Security Risk Management in NGOs

Course content

Humanitarian organisations that are delivering aid in conflict stricken areas, and aid workers that operate in the context of international armed conflicts are formally under recognised protection of international humanitarian law and rules. However, the volatility of conflicts, as well as players like non-state armed groups, often do not follow those rules, exposing NGO workers to various threats to their life.

The world has become extremely volatile and in the last couple of years security of NGOs has become an increasingly important topic. Dangerous operating environment, serious incidents like killings, kidnappings, violent assaults are on the rise and humanitarian workers are not excluded from them. Across the globe, aid workers are subject to violent attacks with 2-4 deaths per week worldwide.

The provision of pre-deployment security training to NGO staff and the presence of field security personnel are important steps in mitigating risk. Unfortunately, only few of very big NGOs have strong organisational culture of safety and security as well as enough financial resources to build their own security departments.

All the others have to rely on governmental support, or various NGO or personal networks. There is an issue as well with the typical mind-set of a NGO worker that doesn’t perceive security as a major topic, as there is an extreme confidence about immunity of their status and their acceptance.

Recently, large international NGOs have begun to adopt sophisticated and professionalized “risk management” approaches. They broadly share a common underpinning methodology, borrowed from the private sector, which systematizes the assessment of risk in all areas at all organizational levels and builds in mitigation measures.

Course objectives

In this course, we would like to enable students, future NGO employees, to be able to independently implement proactive approach towards security by teaching them how to conduct a basic security risk assessment, rather than to rely on a ‘personal sense of security’.

Participants will learn basics of Security Risk Management methodology that will help you determine and prioritise security risk by determining and evaluating threats, likelihood, impact and vulnerability, in order to mitigate or lower your individual or operational risks.

• How to recognise and map security threats and cluster them? 
• What is the likelihood and impact analysis? 
• How to perform security risk management in the sense of determining the risk toward your NGO or yourself and minimising the impact? 
• How to apply it in your own operational setting, no matter if its head-quarters or field environment?

At the end of the course as a take-out you will be able to assess threats and understand risks to NGO personnel and operations, thereby helping you make more-informed decisions as well as measures that you want to implement for mitigating of minimising your security risks.

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