Aid Workers and Defense

Today we met a man named Frederick Baccaan who has spent roughly 25 years doing the logistics of aid for Medecin du Monde, a small independent NGO based in Paris. Frederick has been through countless conflict and disaster scenarios in places the DRC, Sudan, Uganda, Pakistan, Iraq, Tibet, etc, as well as just showed up to build medical facilities where there were none. As a logistics specialist, his job was basically to provide housing, transportation, and safety to the doctors and nurses working with Medecin du Monde. In places like the Congo, Indonesia after the tsunami, or Darfur, this can obviously be an extremely difficult task. After a very long, exciting, and moving discussion about his life and work, Frederick commented on a dramatic change he saw roughly around the year 2002. Previously, being white and wearing the uniform of aid workers was generally enough to ensure safe passage anywhere in the globe. Now, however, aid workers are increasingly targets of violence, rape, looting, and murders, as they are seen as proxies for government rather than neutral entities. This dramatic shift came around, interestingly, right after the beginning of the Iraq war and has presented a whole new set of problems for aid workers. Aid workers traditionally carry no weapons, and often have images on their vehicles and buildings proclaiming that they do not carry weapons. They are in a country to heal- not to hurt. As they increasingly become victims of aggressive violence, however, the idea of doctors and nurses being able to defend themselves is becoming more widely discussed. While carrying weapons would invite more hostility as well as cause the aid workers to be rejected more often by the populations they are trying to help, it may provide them the protection they need to save the life of themselves or others in a critical moment.

Frederick shared his opinion through a story of his time in Iraq. One night, the office and home of Frederick and the two doctors he worked with (one male, one female) were attacked by looters. They climbed to the roof while the looters, armed with machine guns and ranging in age from about 15-17, stole valuable medical equipment, broke into the safe, stole computers, cell phones, and drugs. Frederick called for help on the radio to the UN, but was told the situation was too dangerous to send help. If Frederick had been armed with a gun, he could have killed the looters- Iraqi teenagers- and had Medecins du Monde pulled out of Iraq. He could have fired into the air, showing that this medical hospital was really a place of violence, and perhaps invited retaliation later or invited the looters to come to the roof with their guns drawn. As it was, he had no weapon, and the fear that the female doctor would be raped and all three of them murdered. Would this be an acceptable price to pay to keep the presence of Medecins du Monde in Iraq, savings hundreds of women and children? As it was, Frederick' driver had kept his radio on all through the night, and heard his call for help. Just as two looters arrived on the roof, the driver and the Iraqi police arrived and chased them away. Non violence, in this situation, kept Frederick and his group alive as well as the Iraqi teenagers. If he had killed them, what kind of retaliation may the police and citizens have taken?

I do not think that aid workers should be armed- they are willingly going into a traumatic situation where they know they are targets, hoping that their actions and their relationships with the host population will keep them safe. To go in with guns is to forcefully impose their actions upon the population, and to represent a military power. Especially because NGO's are private organizations and can be run however their leadership sees fit, they should not show up in the gear of a humanitarian only to kill the people they're trying to help when they feel at risk. Weapons will cause more hostility and prevent them from doing their work properly by closing doors that would have been open otherwise.