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7. Working with partners

Effective partnerships between international and local organisations are key to the successful delivery of humanitarian aid. While INGOs increasingly have the security structures and capacity to establish comprehensive security risk management frameworks, local and national NGOs (L/NNGOs) face many barriers to providing adequate security provision for their staff. 

Given their proximity to the operating context, L/NNGOs are often more exposed to security risks than INGOs. Different attitudes and approaches to risk and, in some cases, limited security management systems and capacity, can potentially lead to greater risk-taking. 

In other situations, partners may be reluctant to raise security concerns or request additional support for fear of losing funding, or other financial disincentives (competition between L/NNGOs, budget rigidities and pressure to reduce overheads). 

Although L/NNGOs have many security support requirements, they also have many strengths, including better local networks and greater access to the communities they work with. 

[toolbox-standout-box]Understanding and discussing the risks faced by your local partners, enabling them to make informed decisions about their own risk exposure, and providing sufficient resources and support to manage those risks, is central to an equitable partnership.[/toolbox-standout-box]

While both organisations in a partnership are responsible for managing their own security, INGOs can provide important security support to their local partners as part of their wider duty of care obligations. Improving partnerships and providing appropriate support to local partners requires better understanding of L/NNGOs’ security risks and their approach to managing them. 

Where possible and appropriate, partners should be encouraged and supported to improve their security management capacity, systems and awareness. Assistance to partners may include information sharing, mentoring and advice, facilitating access to training, sharing security management resources, providing additional funding or a combination of these.

Related:

Securing aid worker safety through effective budgeting

In this article for the Crisis Response Journal, Aisling Sweeney, GISF's Communications Officer, puts forward the case for remodelling funding processes for humanitarian security risk management.