‘Unethical and dangerous practices’ condemned as study claims charities keep staff at a safe remove from conflict while relying on local groups to carry out work

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Aid agencies often rely on local people to carry out work in the world’s war zones while their own staff remain holed up in bunkers, a report based on interviews with 2,000 humanitarian workers has found.

Highlighting alarming practices in countries including Syria, Yemen and Iraq, the authors of the independent study said aid groups are spending too little time on the ground in conflict zones and are over-reliant on subcontractors.

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The research was commissioned to evaluate the progress made following a similar report in 2011, which assessed good practice in complex security environments. The authors, Steven Zyck and Ashley Jackson, found little had changed since then, and said they had identified “even more troubling practices”.

Zyck, a researcher with research consultants Humanitarian Outcomes, said: “Humanitarian agencies have dramatically expanded the use of subcontracting arrangements.

“This used to be seen as a last resort, yet we found numerous examples of onion-like layers of subcontracting in places like Afghanistan and Somalia.”

In many cases, said Zyck and Jackson, aid would flow from donors to UN agencies and then on to international charities. From there, funds travelled through up to three further national or local groups before reaching those in need.

Zyck said: “Every layer of this pyramid sucks massive resources out of the system. It is not an effective business model and in some contexts the way it’s being done is unethical and dangerous.”

The report – Presence and Proximity: To Stay and Deliver, Five Years On – found that in Syria, for instance, this allowed international charities to receive funds to work in the country even without having a physical presence there.

Such groups were effectively intermediaries, said Zyck and Jackson, outsourcing the work to “courageous” Syrian organisations on the ground while taking credit for their efforts.

One European NGO was found to have financially blackmailed a Syrian partner into operating in an area controlled by an al-Qaida-affiliated group, the researchers said.

The local group did not want to go there but the NGO said it would pull the agency’s resources if it refused.

“As local NGOs continue to lead humanitarian efforts in war zones around the world, they are increasingly paying the price with their lives,” said Jackson.

Data from the Aid Worker Security Database shows that, while attacks on international aid workers are down since 2000, local humanitarians have become a more frequent target.

Jackson said: “These local grassroots aid groups in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia often are not given the same resources for security as their international counterparts.”

Kevin Kennedy, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, said efforts on the ground are undertaken by a combination of different organisations.

He said: “Clearly a lot of our people work remotely and this is standard practice depending on the security situation. But we do have many people working on the ground and others working cross-border.

“The reality is everyone working inside Syria is at risk. Just two days ago two drivers we hired to deliver aid were shot and injured.”

Greater attention to security concerns affecting humanitarian workers has resulted in the creation of new policy frameworks in recent years.

But the new research, a joint commission by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Jindal School of International Affairs, found these developments often overlooked national and local organisations on the frontlines.

Only 40% of local aid agency staff members who responded to the survey had security procedures, and even local staff from international organisations said they were unlikely to participate in security briefings.

Several interviewees expressed concern that when security policies were out-of-step with perceived risk it led to a greater sense of vulnerability and a more conservative response.

Research found the majority of humanitarian agencies fled when violence erupted and stayed away for weeks, or more commonly months, after the situation had stabilised.

When conflict broke out in Bangui and other areas in Central African Republic in 2015, UN agencies resumed operations within days after the fighting receded but some international NGOs suspended operations for as long as four months.

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In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, however, humanitarians sought protection by entrenching themselves in bunkers and rarely venturing beyond the barbed wire.

And in Yemen one humanitarian organisation revealed it kept its staff in safe areas but periodically sent shipments to dangerous provinces so that their fundraising materials could claim to work in every province of the country.

The study found that upon returning to war-zones, many agencies would focus aid on stable areas while neglecting those in harder-to-reach regions.

However it did acknowledge that certain organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have maintained a major field presence regardless of insecurity through consistent engagement at a local level.

François Delfosse, project manager for MSF, said risk management had become increasingly challenging in the past couple of years due to increased attacks by state forces in countries such as Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

He said: “The threat to health provision is coming from insurgent groups but also more and more now from government forces.”

Delfosse said conditions on the ground were becoming more complex due to the blurring of lines between international humanitarian law and national counter-terrorism law.

“We’ve had hospitals bombed in Afghanistan and Yemen where officials have justified it by saying they were allegedly treating combatants from terrorists groups.”

But where the organisation has found success is through strong communication at a grassroots level and maintaining a position of impartiality, according to the report.

Zyck said other humanitarian groups should be looking to do the same.