Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Security Tidbits

Various humanitarian security topics of note, as the year wraps up...

A Chad court convicted six French aid workers (Zoe's Ark) of kidnapping and has sentenced them to eight years of hard labor. While it seems likely international pressure will either reduce the sentences or transfer imprisonment to France, the court ruling does send a strong accountability message to the humanitarian community.

Chrispin writes in with a link to a nice security manual published by the New Zealand government. Entitled Security in Government Sectors, even though the manual isn't NGO-specific, it's quite comprehensive and has a lot of good information that can be applied outside government circles. Definitely worth a bookmark.

A belated pointer to humanitarian adviser (and frequent commenter to NGO Security Scenario posts) Kevin Toomer's blog. His Web site and blog have been up and running for awhile now, and feature a variety of humanitarian-security content.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When this story first made headlines, Ms Cravens, a regular contributor on Aid Workers Network posted it on the aid workers forum and a number of individuals posted their comments. I found myself posting a comment to the effect that the detained nationals would be released in exchange for something. Although it has not yet happened I believe that eventually they will be released or as the article says, they will serve their prison sentence in a French prison.

I would now like to talk about this blog. I started visiting this site some time in September 2007. I had just decided I needed a more challenging job and suddenly I wanted to work in the field where I could use my knowledge, experience and skills. This is how I started doing a lot of reading on humanitarian security. I became aware of other equally interesting sites among them Patronus Analytical, S.M.I, Humanitarian. Info and several others.

I wrote a lot of emails to different people who handled security matters in various aid agencies. Most of them never wrote back others did write back and from now I started to develop some professional friendship. This blog allowed me to share my thoughts, skills and experience with other experts among them Mr. Toomer at Patronus Analytical, I also read wise comments posted by people like Mr. Paul Currion and others. In order to understand this blog better, I went back and started reading the earlier entries and the reason why this blog was created. I came across a lot of information. (I have always been an avid reader but am surprised at how little I knew about Humanitarian Security. In short, this blog has achieved one of its objectives and I hope that a lot more people will start to contribute and post their comments on various topics. I would suggest that the case scenarios offer some of the best opportunities for one to check their level of knowledge and skills.

I would also like to appeal to the 200 or so aid workers on Aid Workers Network to take a keen interest in security related materials that appear on this blog, patronus analytical, S.M.I and others. It is only by sharing our thoughts, experiences and difficulties that you face in the field that others may learn and become better security officers.

I end here by saying thank you to Mr. McNamara, and Mr. Kevin Toomer for all that you have taught me in the past 5 months or so and I look forward to more challenging thoughts and case scenarios.

Have a happy new year.

2:51 AM  

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