Tara Arthur  0:10  
In recent years, humanitarian responses have been complicated by compounding crises, such as climate change epidemics and pandemics and complex conflicts, and an ever changing humanitarian and development space. We ask, what does the security and safety of aid workers look like? And what might it look like in the future? I'm Tara Arthur, from the global Interagency Security Forum. In each episode, I'll be speaking to guests about topics, such as the localization of aid, the ups and downs of community acceptance, and the role of security in a digital world. Join me as we unpack the evolutions of NGO security risk management.

Unknown Speaker  0:57  
Hello, hi, Avi.

Tara Arthur  0:58  
How are you today?

Unknown Speaker  0:59  
I'm good, Tara, how are you?

Tara Arthur  1:01  
I'm well, thank you so much for being with us.

Speaker 1  1:04  
Well, thank you. I'm a big admirer of JSF. And you personally so I was thrilled to be asked to be on your podcast. So thank you.

Tara Arthur  1:11  
All. Thank you. That's such a kind words, we really feel the same about us. So you know, what we usually do on the series is start with a little question about yourself and how you got into the sector, we'd love to hear a little bit and share with the listeners a little bit more about you.

Speaker 1  1:28  
Sure. So I've been around for a while. I spent 10 years in the NGO sector back in the 1990s. So like, sort of, right after grad school, got a job with care USA. And by the end of that decade, I was program director for Doctors of the World, which is the American chapter, medicine du monde. And I was there until 2000. Then I made the jump into research and policy consulting. After that I was at NYU center in international cooperation, where I was also completing my PhD at the same time. And while I was there, I collaborated with Adele Harmer, who was at humanitarian policy group. And we did the first of our big studies on insecurity for aid workers called Writing aid and insecure environments. And if you don't mind, my sharing, sort of a big motivator for my interest behind that was a major security incident that occurred when I was still at doctors in the world. We had a team, it was it was us and our colleagues from MDM Spain who had a joint team in Rwanda in 1997. And their their house was raided, and three of our Spanish colleagues were killed. And our US colleague, someone who I knew and who I personally sort of hired and sent out on that assignment was gravely injured and actually needed a sort of a field, amputation. And it was, it was a very close call for him. So kind of going through that, seeing the effect of a major security incident that what the effect that it has on an organization, and how it can really sort of shake the organization and everyone in it to its core. And I was also kind of participating in the early discussions with other organizations, the importance of developing a body of knowledge and best practices and security risk management, which really back then didn't exist or was only in the sort of a very nascent form in the humanitarian sector. So I brought that kind of interest to what Adele and I were doing in our research. Just to cap that off, our study led to the aid worker security database, which is ongoing, and we developed into an online resource when the two of us started humanitarian outcomes in 2007, as an independent entity, along with our three other partners at the time, Paul Harvey, Glen Taylor, and Catherine Hamer. And I've been in humanitarian outcomes ever since. We do research on humanitarian security, and security, risk management, but also humanitarian financing, coordination, and many other policy areas.

Tara Arthur  4:19  
What an esteemed career and journey you've had. Thank you so much for sharing that I think it's definitely really impactful, the journey you've had, and I'm really looking forward to diving deeper into some of your experiences and the work that you guys have been able to do with humanitarian outcomes. You know, I'm just thinking before we get into more detail there. Well, what are some of your thoughts on how the sector has evolved since your your earlier days and you started to talk a little bit about that, but maybe you can draw us down to a little bit about, you know, where the evolutions you're seeing In our Yeah,

Speaker 1  5:01  
so I mean, we're really talking about a span of like 30 years. So it's a long time. And I think, researchers in this field and I've been guilty of it, we often complain that you know, how slow it is to change, and how we seem to make the same recommendations about the same structural problems over and over again. And I mean, there's truth to that. But when you look back over that time, you see that a lot really has changed. The sector in general, I think, has matured, and its constituent agencies have matured, gotten much more coordinated, and much more professional in sort of the best sense of that word. So meaning that people, individuals and organizations have a much more developed sense of sort of ethics, and professional ethics, right and performance standards. So it's sort of like a pride in doing the job well, and achieving outcomes for the benefit of the people being served, as opposed to, you know, some sense of vague altruism, or heroics, which you know, can be self serving, or paternalistic, and, frankly, less effective, because it's more about the people delivering in the the, the the people getting the aid. So, I think you've seen this real kind of maturation. But you know, there are still valid criticisms, that not just up the slowness to change but but also that organizations as they have grown, and got gotten sort of older and more staid, they become kind of more corporatist and, and less agile and more risk averse. And you can see some of that, I think that's, there's truth to that as well. But overall, if you look at the sector, as a whole is able to do more for more people in need than was the case decades ago, I really believe that and when people are nostalgic for, for the old days, thinking back to a time where they were many fewer actors and operations in high risk areas, and certainly in active combat situations, them that you see many more now. So it's, yeah, improvement has been gradual, and incremental. But it's real. Yeah, that

