I recently read an article about the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in which the authors referred to ‘the brilliant success of failure’. Captain Shackleton and his crew faced almost certain death during their ill-fated expedition to walk across the frozen…
In 2018, GISF published a report called Managing the Security of Aid Workers with Diverse Profiles. This research demonstrated how specific profiles affect the risks aid workers face. However, security risk management professionals have known for much longer that…
A few months after the realisation of the first hybrid GISF Forum, Laura Van de Vloet, Project and Membership Officer at GISF shares her reflections on the three days event and how GISF is adapting to the pandemic.
Online courses rapidly show their limits when it comes to teaching hostile environment awareness training (HEAT). In this blog, Michelle Newton, from Clarity Security Training, shares Clarity’s experience of developing a live training in the midst of a pandemic and Megan Hooson, a new starter at GISF, shares her experiences attending it.
Given that the need is greatest in more insecure and fragile areas, it follows that training in personal security is critical to keep staff safe, ensure duty of care is met and enable effective programme delivery. Humanitarian security has long…
A crisis can be defined in many ways: ‘an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person’s life,’ ‘an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending especially: one with…
The security professionals we work with at GISF come in all shapes and sizes, each with their own unique perspectives and experiences. These different viewpoints help us to ensure that security risk management is effective for all staff, whatever their personal profile. Here, on World Humanitarian Day, we share a few of their stories and why the work they do is important to them.
The changing contextual dynamics also include COVID-19’s impact on humanitarian security risk management. Broader security risk management, which also focuses on community acceptance, should too adapt its frameworks to include this issue. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation…
Covid-19 is an opportunity for change. Flaws in the way risks are managed between local and international partners have been exposed by the current crisis. Building on lessons learned from the research I oversaw at GISF (which investigates local NGOs’ perspectives on risk transfer, partnerships and security risk management),+ here are three ways to make risk-sharing more than just an aspiration for the localisation agenda.
While COVID-19’s reach may be practically universal, its impact is far from it. Even before considering the secondary risks associated with the pandemic, the health risks of the virus itself are plainly unequal. On top of the well-documented impact…