• Security and development policy

Security and development policy

Attacks against aid workers are not new. Fragile, insecure environments frequently expose humanitarian operatives to a myriad of threats – whether they be political, economic or aggression encountered due to the respective nature of 'the work'. However there has been an exponential increase of violent, deadly assaults on international aid workers– their 2008 fatality rate exceeded that of UN peacekeeping troops.

This paper seeks to monitor the trends of violence against the aid community through compiling a dataset of attacks. Their evidence details and analyses:

• the motive behind the attacks
• the methods and tactics of violence
• the highest-incidence countries
• the breakdown of national and international staff rates
• and the total number of victims.

The authors also consider how aid actors have adapted their operations and developed their policies and practice in light of operating in increasingly insecure environments.

The research presents a significant amount of data and highlights a number of key issues, including:

• attacks against aid workers have increased sharply since 2006, with a particular upswing in kidnapping
  
• the three most violent contexts for aid work – Sudan (Darfur), Afghanistan and Somalia – accounted for more than 60% of violent incidents and aid worker victims
  
• aid organisations are being attacked not just because they are perceived to be cooperating with Western political actors, but because they are perceived as wholly a part of the Western agenda
  
• organisations have made progress in increasing security support to local staff, developing incentives to report security incidents and participating in interagency dialogue. However, agencies face significant dilemmas in certain threat environments, with short-term adaptations often compromising longer-term security
  
• aid agencies must focus their incident analysis and assessment on identifying when the aid community has become a wholesale political target, and acceptance becomes ineffective.
  

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