Tara Arthur  7:14  
definitely resonates a lot. I think, you know, that kind of draws me into some of the work that I know you've been working on with the state of practice. And I'm just curious if you wouldn't mind walking us through the state of practice report that you guys humanitarian comes have recently worked on, I think that it's, you know, really a pivotal document. And just given some of the things that you were just sharing, I don't know if you can maybe take a moment and share a little bit about that particular document with us as well. Sure,

Speaker 1  7:47  
the state of practice report really grew out of discussions with our contacts at GIS F, specifically Lisa Riley and Heather views. And with our funder, USA IDs, Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs. So it felt to us very much like the right time to do another system wide review, where the sector stood on security, risk management, and how practice has evolved. Because it's been over 10 years since we collaborated, the first revision of a somewhat famous book in the sector called GPR. AIDS. It's the good practice review on operational security and violent environments published by HPM, which for many NGOs, in the old days was was like the staple handbook for this stuff. And, and that revision was informed by a global study also over 10 years ago, that we did with the UN spearheaded by young England called Stand deliver. And that report, similarly, went to several different countries and looked at how humanitarian organizations were dealing with security challenges and what the good and sort of innovative practices were. So it's, you know, in the intervening more than a decade, there have been a lot of developments sector, as well as changes in the political landscape and the conflict landscape, where the humanitarian response is taking place. So it kind of felt like high time for our new global study, just to take stock and see what the main challenges are now. And this time, instead of sort of stand deliver was more of a UN focused piece. It included NGOs, but it was commissioned by a multi agency group at the UN. So it was it was kind of centering on UN Security Risk Management. This time by working with CISF. We, we did a more NGO centered study and particularly looking at local and national NGOs.

Tara Arthur  9:47  
That's really, you know, something significant, and I think, you know, that's very telling the journey that you guys have taken around the research in particular and where the direction we're going and being able to deep In the SRM experience and knowledge for the NGOs is really something we should all, you know, say thank you for. I'm curious if you know, you can unpack what the process of putting a report like that together is what, what goes into something like that, I think, you know, it's it's really interesting for us to get a little taste of that the process of that,

Speaker 1  10:24  
yeah, it's kind of a unique space, this sort of H two h research area. And this is an example of a larger, longer study of this type. You know, it was over a year, it involved country based research. So traveling and working with local researchers. But in general, I think the components of research projects, or at least our research projects that you mentioned, outcomes tend to be basically the same, which is that you have qualitative data gathering, basically, in the form of large numbers of interviews, semi structured interviews with humanitarian practitioners, in this case, a lot of security focal points and security officers and organizational leadership, and with policymakers and donors and external experts, and security, risk management. And then another component would be the review of published in grey literature. And then there's generally a compilation and analysis of whatever relevant quantitative data you happen to have access to. And in this case, of course, security incident data is at our fingertips with the aid worker security database. So we relied on that, as well as some other datasets. Also, in this study, in addition to those components, I just mentioned, we had, we kind of set the table with an online survey of 350 was 358 respondents to the survey from like 100 Different organizations in over 70 countries. And based on that, we were able to structure our research guide and approach and, you know, we have, we have sort of a standard, semi structured interview guide that that we all use. And we put together mixed teams of researchers from both humanitarian outcomes and GSF, along with individuals from the country cases we were looking at, to do sort of country based interviewing and data gathering. And the countries that we looked at, in this case, were Central African Republic, Colombia, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Ukraine. And we were, you know, we had a number of different possible countries that we were looking at. And the selection of countries always depends on a number of different things, right. So you want regional diversity, you want a diversity of risk levels and sort of contexts. And you also need a host organization to sort of embed with the many of them. So all of that has to come together. And we were I would just like to shout out, we were very lucky to be hosted in, in Colombia, Ethiopia, in Iraq by DRC. And IRC hosted in Central African Republic and Ukraine, and they were great. And it was really helpful to have their support. We had an amazing advisory group of security experts from NGOs, un and general governments. They contributed their time and input to the methodology and drafts. And we had workshops in Nairobi, Amman, Madrid, and Washington, DC, where we we took the the input from GIS GIS F members, thanks to you guys and, and others, that also sort of was folded into the final report, what

