Latest news feedRefugees Magazine Issue 146 ("Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence") – Difficult Delivery: The 'remote management' of aid in Iraq.
By Cécile Pouilly
Canal Hotel, 19 August 2003, 16:30 hrs.: a truck packed with explosives smashes through the wire fence surrounding the UN headquarters in Baghdad and explodes, killing 23 people, including the UN Special Representative in Iraq. Dozens more are seriously wounded during the attack.
Two months later, on the first day of Ramadan, the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Baghdad is struck by a car bomb – the first attack of this type on the ICRC since its creation in 1863. Thirty-five die and 230 are injured as a result of this explosion and three others that take place in the Iraqi capital over the next 45 minutes.
These assaults – as well as the kidnapping of two Italian female aid workers and the assassination of CARE's representative Margaret Hassan in September and November 2004 – stunned the entire humanitarian community.
"In Iraq, there's no longer any room for neutrality," said Pierre Gassmann, former ICRC head of delegation for Iraq in 2003-2004 and Advisor to the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University. "In situations this polarized, the biggest threat to the security of international organizations is the belief that they are perceived to be neutral. They are not."
His views are supported by some stark statistics: according to the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (or NCCI, an umbrella organization based in Amman representing close to 300 international and local NGOS), at least 82 Iraqi and international aid workers were killed in Iraq between 2003 and January 2007. Another 86 were kidnapped, 245 injured and 24 arrested.
These targeted attacks have almost certainly permanently affected the way humanitarian agencies operate in conflict zones. By the end of 2003, virtually all international organizations had withdrawn their expatriate staff from Iraq, either stopping their activities altogether or adopting a new way of working.
New modus operandi
While many agencies continued to function in the north, most have relocated their international staff based in central and southern Iraq to neighbouring countries, while limited activities continued to be carried out on the ground by local Iraqi staff.
Initially, relief agencies tended to choose the "remote control" option, under which decision-making remained the prerogative of the evacuated international staff. But the limitations of this method quickly became apparent. As a result, most agencies shifted – to varying degrees – from 'remote control' to 'remote management.'
Pierre Gassmann explains: "Many international organizations... realized that if they wished to stay involved in a situation such as Iraq, they had to do the work with national staff – to pick quality staff, whom they could entrust with broader responsibilities."
An increasing reliance on local NGOs became another major feature of humanitarian interventions in Iraq, especially in the extremely dangerous central part of the country. There are very few foreign NGOs still working in the central area.
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), through its 18 branches and extensive network of volunteers, is the only agency able to openly operate nation-wide. But even IRCS is not immune to the anarchy that plagues Iraq today: on 17 December, 30 of its staff were kidnapped from one of its Baghdad offices, and 13 of them were still missing in mid-March.
"But there are places you can work – do community-based work," said NCCI's Cedric Turlan. "More and more, you can work in your own community, but not anywhere else." He is somewhat heartened by the recent shift of focus by UNHCR and the rest of the UN in Iraq. "For months we felt alone in focusing on the inside – now, with the UN, it seems there is a wish to change – and movement to change."
Andrew Harper, head of UNHCR's Iraq Support Unit, agreed that new approaches are necessary to alleviate the plight of people inside the country. "Our operations must be pragmatic," he said. "This may require an increasing reliance on money changers, cross-border operations, working with non-state actors and moving the focus of interventions away from Baghdad to areas where we have access and can operate."
The only option
This type of approach has allowed agencies to avoid a complete disruption of operations and may be the only way they could function in the current climate. "Remote management is not an option. It's a one-way street," said one of the UN refugee agency's Iraqi staff. "We don't have other options to choose from."
As of early March, UNHCR had eleven partners carrying out protection and assistance programmes on its behalf inside Iraq, including distribution of non-food items, providing emergency shelter and running legal aid and information centres.
While monitoring activities are carried out by UNHCR national staff, according to a monthly plan approved by the agency's offices in Kuwait and Amman, daily contact with international colleagues is mostly maintained through emails and phone calls.
"What's the point of going to Baghdad?" asks a European NGO programme manager whose agency works with UNHCR in Central Iraq. "You risk your safety and that of your staff, because they have to look after you. And if your operations are in the field, it is no help going to the Green Zone. And asking your staff to come to the Green Zone can put them at risk."
It is the same in the south: "I don't see any value to have international staff in Basra at the moment," says an Iraqi aid worker from that city. "They would be either located in the international airport or at the palace where the American consulate is and both these places are not safe for us to go."
But the transfer of responsibility also implies a transfer of vulnerability: "Iraqi aid workers are taking incredible risks," said NCCI's Cedric Turlan. "In the central area, just living there is a risk. But aid workers are more at risk: they are going out when others stay in."
Nevertheless, the ngo working with UNHCR in Central Iraq is still able to deliver on activities that strengthen local capacity to absorb and protect people of concern. It is also drilling much needed bore-holes, and carrying out rehab- ilitation and income generation projects that benefit displaced people and host populations alike.
Some staff have been threatened, according to its programme manager. "You receive a warning from somebody. If you're lucky, you receive a second warning." One of his staff working with internally displaced people was forced to leave the area, and became a displaced person himself.
The flip side of the security situation is that, in some cases, the lack of information available to external managers making security decisions may result in too much caution. "The UN security rules should be more flexible so we can move, as Iraqis living in Iraq," says the UNHCR staffer in the south. "I will assess if it's ok for me to go or not and I will not take unnecessary risks... but these people are our cousins, our relatives – we have to do something."
Mutual monitoring
Since overnight missions are not allowed, it is practically impossible for UNHCR staff to monitor programmes performed by implementing partners in some of the nine southern governorates such as Kut and Missan, which leads to a second issue: accountability. How can you track what is going on from abroad?
"It's not perfect at all but it's better than nothing", says Cedric Turlan of NCCI. "The delivering is not remote – it is the managing."
Janvier de Riedmatten, UNHCR Representative to Iraq (who is based in Jordan), notes that various options are being explored to boost monitoring: "Most of our implementing partners have strong Iraqi staff, who were trained before the war. Therefore, we generally trust what they are doing. And we can monitor a fair number of activities through our own Iraqi colleagues. Nevertheless, we are now developing an additional system of 'peer monitoring' which will help ngos to monitor each other."
Everyone agrees on a key point: in order to avoid continued displacement inside and out of Iraq, the needs of Iraq's general population – both those still in their own homes and those who have been internally displaced – must be addressed quickly. To do so, humanitarian workers may have to operate at an elevated risk level, until politicians deliver on their duty to do their utmost toward restoration of a safe humanitarian space.
Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 146: "Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence" (April 2007). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (1.27 Mb) here or high-resolution (4.25 Mb) here.