IFAD social reporting blog

They called yesterday “Black Monday” here: 7 car bombs killed more than 32 people and wounded more than 130.

I arrived here earlier in the morning and had all the intended meetings and consultations—yesterday and today.

My original plan was to write about the use of skills gained at the security training. I scrap that (the training was very useful—used key knowledge learned) and rather will relay some of what I heard from national officials and international workers who keep going despite the man-made disaster (I just sent a note to colleagues in Rome concerning the Central Italy earthquake…)

Here are some of the voices from the conflict area:

• “Innocent civilians are again the only victims”;
• “Things were getting calmer but whether it’s a visiting dignitary or any other stupid reason, there are those spurts of incredible violence that just are devastating”;
• “Getting in and out of here is an example of “hurry and wait”…you have to be patient”;
• “After a few years here I need a change, I am leaving to join the UN mission in Afghanistan”;
• “Our country wants to completely re-engage in the international community and we will be full-fledged players—we don’t necessarily need funds, but temporary support to pull ourselves up”;
• “Our agriculture production system is completely devastated by the conflict—we used to export food and now import about 80% of our needs”;
• “There are 40,000 small projects that were funded in 2008 to stimulate agriculture—focusing on small farmers will revive the sector”;
• “Let’s not put all bets on the private sector—especially in cases of conflict like here, the public sector needs to get into investments such as to rehabilitate large irrigation and transport infrastructure”;
• “We need to quickly move a lot of support to farmers: this, more than any other action, will promote a sustainable peace in these areas”.

As I complete this blog and get ready to leave, my thoughts are with the civilians here and the heroes assisting them by showing up to work every day.

Nadim

Today we complete the security training program with a second day in the field. The feedback received constantly from our handlers and from each other is making sure that we perform much better at checkpoints, with wounded team members, with ducking at sirens, and even with taking personal responsibility when things don’t go as they should. In other words, we’re coming together as a team as a result of taking the training (but not necessarily ourselves) seriously.

“Nothing to fear but fear itself”
This quote from FDR has always helped me in periods of doubt and…fear. Yesterday night I went through a mental check of all the calamities that were recreated for us in the field and a quick “gaps analysis” showed that one incident that would undoubtedly befall on us today is a good old fashioned hostage taking…and I wasn’t mistaken. In preparation (premonition?) for that, we repeat some of the guiding principles: objective is to survive; comply; don’t be a hero; but don’t be too accommodating, stay/act confident.

Sure enough the day ends with a huge ambush where we were (again) thrown to the ground, unceremoniously stripped of our shoes (it stopped there…) ordered to keep our face to the ground in a cacophony of blank bullets and explosions.
Then, silence.

It took us many minutes to start standing up, asking each other if everything was OK and whether someone was missing. One of our UNHCR colleagues had indeed been taken by the armed group that attacked us.

I won’t go into all the details (although they were quite lively) as I have a plane to catch…but just to report that we eventually found her, on the ground, seemingly unconscious, and a whole debate went on in the rest of the team about what to do next. I must confess that my own reflex was just the thing not to do and I was thankfully over-ruled: I wanted for a group of us to rush to check if the hooded person was indeed our missing colleague and if she was alright. This would have been a big mistake: she was “wired” with mock explosives. Eventually we did send one person (a “medic”) who did “die”. The right thing would have been to call in a team of specialists who would have cleared the site and undertaken the required checking for explosives before touching or getting too close to our companion. (“delegate, delegate”…again.)

Take-away Lessons
This was an excellent training and I am glad I took it seriously. Beyond the very effective enhancement of our security skills, the training did highlight, in the most graphic terms, key strategic questions that we have to consider as we plan for a potential future scaling up of involvement in a specific conflict area. Two of these questions and suggested answers—shaped or re-enforced by this training—can be summarized as follows:

• Should we be sequential? Should we wait for relief operations to end and for more stability before we consider development strategies and activities?
  No.
  There is consensus (from worldwide practitioners but also among a non-scientific sample of my fellow trainees) that relief work as well as development planning/execution should ideally start in parallel. I still recall that this consensus started emerging in the seventies—but is surprisingly still not complete. Starting development planning early on and implementing it in earnest yields potential advantages with respect to: quick rehabilitation of local livelihoods and therefore resilience of vulnerable households; capacity building of institutions, whether governmental or otherwise; improved accountability with respect to the use of support funds. The condition of course is to ensure that some level of development activity can be undertaken while purely relief activities are going on. In the food and agriculture sector, FAO, WFP and IFAD (all present at the training) have specific initiatives that ensure the link and seamless transitioning between relief and development.
• Is it worth the risk? Safety of our own team members will continue to be priority number one. This is an unshakeable principle. We are right now involved in development work in many of the conflict areas around the globe. The decision to get involved in additional conflict areas, and at a stage where security is still a concern will definitely require close attention. The pros of course are known: that’s where you have some of the most vulnerable rural poor; it’s the UN at its best; it’s an essential complement to emergency relief. The cons: security risks; frequent over-supply of grant funds; donor coordination needs. Some next steps: (i) we should continue considering scaling up our development work in hostile environments case-by-case; (ii) as was done informally during the 4-day training I reported on, there is a need for exchanging field-level experiences on the relief-development continuum among practitioners and beneficiaries; and (iii) frankly, if the UN does not continue believing and working for world peace through development, who will?