Tara Arthur  13:53  
a beautiful, like compilation of being able to pull so many different important stakeholders and resources and information together to really put something out for the sector to understand where things are. So hats off to you all for for making that possible as well. I would love to hear, you know, just maybe some reflections about the report as well. You know, as its report outlines the current state of practice in the sector. Do you have anything from report that you think you found particularly notable as developments or things that you think would be worth highlighting? Yeah,

Speaker 1  14:38  
I think there's there are things both within the sector and kind of externally that are notable that have happened over the the time it's taken to do another kind of system wide review. And even as I said, that security risk management and capacities and systems have really been built up, and I think improved over the past 20 years or so. Over that same period, unfortunately, if you look at the data on aid worker attacks and fatalities, the numbers keep trending upward. Even so, and of course, you know that 2023, they actually doubled because of Sudan and Gaza. Really large numbers of aid workers killed and wounded there. And it's not just absolute numbers, we know from, you know, our estimated denominator aid workers in their field that the attack and fatality rates are going up as well. So the environment is becoming more dangerous when you look at the at the most violent conflicts were humanitarian responses going on. And that's because, you know, these proliferating and intensifying conflicts between you're seeing sort of major military powers fighting each other, it's not the asymmetric civil conflicts, that was the main concern during the first part of the 2000s and early 2010s. Got, but you still have those right, you have the complex emergencies and civil complex with multiple armed factions increasing with adding that, adding to that the large scale wars in Syria and Yemen and Ukraine and Gaza, with heavy weaponry and what seems like more and more indiscriminate airstrikes. It's, it's become quite dangerous. And you have these new threats to do with low meddling sort of cybercrime and digital security, but Miss and this amount of information that can start online and then translate quickly into into real world threats. It's gotten, it's gotten increasingly difficult. Yeah,

Tara Arthur  16:47  
absolutely. It has. And just thinking about as the humanitarian landscape is, you know, being more complex, and we're seeing IRS and greater threat environments. You know, you started to touch a little bit about this, but are you seeing advancements in the sector at all levels, you know, especially in terms of local actors having increased access to SRM resources?

Speaker 1  17:10  
I think you're seeing some progress there in terms of local actors having increased access. But I mean, I have to say that, that you're not seeing anywhere near enough. We wrote in the report that the national and local NGOs working in the sector are about where the internationals were upset like 20 years ago, in terms of developing structures and procedures. And unlike with the internationals back 20 years ago, the issue isn't with risk awareness. I think, you know, every, every time we spoke to national organizations, they were very clear on the security threats and risks and what their security needs were, but simply didn't have the funding models to be able to develop their capacities, because of the way they get funded through their international partners. There was one NGO director in Iraq, who was explaining how her organization was completely dependent on their international partners to fund their security. And she says, you know, they're always asking us who our security focal point is, and we give them the name of our HR person or logistics person. But the truth is, we don't have anyone to really do this role and to be dedicated to it, and we need that. But then she says there's no budget, and we know, we can't ask for it. So it's, it's a real problem that I think the report rightly centers on, because there are more and more national organizations working in these high risk areas, partly because of localization efforts, which are good, but also partly because the internationals will use partnering with nationals as a risk reduction measure themselves. So then you get into the questions of kind of ethical issues and moral hazard like there are great incentives for these national actors to take take on these risks for which they're not appropriately funded or equipped. And then then it becomes simple risk transfer, which I think everyone is clear is is unethical, but still happens, even if it's inadvertent in some respects.

Tara Arthur  19:28  
You know, thinking about that angle of risk transfer. And this I think, you know, you're signaling something really important that I'm appreciative that this report really highlights. I think, you know, I'd be curious to hear your reflections of where that conversation is heading. And are we seeing some signs of opportunity to improve on that and give better resources? Are you seeing some some signals of hope?

Speaker 1  19:56  
I am definitely I think it's there's A recognition of the problem I think, you know, the the commitments of the Grand Bargain are there, they're still not being adhered to, across the board. I mean, it's so discouraging when you hear of national NGOs, still, many of them still not receiving any overheads at all, and just being funded and kind of project expenses. There's no way you can create SRM capacity in that model. So it's still going on, it is getting better. In some places, I was thrilled to learn that USA ID has a pilot where they are, for the first time directly funding local and national NGOs. I think there's there's about 30 that they're doing now. So I think that's where that Yeah, I think that's where the change happens. I think if donors are more and more willing to do that, you're going to start to properly develop the capacities of these organizations. And,

Tara Arthur  20:57  
you know, just out of curiosity, you know, what, what types of changes are we seeing with regard to, to SRM coordination, and around this kind of topic, but also, you know, broader, broader impacts for not just local actors, but just the SRM community as a whole? Are you seeing improved coordination with examples? Like you just mentioned, the BHA, but, you know, just broadly speaking, what kind of changes are you seeing with regards to, to coordination efforts? And are you seeing some, some further advancements there also?

Speaker 1  21:33  
Yeah, well, again, like taking the long view, there has been a huge amount of improvement. And thinking back to a time when organizations would experience a an attack or some sort of security incident wouldn't let other organizations in the same area no about it. And there was only sort of ad hoc, informal information sharing. And now, it's, there's a world of difference, at least in the on the international side, where you have, in many countries, security incidents, and information and analysis can be compiled and and shared to a large number of organizations, which is really a boon for the organizations that don't have the analytical capacity in house, and maybe otherwise wouldn't have had that information. So kind of globally, you have groups like Iran, gi SF, and country, you've got on the UN side, the UN DSS mechanism, which has its problems, but is, is improving as well. And so where it's established is very, very useful. The concern is, I think, with coordination is that we don't want to become rigid about it and say, there's only kind of one right way and one or two approved channels to do this coordination. Because there are places where they aren't set up. And where maybe there are the international coordination committee set up but don't fully meet the needs, the local actors, either because they're not formally registered, or whatever the case. It's, it's getting better in terms of national participation. But there are still many areas where there are a lot of humanitarian actors who are not participating, don't know about it, maybe can't join for formal registration, reasons, whatever. And they can really still benefit from coordination. So I think rather than gatekeeping, we should really be seeking to support local efforts, such as kind of there are many places there are existing local NGO forums that could develop a security coordination capacity. Now I understand the arguments that it's ideally better to have kind of one one single stream of complete information that everyone has access to. But that is just an ideal, and it's unrealistic in a lot of places. And even if it were possible, then you have the risk of there being a single point of failure, which we pointed out in the report. So I think that even if it's messy and overlapping, it's probably better to have additional coordination channels. Let's be honest, you know, this happens anyway. I mean, there are there are the formal channels, and then there's any number of signal or telegram or WhatsApp groups that NGO security staff belong to and get a large part of their information from. So there's already these, you know, multiple channels. The important thing is that specifically in localities, where it might be remote, where there are some organizations that work only there, get good contextualized information and, and security coordination where they are, and that I think, in many places can only be done by supporting local efforts. I think that's really

Tara Arthur  24:59  
well Solid. And I think you've kind of really tackled a lot of the challenges around coordination at all the different levels. And it's really interesting to hear, you know, I think you're pointing towards, or we're seeing momentum forward around coordination efforts. And I'm really curious about, you know, your your reflections then. And, you know, this, this may take us down a slightly different path, but it prompts me to think about other themes within SRM. And are you seeing other shifts and trends on things that have been evolving or developing around the sector that kind of speak towards that momentum forward that we're seeing?

Speaker 1  25:42  
I think so. Yeah. And again, it can be slow. I mean, I think the chips and mindset and consensus will happen long before you see any sort of widespread change in practice. And that's just how it is. I mean, what is the the move from the sort of reactive and restrictive approach to security to the enabling approach. And this is something everyone agrees with, in theory, and has been talking about since you know, the early 2000s. But it's hard to do when large proportions of security professionals still came from police or military backgrounds, which you know, they're trained in, and they have a very different approach. And it does tend to be more restrictive and telling people they can't go as opposed to telling them how they could go and reduce their risks as much as possible. By doing so, you're seeing more of it now. And I think it really is related to the more diverse backgrounds of people in these security roles, many more from humanitarian backgrounds, as opposed to the traditional security backgrounds, people who worked in access, or worked in programming, who also have an interest and training and qualifications and security. But it comes more from the vantage point of how do we get this humanitarian operation to work while keeping staff as safe as we can. And, you know, it's I was struck this time around going to these countries of how many more female heads of security I saw than ever before, it's much more common. It's kind of a young group, humanitarian, and more diverse group. So it's kind of it's receiving the birth of a new professional field, really, which is quite exciting. And somewhat related to that, I guess, also is the, again, mindset shift happens before or practice shift, but the person centered approach, which has, you know, is, is to do with assessing risks that are not sort of a generic risk for an aid worker, but looks at the person and everyone has their own specific risk profile due to their identity factors and understanding this and helping the staff members to understand this so that they can approach their own security with, you know, a more informed and nuanced view. Everyone we spoke to knew about the person centered approach, everybody was in favor of developing it further, it so far is we're not seeing sort of concrete examples, at least kind of widespread in terms of practice. And I think that's something that, you know, might be an area to focus on developing, going forward.

Tara Arthur  28:34  
I think I could definitely agree with that. No, that's really interesting. And I think, given all of the different examples you highlighted already, so far, it really speaks to the trajectory, also just weaving in the different directions that I think the sector is moving towards, with regards to improve coordination, hopefully seeing more improved practices at the local international national levels. And, and like you said, you know, this, this, this deeper, you know, practical focus on person centered approach and seeing it actualized in practice, you know, I, I really would love your further insights on, you know, as the report really impacts a lot of different interviews, and you guys did such extensive research across the sector. It's, it's pretty profound. And just Are there any surprising elements or any particular interviews that you found, you know, especially impactful?

Speaker 1  29:34  
Well, you know, first, I really want to say that I'm always amazed and grateful, and people's willingness to give their time to talk to researchers about this stuff. These are the busiest people you can possibly imagine. I was talking to people in Ukraine who basically worked and slept and maybe took 20 minutes to work out and that was all they did, you know, seven days a week. So I'm personally I always make sure to be here. Even though they're doing us a big favor because they absolutely are. And people are also willing to talk about security incidents that have happened to them or their colleagues. And sometimes they need a timeout, because this is it's traumatic to even talk about. So hats off to all of them for even giving us their time. In terms of this round of interviews, I think, if I was going to pick the most surprising and also disheartening, unfortunately, it's the the loss of faith and deconfliction efforts, which is really hugely important to aid worker security. It's started in Syria, but it's also very evident in Ukraine. And we're seeing a bit of ungasan elbow that wasn't on one of our studies. But the military is not being cooperative with deconfliction, sort of receiving the information that the NGOs would faithfully report on their movements and their static facilities. Sometimes, you know, repeatedly making sure that the notifications were made, and it not being reciprocated. And in Syria, where there were NGOs that believe strongly that they were deliberately targeted by Russia and Syria, using the information that they got from the humanitarian notification system. In Ukraine, there's a lot of skepticism about deconfliction, we've spoke to several organizations who no longer use it or use it sporadically. And, you know, with, you get this increasing likelihood, even if even if the militaries are acting in good faith, there's there's, the less the deconfliction system is used, the more likely that error and friendly fire happens when it comes to, you know, outdated maps or coordinates or whatever. But it can only these systems can only be as good as the partners on all sides. So I found that some pretty shocking.

Tara Arthur  32:07  
Yeah, absolutely. That's that. It's definitely something I think, like you said, we're seeing right now. Unfold and it. Yeah, I think you're right about the disheartening factor. But would you say that, even given some of that, that there's opportunities for that to be improved?

Speaker 1  32:29  
I would like to think so. I'm not sure how far it's going to go in these contexts that are happening right now. I do think that it would be useful for the NGOs to come together. And as you know, we're not the first to suggest this, there have been efforts to revitalize the understanding, and they and the trust in the system for humanitarian notification. I think it does need more reciprocation and guarantees from the from the military sides, and there should be very strong advocacy devoted to getting that to happen. I think it needs to sort of happen globally, and with sort of member states involved. But yes, I do think it's worth putting time and effort into. Yeah,

Tara Arthur  33:15  
thank you for that. I, you know, just thinking about this report, and its magnitude again, you know, just how amazing it was that you guys were able to put something so transformative together. Did you encounter any challenges with that process? Honestly,

Speaker 1  33:33  
it went very smoothly. That's mainly because we have this fantastic team. But I've done a lot of these over the years. And from past experience, it's not at all uncommon. If you have five country case studies for one of them to go completely sideways for whatever logistical reason, or, you know, maybe one researcher or one country team just doesn't deliver as you hope. We had one case many years ago where a researcher was actually arrested in Chechnya, I mean, things can go very, very wrong. Not in this case. Luckily,

Tara Arthur  34:01  
we're glad to hear that. Yeah,

Speaker 1  34:04  
we had. I mean, we had my colleague, Monica suono, doing great work on the logistics and security side of it, which was, which was really nice. And, you know, normal team, in every country, every researcher, they went, I thought did great. So yeah, start out with a good team. It also helps that we have this standardized system for the for the research process, where all team members are uploading to the same shared platform so that you can see everyone's notes in real time anonymized notes so that there's no security issues. But when it comes time to analyze all of this evidence, it's all in one place and it can be downloaded and cross compared by theme, by country by type of informants, you know, what sort of organizational affiliation etc. So you have the the evidence from the country case reports, but plus or All of these raw incident, sorry, raw interview notes from the, from the country research teams. And you can ensure by having at all in front of you that the findings are going to be based on the actual evidence and not overly filtered through the main author's memories or prior assumptions or biases or whatever. So that we've kind of honed this process over the years. And I think it works really well for us, it's also helps to, to do it more quickly, in a lot of cases. I can I can talk about another challenge. Without naming names. I mean, it's inevitable when you release a report like this, that early drafts get out, sort of beyond the team, it just it just happens people share it, and other people see them and and the issue there is that certain organizations might try to intervene with the report if they don't like the findings. I would say it happened a little bit in this case, but nothing compared to past studies I've done where there are multi agency groups involved. And there were huge fireworks about things this was this was quite muted compared to that. So all in all, really, really happy with how Armitage

Tara Arthur  36:10  
Well, as a consumer of the report, I have to tell you a huge thank you to you all your entire you'll and the entire team. It's truly a impactful document that, I think is definitely sending good signals to the sector of what we need to do. So want to just thank you. Thank all the people who are involved in that process, because it's definitely something everyone if you haven't had the chance to read, should dive into and really sink your teeth into. Yes,

Speaker 1  36:40  
not only to get the names of the other members of the research team, I don't have time to Name Check everyone, but they were so good. And they should all be Yeah. Everyone who's not part of h2o already should be should be hired by many other people is a great,

Tara Arthur  36:55  
I think that's a really good point. Absolutely. So hopefully, if you've learned picking it up right now, and we could put a link to the report in the notes for those listeners who haven't had a chance to pick it up yet. You know that I kind of want to take you back to this. I kind of keep circling back here. But that forward trajectory we're focused on in today's episode, in many ways, just if we isolate the next decade ahead, because we've been looking kind of decade by decade a bit. What what do you think organizations should prioritize in around the emerging risks that we're foreseeing and, you know, how do you see SRM evolving in that period as well? Do you have any signals that you think are worth highlighting for us?

Speaker 1  37:47  
Well, in some ways, it's impossible to predict because it should really evolve as the threat landscape evolves, right. And we don't know what the next decades will bring. But that's actually something that we we mentioned, that it's important that the sector be as adaptive as possible and, and adapting to new threats and risks. By being you can't, you can't be prepared for a black swan event, because, by definition, a black swan is unknowable. But with practices, like what's called horizon scanning, where you're looking at just very unlikely, but potentially very impactful scenarios that can kind of force the security risk management staff and program staff to look beyond the most common risks, and the most likely events and, and we'll help them be alert to changes in the threatened environment and be potentially more flexible and adapting to them. Because they've kind of gone through other potentialities with them. It's it's a worthwhile exercise to do. Because when you do see this kind of inertia and complacency, and in some places, we saw that BsrM step actually were slow to pick up on the changing environment. And we're sort of the lagging part of the of the transition from one condition to a more crisis condition. And that's the opposite of what you want. So to doing that, the other main thing, as I said already is localizing security risk management, more so than it is now. What we've done now is localize the risk more than the good practice and the support and the and equipping national and local actors to continue doing what they're doing with more risk reduction. So that requires really acting on these long standing recommendations on fair partnerships and equitable contracts and funding models that allow for capacity building. Coordination, I think yeah, I mean, as I said, I think coordination is something that has gotten way better and can continue to improve and should focus on filling gaps. And that, again, could mean additional helping support additional, and very localized platforms and mechanisms. I guess, if you wanted me to sum up the main the main takeaways, take the progress that's been made, and share it and extend it more to the local and national actors. And thinking and planning further ahead. Sort of what new threats we could be prepared. If that makes sense.

Tara Arthur  40:40  
That makes a lot of sense. And it's something I hope everyone walks away with. And we really appreciate your comments there. And before we send you off, and and thank you, I think it would be really, if you're open to it, giving us a little teaser, you you mentioned it earlier on in the episode that we know that humanitaire outcomes is working hard, the revision of GPR eight. And we'll have an opportunity later in the series to come back to it. But if you're open to it, maybe you can give us a little preview a little sneak peek of what we might expect. Sure,

Speaker 1  41:18  
yeah, well, great. If you can speak to my colleague, Alicia Fairbanks on kind of managing the revision of the of the GPR, eight, I think, good practice review. The reason why it was so important in the beginning was because it was the first place the first volume, where all the collective knowledge around security for humanitarian operations was kind of written down and organized at a time again, where most NGOs didn't have any sort of security structures or policies at all. So it was used by quite a few, my own included to begin building their own SRM systems in our organizations. But when you look back at the first division, and even the the next revision, it's very clearly written by and for the international organizations, specifically international NGOs. And it's, they were working very much from that perspective. And that, that centering that perspective doesn't really make sense anymore. It's still hugely useful for international organizations. And honestly, there's a lot in it, which, because of capacities can really only apply to the larger organizations with kind of global staffs and big budgets. But the core of it the basics of security is now we're hoping being written from a more universal vantage point. I know you're going to be inputting yourself. And we have kind of national NGO reviewers, and we're going to try to make sure that we can, we can dissenter, the internationals a bit, a bit more, we've taken out stuff that's outdated. And there's going to be new chapters on specifically how security relates to humanitarian access. And how important it is that those two objectives not be at odds. But that, you know, you want the security people inside the access, coordination and negotiations to help enable the access and not to prevent organizations from kind of pushing the limits. And there's going to be, of course, more on realizing the the person centered approach, along with some other things, but my colleague will be better placed to give you the details.

Tara Arthur  43:35  
Thank you so much for that preview. I, I know that Jeep era is such an important document for many of us in the sector. So it's very exciting to see that the next iteration come to life. And thank you to the team and all of you at humanitaire outcomes for all the hard work from state of practice to all the other initiatives underway. You know, I wanted to just come back to you, you know, we talked a little bit about the aid worker security, database, localization GPR, aid, all of these different elements and so much more in such a short time. Are there any other I don't want to call them last words? Because hopefully, this will be many more words to come between us. But would you like to leave us with any any other things before we park for today's episode?

Speaker 1  44:27  
I don't think so. I think we covered we covered the the report. Well, I would just I encourage people to there's there's so much now there's so much information, so many resources available online. And I hope that more people who are just entering the sector will be encouraged to look at the security risk management side of it. Understand how it can be such a critical component to making aid work and And, and to kind of take up that challenge working in dangerous places, and balancing the needs of security against the needs of the people being served. So, yeah, I hope we see that the field continue to grow.

Tara Arthur  45:17  
Thank you so much, Abby, it's been truly such an honor to have this opportunity to speak with you. And, again, thank you for the incredible work that you guys continue to do. And we look forward to having people engage further with the resources mentioned, and all the initiatives as well. And we look forward to bringing in some of your colleagues to unpack some of these additional topics that we've talked through. And the series will also talk about other other areas that we that were mentioned, and some that weren't. So we're excited to continue this discussion, and really appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Speaker 1  45:55  
Great, Tara, hope you get to speak to my colleague, MJ Breckinridge, who's our data person that runs the AWS thi as well as at Alicia and I just want to thank you for having me on and giving us this, this platform to share our research. So it was a real pleasure. Thank you. Good

Tara Arthur  46:10  
to see you. We'll see you soon. The global Interagency Security Forum is a member led NGO with a global network of over 140 member organizations and affiliates. We are committed to achieving sustainable access for populations in need through improved safety and security for aid workers and operations. GSFC original research, collaboration and events drive positive change in security risk management across the humanitarian and development sector. We operate according to humanitarian principles and lead on best practices and innovation by pushing for a collaborative and inclusive approach to security risk management.

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