Security of Humanitarian Personnel
Speech by Catherine Bertini: Executive Director World Food Programme, United Nations Security Council. 9 February 2000. (Has been edited for our site).
In more and more crises, the UN flag has become a target rather than a shield and all too often, aid workers must risk their lives to save the lives of others. It is hard for us here in New York to really appreciate what humanitarian workers go through on a daily basis. In Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan, UN relief convoys have been hijacked and our drivers beaten or killed. In Angola and Afghanistan, our planes have been fired on. Our staff have been held hostage in Sierra Leone, the Balkans, the Great Lakes, the Caucasus, and elsewhere.
Since 1992, UN agencies have lost 184 civilian staff to violence, including air crashes. Since 1994, there have been 59 incidents of kidnapping and hostage taking affecting 228 of our colleagues. In 1999 alone, there were 292 violent robberies, assaults, rapes and vehicle hijackings.
The mechanical business of delivering aid in war zones is especially hazardous. WFP often handles the logistics of moving both people and supplies for all the UN agencies and many NGOs in trouble spots such as East Timor, Kosovo, and Angola.
A growing factor in the security picture has been the resurgence of the use of hunger as a weapon in war. People are willfully starved because of their politics, their religion or ethnicity. Food stocks are stolen or destroyed, fields are burned. Hunger is an integral part of the tactics of violence in Somalia, southern Sudan, Angola and Afghanistan. It was also used in Kosovo in a systematic way not seen in Europe for half a century. The tactic does not vary that much whether it is used in northern Afghanistan or northern Uganda. Delivering the food aid crucial in responding to this has put humanitarian workers in harm's way. Warring factions sometimes see the delivery of food aid itself as a political act and those who deliver it are seen as targets.
This is unacceptable. The international community must take concrete steps to ensure the safety of our aid workers and put a stop to this alarming trend. If humanitarian agencies are to carry out our primary task of assisting civilians, humanitarian workers have to be given better tools to ensure their protection.
The Deputy Secretary-General wisely put the issue of staff security as one of her top priorities. Staff security has also become my highest personal concern at WFP. In 1998 a year in which WFP lost 12 staff members, seven of them murdered we created a security task force to examine ways to better protect our people. Our greatest achievement so far has been an agency-wide security training programme for all WFP employees. In just 11 months, we have trained more then 5,400 WFP staff worldwide.
In fact, over a two-year period, we quadrupled our expenditures for security of staff. We must equip all humanitarian staff for dangerous work through security training: how to read the warning signs in volatile settings; how to deal with armed marauders; how to spot hidden land mines; how to extricate themselves from trouble and deal with forced confinement.
But in-house training by WFP or our sister agencies, although extremely important, is not enough. We must also improve our communications systems, our field structures and equipment, our security consciousness. And we must have the cooperation of Governments in providing better protection and allowing the UN to use needed communications systems, and then in pursuing and prosecuting those responsible for violence against UN staff.
There needs to be a shared recognition that the job of "humanitarian worker" is now, more often than not, a dangerous one. Soldiers, who may spend only a small part of their time in dangerous, life-threatening situations, are instilled with an awareness of security. Humanitarian aid workers, on the other hand, who may spend most of their time in equally high-risk environments, are not taught to be aware of risks. It's time we were.
This means that we need to increase the awareness of security in UN culture and, more importantly, to embrace security management as an integral part of all UN humanitarian operations.
I commend the President and the Security Council for your willingness to address the issue of security for humanitarian workers. Humanitarian agencies are facing some difficult questions these days. The most difficult of all is: When is the security risk for our staff so great that we cannot reach the victims of war who then die for lack of food, shelter, water and medicine. Where do you draw the line?
We need to confront the simple fact that the United Nations sends unarmed aid workers into environments where member governments will not send their own armed troops. A number of recommendations have been made to strengthen the "consciousness and competence" of the UN approach to security. I would like to highlight some for your consideration:
- The humanitarian principles of impartiality must be maintained in all crises. And they should be taken into account even when the Security Council takes its decisions on conflict situations. The humanitarian principles of impartiality must be accepted and the terms of engagement must allow aid workers to reach innocent civilians wherever they are on either side of a conflict. This has been a problematic issue in Angola, Kosovo, and the DRC. We must reaffirm, for instance, that no innocent child or adult should starve because of a war or conflict.
- The Security Council should examine its authorization of peacekeepers in crisis situations. The Council regularly spells out peacekeepers' role in protecting civilians but does not clarify their role in protecting aid workers. I would recommend that the Council explicitly include and define how future peacekeeping operations will protect humanitarian workers as well.
- We must also mobilize the international community to punish those responsible for crimes against humanitarian workers. A strong message must be sent to governments and groups under whose jurisdiction murders, kidnappings and harassment take place that they will be held accountable and punished if they fail to respect aid workers' lives. In the case of countries that do not take serious action to prevent or investigate and prosecute crimes against humanitarian workers, I suggest the Council consider calling for a system to monitor such violations against humanitarian workers, leading to penalties.
- Security training must be conducted for all UN staff members who work in insecure environments. This should be a pre-condition for staff to participate in high-risk operations. UN managers and officials must be fully trained in security management and be responsible for integrating security into their operations. Each agency should review its facilities and equipment to ensure it is providing the best support possible to staff.
As humanitarian aid workers we want to work under a UN flag that is a symbol of hope and safety. We don't want to abandon the poor people we help when insecurity makes the job too dangerous. We want to be there to provide food, shelter, medicine and hope.
Every day, that's what UN staff members do. They give everything they've got to save people living in the worst circumstances on earth. They shouldn't have to give their lives.
Bertini, Catherine: Security of UN Humanitarian and Associated Personnel. 2002. Online. Gifts of Speech. Available: http://gos.sbc.edu/b/bertini.html. 9 February 2002.
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