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The
Security of National Staff: Essential Steps 2002
The Security
of National Staff: Essential Steps
In spring 2001, InterAction
commissioned research on the practices and policies of its membership
regarding the security of its national staff. Based on the resulting report,
InterAction's Security Working Group asked the researchers to draft essential
steps that aid agencies can take to improve the security of their national
staff.
Essential
Step #1: Increase the involvement of national
staff in the formulation, review and implementation of security policies
and plans.
Essential
Step #2: Identify threats to national staff, then reduce their
vulnerability to these threats.
Essential
Step #3: Establish clarity on security procedures and benefits,
especially with regard to evacuation and relocation options.
Essential
Step #4: Integrate national staff security into preparedness, training,
and human resource management procedures.
The following pages
review each of the essential steps, explaining their importance, listing
possible actions and citing examples.
Essential
Step #1: Increase the involvement of national staff in the formulation,
review and implementation of security policies and plans.
Why this is important:
National staff has
an understanding of the local society that expatriates rarely achieve.
Not using them as an integral part of security planning means that agencies
ignore one of the best - if not the best - resource they have. Expatriates
are often harried, stressed and overworked. They may not be the best at
designing security structures for national staff.
Possible Actions:
- Competent national
staff members are allowed to advance to the highest levels of responsibility
within the agency.
- National staff
nominates or elects representative(s) to the security plan design and
review team.
- The agency implements
systematic procedures to elicit security feedback and analysis from
national staff.
- In situations where
expatriate staff are absent on a regular basis (because of evacuations
or program structure), capacity building of local staff is promoted
over "remote control" management.
Examples:
- In one organization's
Somalia program, national staff is responsible for designing and implementing
security plans, including for expatriates.
- Another agency
insists on a two-person security focal point: one expatriate staff,
one national staff.
Essential
Step #2: Identify threats to national staff, and then reduce their vulnerability
to these threats.
Why this is important:
Along with the risks
that they share with expatriate staff, national staff also comes under
additional threats. These stem from being members of the local society
and hence vulnerable to pressures that expatriates are largely immune
to and of which they often have only a vague notion. To counter these
vulnerabilities, agencies must make the identification of threats to national
staff a systematic part of their overall threat assessment.
Possible Actions
- The agency recognizes
that some groups of national staff are more at risk than others, depending
on gender, ethnic or national origin, age, position, level of responsibility,
that this determination varies from program to program, and that the
conclusion may at times be unexpected or counterintuitive.
- The agency includes
national staff threat assessment into program decisions such as where,
how, and what type of assistance is provided.
- The agency includes
national staff threat assessment in procurement decisions (e.g., do
expensive, visible assets such as vehicles enhance or degrade the security
of national staff in a particular situation).
- The agency includes
national staff threat assessment in staffing decisions, such as filling
open positions with national or expatriate staff.
- The agency includes
national staff threat assessment in determining local procurement and
contracting practices.
- The agency takes
steps to increase acceptance of presence and its programs to the local
community.
Examples
- In Kosovo an NGO
would ask its national staff to review and change if necessary the daily
distribution plan based on the overnight violent activities of the police.
- In Chechnya, one
agency determined that Chechen male staff between 15 and 40 are the
most at risk.
Essential
Step #3: Establish clarity on evacuation and relocation options.
Why this is important:
Most agencies do not
plan on making general national staff evacuations. And most national staff
do not expect it. However, the issue of national staff evacuation is so
emotionally charged that it has taken over the debate on national staff
security. This impedes discussion of how to deal with more common threats
to national staff. In-country relocation and individual evacuation are
issues for which agencies should define their commitments. Clear policies,
explained to all, will clear the way for more important discussion of
day-to-day threats and concerns.
Possible Actions
- Within a country
security plan, the commitments to the evacuation or relocation of national
staff are spelled out with clarity.
- The agency examines
procedures to protect, and if need be, evacuate a member of national
staff who has come under life threat due to his or her activities as
a humanitarian worker, and reviews potential obstacles to doing so.
- The agency defines
safe areas in the geographical neighborhood of its operations, and reviews
procedures and potential difficulties in the event of relocation of
national staff.
- The agency reviews
and lays out how it will cater for the security and well being of national
staff should international staff be evacuated. Examples:
- During the war
in Bosnia, a national staff member who had run afoul of local authorities
was sent out of the country for three weeks of training. This provided
a cooling off period.
- In Sudan, one
agency has on occasion evacuated Sudanese staff due to threats and has
left Ugandan and other expatriate staff behind.
Essential
Step #4: Integrate national staff security into preparedness, training,
and human resource management procedures.
Why this is important:
Current thinking emphasizes
the need for a holistic approach to security and the fact that it is not
a topic or sector that can be dealt with in isolation. This is also true
for national staff security. The security of national staff depends on
the innumerable decisions made at all levels and in all departments of
agencies, their donors, other agencies, and beyond. It will take time
for security concerns to be incorporated into the decision making process.
Possible Actions
- The security orientation
of newly hired national staff goes beyond the risks associated with
their level of responsibility and includes the history, role, mandate
and message of the agency. A good orientation should allow the newly
hired staff to go home and explain to family and friends what the agency
is all about.
- Orientation includes
making them aware of the existence of a security plan, and filling them
in on who the focal point for that plan is and what structures exist
to include their voice in the formulation or review of the plan.
- Ask security trainers
to incorporate national staff trainers and national staff security issues
into their curriculum.
- Prioritize national
staff over international staff for security training.
- Provide equipment
training to the primary user and a potential stand-in.
- Staff are hired
or promoted based on their qualifications for a position regardless
of whether they are national staff or foreign.
- Hiring, promotion,
and dismissal procedures are transparent and able to be understood by
national staff and applicants.
- Where local health
insurance is non-existent, ineffective or corrupt, agencies craft a
solution that provides their national staff employees protection better
than the in-country standard.
- Local partners
such as NGOs, institutional partners, contractors, local professionals
share in the information and in-house security training. This has the
added benefit of extending an agency's informal risk assessment network.
- All staff are repeatedly
told, before and during a crisis, that agency assets and equipment are
never worth risking one's life for.
Examples:
- In Georgia, the
national staff of an NGO has opted to receive a $15 dollar monthly allowance
instead of local health insurance, which is not satisfactory.
- In Somalia, in
one agency national staff determines who is to receive the limited amount
of security training available.
For more information,
please contact:
Elizabeth Bellardo
1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 701
Washington DC 20036
Tel: 202-667-8227
x166
FAX: 202-667-8236
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