THE GUARDIAN: COMMENT & AANALYSIS:
DON'T SHOOT THE HELPERS
81% match; The Guardian - United
Kingdom ; 29-Feb-2000 12:00:00 am ; 658 words
Humanitarian workers in the fields of war and natural disasters live by an immutable
rule: risk goes with the job. Delivering food, shelter or medical aid to refugees,
displaced people or the victims of floods or earthquakes or drought - this work requires
sacrifices, large and small, of one's personal comfort and safety.
For a long time, the humanitarian community accepted this hard fact, and, occasionally,
its tragic consequences - a death by violence or a fatal accident in a faraway place, the
news received by shocked colleagues, heart-broken families and friends. These were like
bolts out of the blue in a kinder world in which the flags of the United Nations or the
Red Cross constituted an unassailable shield for their personnel.
Not anymore. In lands without the rule of law, the humanitarian flag can become a
target, and humanitarian aid booty for armed bands. Cold-blooded terrorism against aid
workers is becoming, alarmingly, all too commonplace. In Somalia,
Sudan and Afghanistan, UN relief convoys are hijacked, our drivers beaten or killed. In
Angola, UN planes have been fired upon. In Sierra Leone, the Great Lakes, the Balkans and
the Caucasus, our staff have been taken hostage. Every day, our workers, and the employees
of numerous other aid agencies, are risking their own lives in their efforts to save the
lives of others. The toll is heavy: The UN lost 184 civilian employees between 1992 and
1999 to violence and air crashes. In 1998, more civilian relief workers died than armed
and trained UN military peace-keepers - 98 of them murdered.
The World Food Programme has the tragic distinction of having lost more staff members
to violence or work-related accidents than any other UN agency in the last three years.
Last year, one of our employees was shot in the head in a refugee camp in Burundi. She was
only 34-years-old and she died on a gunman's whim, along with a colleague from Unicef ,
the UN children's agency.
The killing must stop. The time has come to give our aid workers the protection they
are entitled to as basic rights in order to carry out their work. To achieve this will
require a concerted effort by all of us in the UN - government, agencies and secretariat -
and by the entire international community. Together, we must forge an inviolable
recognition that the safety and well-being of humanitarian workers in the field are to be
respected at all times. This principle must carry the same force as other portions of the
Geneva convention; it must be scrupulously observed and forcefully defended for the sake
of the men and women around the globe who are dedicated to helping the victims.
We must hold accountable those who are responsible for crimes against humanitarian
workers. They cannot go unpunished. Countries which fail to take action against those who
harm humanitarian workers should be made to understand that all available pressures may be
applied against them. When aid workers are killed, kidnapped or abused, when food convoys
are attacked or vehicles hijacked, the international community should be prepared to apply
serious measures. Now we do not hold governments responsible for investigating murders and
prosecuting the guilty. Two - only two - of the 98 UN staff members who have been murdered
in the last eight years have had perpetrators brought to justice.
We need to improve our communications systems and our equipment in the field. We must
make greater efforts to equip our 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 landmines, how to extricate themselves from trouble, how to
handle forced confinement. For this is the world of the humanitarian worker, and the
sooner we face up to it, the more lives will be saved.
These ideas - among other valuable recommendations - are now before the UN security
council, which must be given full credit for addressing such an important humanitarian
issue. The proposals are under consideration for a comprehensive programme of security and
protection for all those engaged in helping the less fortunate. I believe such measures
are crucial to the UN humanitarian mission. Because, while we cannot forfeit our mandate
to help people in need, neither can we endanger the lives of the people healing the need.
To paraphrase the poet John Donne, 'Any death diminishes us, because we are involved in
humankind."
Catherine Bertini is executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme