1970s) were some of the poorest families in the area — they’d even started organising activities with them!

The group they said that they wanted to expand their activities but needed more help to do this. We saw an exciting opportunity to work with these enthusiatic young people to find potential areas for climate change adaptation work — they’re already finding innovative ways to address needs in their local community.

In a country where around 61 million people are aged under 18, engaging with youth is one of the best ways of protecting the next generation of children in Bangladesh. The knowledge and capacity of local NGOs is often too limited to develop and guide the talents of young people involved in disaster risk reduction, so one of the key focal points for the project will be to raise their capacity.

Over the next couple of months I’ll be keeping you updated with my experiences from this project.

You can also find this blog at http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/blogs/author/apearlman/