I fly to the conflict area in two days. Looking forward.

Nadim

The much-anticipated first field day is here. We start at 7:00 with having to hand in our homework; then a 30-minute exam that would require twice that time to complete; and we’re on our way.

Of Bridges and Breaches:
As we will keep being reminded: communication is given all the importance needed in this course. We have to call in, check our radios, note anything that is noticeable and communicate it to our colleagues even during the 40-minute ride to the training center. We are 3 SUVs in the convoy and our chief instructor (and tormentor) is riding a silver Prado not too far behind us—he is a moving “Alpha Tango Base” that will continuously haunt us today and, I am sure, tomorrow.

Did I mention that communication was important and we had a diverse group?
Our Dominican companera: “Breeeach in front of us”
“did she say breach? There’s no breach in our convoy!”
“no, she meant bridge…there was a bridge back there”

Unsafe at any Speed:
As soon as we reach the field training site and get off the SUVs we get a rude introduction of how things will be for the next two days. A siren sounds (imagine a flock of cackling ducks) meaning we all have exactly eight seconds to take cover…we’ll be getting better at that, but on this first time, we all get flat on the ground; the correct answer would have been to go back to the armed vehicles and lie low…as this is the safest spot around.

A quick briefing and the caravan has to go to various spots within the training facility with lots of mock check points (sorry Charlie Papa’s) manned by angry role players mock minefields, ambushes, and other real-life recreations of risks in hostile environments.

Know your Mission Statement:
Now here’s a thought: maybe our next Divisional retreat should be organized in a security awareness training facility…not only for team building. We take turns at being convoy commander (CC or Charlie Charlie) deputy CC all through the day. This means that at every stop (after we recover from the last fright) the CC will give a briefing. These usually start with a restating of our mission (“to reach a refugee camp in site so-and-so and undertake a monitoring of on-going activities and assessment of needs inside the camp”). At the first mock check point, we are rudely stopped and thrown to the ground, and immediately individually asked what we are doing in the area. I hear a variety of statements…some being quite far from the agreed objective…reminds me of some interesting discussions around meeting tables back in Rome and the importance of getting to a simple statement of our common objective.

Why do we do this?
The lunch break is an opportunity through relaxed conversation, to conduct a non-scientific survey of the motivation of my co-trainees and how they’ll be using the skills learned. Here’s a sample of responses:

• “I will be flying planes for the World Food Program (WFP) into hostile areas and this training is a requirement”;
• “I am the Assistant to a UNDP Manager who’ll be moving to the hostile area;
  “I’ll be joining a UNHCR site for a year—I cannot think of doing anything else in life. Anything that resembles a 9-to-5 job would be lethal…give me risk and truly helping the most vulnerable any day”;
• “I need to know what some of my colleagues will be going through in case we do decide to design development projects in this area”;
• “This is the third time I take this training: if you spend a whole year without going to the hostile area…and I haven’t been there yet…then you need to retake the training to stay current”;

That’s a group of very dedicated professionals with a sense of purpose—and from the way everyone has been coming together—a group I would have no problem counting on for increased safety while we do our humanitarian and development work.

At the end of the day, I tally the incidents that we went through over the day and come up with the following approximation: 2 minefields; 10 IED explosions; 1 gunmen attack; 6 concealed explosive devices in and under our vehicles…of which we only discover 1 after thorough examination; 1 explosion leading to (mock) injuries that needs attention under heavy gunfire…and of course 1 angry checkpoint.

Back in my hotel room I think of all of the events of the day of course—but also to Ericka: all this action will make me lose weight and might just compensate for the fact that I haven’t been juicing and following my liquid diet for more than 2 weeks now.

Nadim

Nadim is undergoing an intense security training. Here is his blogpost for second day of training.

Today will be the second and last day in class. The next half of the security training program would take place in the field. To get us ready, here are some of the topics that were covered:

• Communications: More on Alpha Tango Bays, wavelengths and communication “etiquette” (Don’t, repeat, don’t, repeat; keep messages short and to the point; etc.)
• signs of stress and how to overcome stress (more on this below);
• driving guidelines (on staggered driving, avoiding breaches in the convoy);
• personal protection and how common sense and experience are our best allies in enhancing individual safety and the safety of the group;
• all sorts of mnemonics (“five C’s”; “seven W’s”) to recall what to do in cases of various types of incidents (mainly improvised explosive devices; direct gunfire; hostage taking; suspicious sightings.)

