While its true that aid workers have become soft targets for terrorist groups and mere bandits, i would like to think that aid agencies are too slow in reacting to some of the threats they face in the field and this is well known to the bandits and terrorist groups. How many aid agencies have in house intelligence officers within security units to conduct assessments before teams are sent out into the field? Why do agencies want to combine logistic duties with security? i know someone will say that disasters are unpredictable and as such it will be a waste of resources to have such teams since they would not know where to start from in terms of knowing where the next team would be sent and that they are trying to save money by combining the roles of security and logistics. The second problem i see is that aid agencies believe on collecting their security information from internet, and newspapers etc. The information is out there and its just a question of knowing how to access it. If Security officers in aid agencies made it a point to liaise with state organs in the countries they operate in, some of these calamities would be avoided.
When i was working in the Government, we shared information with aid agencies because bad incidents on aid workers reflected badly on the Government and this could stop other agencies from setting up offices while those around could leave. if such a thing happened, its not only the poor people that suffer but the Government loses face while investors will not want to have anything with such a country.
In my professional opinion, a number of things ought to start happening and the following would be my advice.

1. Aid agencies should immediately start relocating their offices from crowded places into open spaces. Its easy to monitor unusual activities such as surveillance on their offices, staff etc

2. The idea of having 3 or so aid agencies in one building should be critically examined.(you cant put value on someones life).Its time you start having different offices for different agencies. The practice of having different agencies in one building is old dated.

3. Start employing experienced people who are able to move with the time. How many security manuals talk about terrorist threats. By the way, you cant train a security officer in 3 days.
A seasoned security officer takes years to be where he gets to be good. Even then, he continues to perfect his/her skills.

4. The person responsible for security must be able to officially interact with security officers. You will be surprised how much you will be able to learn.
Finally one aid agency in my country is a disaster waiting to happen.

The UN humanitarians are soft targets, but not as soft a target as those (almost by mandate), working even deeper in the field. Even so, just the fact that only within WFP, we had 36 people killed, injured or detained this year only, says enough of the dangers we all encounter.

So the article goes for all humanitarians… not just for UN…

We are all in for a rough future!

P.