Recent kidnappings in Iraq pose serious questions for the aid community about the standards of security they apply in extremely dangerous settings, writes Denis McClean
The tragic case of two young female aid workers kidnapped from the Baghdad offices of the Italian agency, A Bridge to Baghdad, last week poses serious questions for the aid community about the standards of security applied by NGOs in dangerous settings.
Despite the bomb attack on the UN compound which killed 23 people in August 2003, followed by another deadly bomb attack on the Red Cross last October, and the clear targeting of non-Iraqi civilians since then, it appears that some 80 relatively small non-governmental organisations continued to operate in Iraq in extremely dangerous circumstances during the past year.
Many of them were and are receiving funding from donors which should know better such as the UNHCR, the EU and the Italian government which fund A Bridge to Baghdad.
Séamus, an aid worker originally from a small village in Tipperary whom I first encountered in Khartoum in 1987, e-mailed me recently. He is in hospital recovering from dengue fever, a life-threatening illness which he contracted from a mosquito bite in Columbia, where he finds himself today living under a tiresome high-security regime.
The last time I saw Séamus was about 18 months ago. He had been medivaced to Geneva from Belgrade after he broke an arm when the vehicle in which he was travelling hit an icy patch on a dangerous mountain road in Serbia. Luckily, he survived even though the vehicle overturned.
When the Nile burst its banks during the 1989 rainy season, it flooded Khartoum. Séamus's house was among the casualties. He had just installed some new electrical equipment and the result was that, when he went to open the metal front door, he was knocked unconscious by a powerful surge of electricity.
Strong as an ox, when he recovered consciousness he struggled to his feet, found his car and attempted to drive through Khartoum's notoriously potholed streets to a hotel where other colleagues were staying. The inevitable happened and the car ended up in a large crater rendered invisible by the flood waters surging through the fetid city. He walked the rest of the way.
Séamus, like many aid workers with the "I cannot leave" syndrome, insisted on soldiering on until his dramatic collapse in an elevator two days later.
Some GOAL nurses had him examined by an Egyptian neurosurgeon, who could not believe that the aid agency employing him at the time had not flown him out of the country immediately given what he had been through.
Séamus is a vivid example of the aid worker who doesn't always act in their own best interests. They grow so devoted to the job that their personal safety and well-being become of secondary importance.
This phenomenon may also be linked to some sense of guilt, knowing that aid workers generally have a higher standard of living compared with the poor whom they seek to help, and always have the option of leaving.
In today's vengeful world, where mob violence and terrorism flourish in circumstances of deep-rooted poverty side-by-side with great plenty, the option of leaving is often left tragically late.
And it's so difficult to know when to make that decision to leave. Often the presence of international aid organisations on the ground is the best guarantee for the safety of the local population as is presently the case in Darfur, where Concern and GOAL are probably doing as much good in terms of psychological support to the terrified displaced population simply by being there, as much as by distributing aid.
It's difficult to get on with the business of ethnic cleansing, murder, rape and looting if you have all these khawajas (Sudanese slang for foreigners) reporting back to their head offices, talking to the media and provoking the UN Security Council to sit up and pay attention to your internal affairs.
But Sudan has a government which, despite its duplicity and totalitarian bent, can still be brought to book after a fashion, as became clear when the authorities finally relented in March and gave unfettered access to aid agencies wishing to work in Darfur.
In failed or failing states like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan such delicacy does not apply. Aid workers are tempting targets, their white Toyota landcruisers symbols of Western power and technology alien to the local environment.
The option of leaving in a body bag has become an increasingly likely fate for many aid workers, whose organisations choose to keep them in dangerous locations, sometimes doing work that could just as well be done by local staff.
According to UN statistics, since January 1992, 198 relief workers have lost their lives and 240 were taken hostage. Many more have been injured in violent security incidents.
More than 30 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2003, according to reports. In June, Doctors Without Borders decided to leave after 24 years when five staff were murdered in cold blood as they drove out of their compound in Baghdis province.
Concern is withdrawing its staff from Afghanistan for a 10-day period before the October elections and keeps the security situation there under constant review. GOAL has already pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because of safety concerns. Not easy decisions to make, but it is clear those Irish aid agencies have a very active and alert sense of security issues when it comes to the safety and well-being of their staff.
Sadly, this is not always the case with smaller NGOs as indicated by the kidnapping of the Italians. It's time for the aid community to get real and revise the internationally accepted Code of Conduct for NGOs in Disaster Relief to include a clear commitment to put the lives of their own staff and volunteers above all other considerations, financial, operational and philosophical.
Reputable donors should not be funding organisations which do not exercise appropriate care and responsibility in this regard.
In the meantime, let us all do what we can to impress on those responsible for this heinous crime to release Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Parri to their families unharmed.