All goes quite smoothly with our group of 13 getting together in groups and subgroups and building the kind of camaraderie that we can tell will be needed in the coming two days.
Isn’t it all (or a big part of coping) about your state of mind?

The session on stress, in my view, was not particularly helpful, considering the vital importance of the topic. After going through a list of signs of stress (irritable, overeat, over-drink, exhausted, etc.) there was a lighthearted identification and listing of possible things to do to counter stress (exercise, stop and relax, music, …)

There was little time or opportunity to address three key points on stress—stated in my non-specialist terms:

• (i) stress is normal;
• (ii) recognizing our own stress levels and symptoms and our own coping mechanisms helps us ensure that we can control our behavior in the extremely stressful situations we are being asked to train on; and
• (iii) “dry-runs” involved especially in the field exercises will help us ensure that we have additional inputs to add to a crucial coping mechanism: experience of “having been there and done that”.

But not to worry, I’m pretty sure these points can be made in the next two days.

S.A.F.E.R.
As a public service, let me share here one neat mnemonic concerning personal security that could be useful to anyone, whether in formally hostile or not-so-hostile environments. It conveniently comes under the SAFER acronym, standing for:

• Stay aware of surroundings;
• Avoid routine (alternative routes, times etc.);
• Follow security instructions;
• Exercise common sense;
• Remain anonymous and show strength.

I’ll stop here and hope to report on some of the other more existential questions (why are these people here? What is the link between relief and development?) in the last two days of training…perhaps.

Nadim

Nadim is undergoing an intense security training and sent this blogpost to share his experience.

DAY 1: MRG’s and RPG’s

“Your main objective is survival”…

I will be spending the next four days in a security training program organized by the UN. That’s a requirement before heading to some of the conflict areas around the globe. In a week I’ll be going to such an area in order to identify, at the invitation of the government and the UN, a role for IFAD in addressing some of multiple issues linked to rural poverty where conflict adds an incredible complication to the hardship of the rural poor.

This blog post describes the four days and, if possible it may also describe the short visit to the conflict zone. Along the way, there will be room for thinking about the link between relief and long-term development; the foolishness of war; the motivation of UN (and other) humanitarian and development personnel; the precautions to take; and the steps we should take to ensure we step cautiously (not a pun) in laying the foundations for development in a conflict situation.

The quote above is from the training material to prepare us for a possible hostage-taking situation…but we’ll have time for this; it is covered only in Day 2.

Acronyms and DNA:

There are thirteen (talk about a lucky and promising start…) of us trainees in the classroom. The youngest is probably Tina (at least we’ll call her that way for the blog…all names are fake but the characters real…yes, paranoia was affecting me even before the start of the security training.) So, my desk neighbour Tina, all of 23, is the youngest. She works at the IOM. The balding old man next to her, at almost 53, is probably the oldest. The group is quite diverse at other levels too: 6 women, 7 men; nurses, pilots, economists, agronomists, managers, political scientists; conversations in a combination of 7 languages at any one time—(well actually 8 if you consider that Australian was heard quite often).

Rapid introductions and we start with the abundant alphabet soup of forms, rules, regulations, and forms that are necessary to ensure the security of personnel. We cover the ways to request security clearances for trips and missions, the key security personnel, the main threats and the alert levels.

Then, we watch quick, sobering videos of actual incidents and we discuss them. It is a reminder (if any was needed) that the absolute and shocking majority of victims are local civilians—the real heroes if we have to find ones in these sad events.

Sessions follow at a rapid pace, including a session on cultural awareness (“Don’t discuss religion and sex”); the latest security update in the country (opportunity to note just one of the numerous ironies of the situation: “security is much better but we can expect that this will mean more missions and therefore more risks”); and a reminder that communications are vital to our missions and survival in a hostile environment. OUCH! A sample of hair was just snatched from my forearm…for possible future need for DNA.

In the evening, back at the hotel, there’s homework and the learning of the phonetic alphabet where A is Alpha; B is Bravo etc. My name, therefore would be November, Alpha, Delta, India, Mike (“In some countries letters like India, Yankee & Whiskey are considered to be unsuitable; therefore substitutes should be found and used from other variations of the phonetic alphabet.”) I do squeeze in a joyful reunion with old college friends—that’s relief!

Before I go to sleep many things are racing through my mind, including the fact that normally I would have been in Rome completing the MRG for our staff…let’s hope the back-up arrangements I left in place are working. My very last thoughts are for the civilians in hostile environments.

Nadim