Ensuring Security Risk Management is People-Focused: Insights and Tools for Effective Security Risk Management

Workshops Organised by: GISF and Insecurity Insight, with support of AidEx. 

As the contexts aid agencies work in become more complex, the management tools required to keep staff safe while maintaining access and programme implementation must become more flexible to be able to respond to these complexities. An approach to security that requires staff to only follow a pre-determined series of actions will not be sufficient. A system that actively identifies the risks and empowers staff to understand their impact and to manage them is required.

Please note: workshops participants must also be registered to attend AidEx. See the bottom of this page for more information.

Day 1: Developing and Implementing People-focused Approaches to Ensure Effective Security Risk Management

November 13th 09.30 – 13.30 (including 30-minute break)

This workshop will look at how effective security risk management is not about ticking boxes, but must be based on policies and practices that put staff at the centre.

Topics covered will include:

• Introduction to the workshop, including what are currently the big questions in security risk management in the aid sector and how do we balance programme access and staff safety.
• What does an “aid worker” look like, how do we ensure that we can meet our duty of care responsibilities while not discriminating against particular staff?
• Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, safety and security form the foundation for all levels of motivation. Therefore, for staff to be effective they must have these needs met, how does security risk management help to achieve this?
• Building an inclusive team where all staff are proactive in creating a safe workplace.

Register for Workshop 1 here. 

Day 2: Improving the Effectiveness of Security Risk Management through Staff-Friendly Incident Reporting

November 14th 09.30 – 13.30 (including 30-minute break)

This workshop will discuss how aid staff and aid agencies report, record and use security incident information for evidence-based risk analysis to improve a people-centred approach to security risk management. The workshop gives an overview of current practices and provides a space to think about what we would like to see happening in the future.

• How can we better manage and use the information from security incidents for a deeper understanding of the context, improved planning and greater awareness across different sections of the organisation?
• How do we utilise incident information and understanding of the context to provide appropriate security measures for all staff, whatever their personal profile.
• Why is some information (including around personal incidents) so difficult to obtain and how can we change this?
• Reporting sexual violence and other bullying/harassment type incidents and improving collaboration with colleagues for better safeguarding within and between organisations.
• What is our vision for security incident reporting in the future, how can it influence aid agency policy and decision making and do we have the right tools available?

Register for Workshop 2 here. 

Once you have registered for one or both of the workshops, please ensure that you are also registered to attend AidEx – you can do so here. AidEx is free of cost for all non-profit organisations. 

If you would like to find out more, please contact Laura Van de Vloet on gisf-info@gisf.ngo.