POLITICS: Local U.N. Staff Face Highest Risks

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2007 (IPS) - 2006 was a deadly year for United Nations civilian staff and peacekeepers.

Twenty-two U.N. personnel were killed in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan and southern Lebanon, according to the U.N. Staff Union and its Committee on the Security and Independence of the International Civil Service.

In addition, there were 215 violent attacks on U.N. staffers, 93 armed robberies of U.N. assets, five rapes and nine sexual assaults perpetrated last year.

“We can only expect more violence as our presence globally expands,” Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff, said on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today at the Seventh Summit on the Safety and Security of U.N. Staff and Associated Personnel.

The summit addressed increasing security threats and the delicate balance staff face every day in carrying out the missions entrusted to them by member states.

“The summit serves as a reminder to the member states of their obligations,” Guy Candusso, former vice-president of the U.N. Staff Union, told IPS.

“We must denounce those who refuse to react to the threats our staff are facing – hostage taking, physical assault, robbery, theft, harassment and detention,” stressed Dimitri Samaras during his presentation.

Samaras, chair of the joint Staff Council of the U.N. Development Programme, U.N. Population Fund and U.N. Office for Project Services, noted that, “Host governments bear the primary responsibility” for staff security.

“The U.N. system continues to face difficulties in obtaining timely authorisations to import radio equipment,” Samaras said, adding that some donor countries still “do not accept the inclusion of security costs for delivery of a project as part of the budget.”

Attendance of government delegations at the summit meeting was poor, with about 50-60 delegations sending representatives out of 192 member states.

Of the five countries where U.N. personnel lost their lives last year, only Haiti sent a representative.

“If we achieve the energy of the 192 member states, U.N. staff security would be greatly improved,” said David Veness, Under Secretary General for Safety and Security.

Only 81 countries are party to the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel.

Thirty-four states are signatories to the Convention’s Optional Protocol which expands legal protections to all U.N. operations – including humanitarian, development and other non-peacekeeping operations which were not covered by the original agreement.

As of Monday, only three countries were party to the Optional Protocol.

Candusso remained optimistic, however. “There were enough delegations at the Summit today to achieve the 22 ratifications necessary to bring the Optional Protocol into force,” he said.

A discussion of specific security issues followed the plenary session of the summit.

The plight of international aid workers was highlighted by all the participants, specifically that of locally recruited personnel.

“Attacks have doubled over the last 10 years,” said Abby Stoddard, senior research Associate at New York University’s Centre on International Cooperation. “Since 1997, over 500 humanitarian aid workers have lost their lives,” she said.

The majority of the aid worker victims are nationals of the country in question, according to “Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: Trends in Policy and Operations”, a report by the centre co-authored by Stoddard that was presented to the summit.

“Humanitarian agencies have largely failed to consider the ethics of transferring risks to national staff or local NGOs,” the report says.

When security conditions deteriorate, international staff leave and pass on their responsibilities to local partners, Stoddard told those gathered. “This practice is reactive and ad-hoc,” she stressed.

“National staff is not considered when it comes time to evacuate, and national staff’s local security is not taken seriously before that,” Masood Ahmed, a representative of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF staff said.

U.N. staff have been forced to seek refugee status because the U.N. could not protect them, said a representative of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.

“In the vast majority of incidents aid workers were deliberately targeted,” the New York University report says.

U.N. member states have found it hard to agree on how to logistically and legally evacuate local partners from conflict zones.

Stoddard pointed out that attempting to solve the problem of evacuation of local partners is not the only way forward.

Local partners receive less security training, Stoddard said. Why is this? she asked. Security equipment like radios and better vehicles could be left behind for local use after foreign staff are evacuated, she suggested, and better assessments of risks to local staff should be carried out at the onset of projects.

The past six summits on safety and security highlighted the duty and commitment of governments to protect and defend U.N. and humanitarian workers performing their duties under hazardous conditions.