Aid worker security continues to deteriorate

Recent analysis indicates that there are about 570,000 aid workers in the field.  Understandably, national staff make up the majority of these personnel, with approximately 40,000 international aid workers in the field.  Despite most of our aid worker security training – online and face to face – being directed at international aid workers, it is generally our national colleagues who face the greatest risks.

Humanitarian Outcomes identified that 2018 was the second worst year for attacks against aid workers, with 399 personnel impacted by major violence in over 200 separate attacks.  Of these 399 recorded attacks, 370 were against national personnel.  In addition to national staff being more likely to be the victims of attacks, the outcomes are also more severe with fatality rates for national staff higher than for international staff.

In the same way the aid sector has achieved significant improvements on collected disaggregated data on our beneficiary populations, we have not made the same progress with safety and security reporting.  We have a real gap in our sexual violence data and limited analysis of risk by gender, and the necessary empirical evidence about successful mitigation strategies.

Despite some improvement in recognition of the mental health risks faced by aid workers, this remains sorely under-reported and analyzed as part of risk reporting.  It is likely that instances of mental health are even more negatively felt by national colleagues who live and work permanently in these challenging environments.  On a recent mission to Yemen, the number one complaint by national staff was mental health conditions associated with over work, continued insecurity, and lack of attention to staff well-being.

Most aid workers are affected in some way by the crises we repeatedly respond to, often at significant personal risk, and we must recogonise that the risk is not always shared equally between genders and nationalities.