Landmark ruling may affect the way NGOs assess their security

25 April 2016 - RPS Partnership

RPS Partnership offers training for and planning in crisis management. A landmark ruling and the court case that led to it, will have a significant impact on the aid and NGO sector. Contact [email protected] for more details on how to plan for contigencies and ensure that you "get it right".

in November 2015, Aid worker Steve Dennis won a case against his former employer, the Norwegian Refugee Council, after he was kidnapped on the job in 2012. What impact will it have on the sector?

The UK's Guardian reports the story here

Steve Dennis seems heavy with relief and exhaustion rather than elated with victory. He has just won a landmark case against his former NGO employer. Now he is trying to come to terms with what comes next.

“It is a shock, and a disappointment, that it got this far,” he says. He brought the case against his former employer, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) after he and three other staff members were kidnapped while working in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya in 2012. The incident left aid worker Dennis with a gunshot wound in his leg, PTSD, and the Kenyan driver of his car dead. The Oslo courts last week found NRC guilty of gross negligence and failing in its duty of care.

The case has been hailed a landmark ruling and wake-up call for the industry. But it is one Dennis never imagined he would be filing – let alone winning. Its success, which Dennis hopes will force the industry to take security more seriously, comes at the end of a long and unforeseen journey, beginning back in 2012.

“I was interviewed for the NRC position on the Monday, got a job offer on the Wednesday, the info pack on a Friday, and by Sunday I was flying out to coordinate a response to a famine in the world’s largest refugee camp,” Dennis remembers. Three years later he was taking his employer to court. “I have to say, I didn’t see the 20 moves ahead on the chess game,” he says.

After the incident, where Dennis and his colleagues were held captive for four days before being rescued by a pro-Kenyan government Somali militia, the Canadian returned home and focused solely on recovering. “I was really struggling,” says Dennis. “I couldn’t sleep. And I had real problems engaging with people and being in public.”

It was over the months following his return to Oslo for an NRC debrief that he became displeased with what he saw as an unsatisfactory follow-up investigation. Dennis grew suspicious that basic security practices and considerations had not been followed prior to the incident. He then also began to struggle to get adequate insurance cover for the medical costs of his leg injury and diagnosed PTSD and depression.

“I met with HR and senior management for discussions, but ultimately the support I received and the explanations they gave were really disappointing,” says Dennis, explaining the months of back and forth leading up to legal action. “I thought going to court was the last resort, but eventually I had exhausted every other option.”

The verdict of the case, which found the NRC liable for physical and psychological injuries and awarded compensation for gross negligence that totalled 4.4m krone (£350,000), broke through the numbness that had set in for Dennis after almost two years of what he saw as failed attempts to negotiate. “Hearing it all presented in the verdict from someone anew… wow, it sounded horrible,” he says. “Actually some details that came out in court were worse than I thought.”

In a statement in response to the ruling, the NRC commented: “It is important for NRC to express that we are sad that this case ended in court. NRC and Steve Dennis met early in 2015 for negotiations. Dennis did not accept NRC’s offer to settle, and NRC could not meet Dennis’s demands for financial compensation and his absolute demand that NRC publicly admitted gross negligence. To ensure that we exhausted all possibilities for out-of-court settlement, NRC met Steve Dennis for court led mediation on 30 September this year. The mediation did not lead to a settlement.”

What the case reveals about the industry

The case’s significance lies not in the uniqueness of the incident, but in fact it has put the issue of security in the industry under public scrutiny, argues Steve McCann, security specialist and director at Safer Edge.

For many, this is linked to the particular working culture of aid work. “We have all put ourselves in harm’s way at one time or another, but no one wants to be the special snowflake who is precious about their safety,” said one aid worker, who wished to remain anonymous. “In most situations you just put up and shut up. Steve’s case is interesting because he has actually challenged that and said you [the NRC] are liable for the situation I found myself in.”

Despite the financial and moral support Dennis has received, there is still an anxiety among many people about speaking up publicly on the issue, as was illustrated by the reluctance of many interviewees about going on the record to the Guardian. The reaction to the victory has been one of firm, but measured, applause.

“There is a lot of fear in the industry about using the ‘n’ word – negligence,” says McCann. While security practices have been mainstreamed into major NGOs, there is still among organisations in the industry a difference between what is said in terms of security policies, and what is actually done in the field, McCann explains.

While McCann supports Dennis’s claims of negligence against the NRC, he argues that they are far from the worst in the industry. “There are many, many, lower quality organisations operating out there ... and sometimes they don’t have security at the heart of things.”

Lessons for aid organisations

“Good can come of this case because organisations will really have to get their houses in order,” says McCann. “Not just in terms of security policies but behaviours and consistent attention to detail.” While there are guidelines on security best practice in the industry, they are currently voluntary standards for individual organisations to adopt. Dennis also suggests the industry should look closely at how security risks and insurance cover differ between international and national staff.

McCann argues that the industry should, however, be careful about the conclusions it draws from the case. “The potential downside is that there will be a culture of ‘you can’t do that’, rather than security policies aiming towards enabling people to do their jobs,” he explains. Some suggest that the case may push up insurance premiums for aid organisations, forcing them to pull back in their operations.

Emmanuelle Lacroix, people capacity and development manager at the CHS Alliance, agrees that there is a two-fold lesson to be learned from Dennis’s case. “We need to ensure comprehensive duty of care is applied consistently for all staff to protect them (both in terms of risk mitigation and post-incident appropriate support), while enabling agencies to continue reaching out the communities most in needs without fear of litigation or restriction of their work in high risk environments.” While Dennis is familiar with the arguments that aid workers are aware of the risks they take on with the job, he argues that there needs to be a conversation about what it is reasonable to ask staff to do.

Dennis’s case should also be seen in the wider context of the pressures and expectations put on staff and organisations in the industry argues McCann: “Donors are a double-edged sword – they may well do funding, but they can also be demanding in a way that makes people go to the edge and beyond ... and miss stuff.”

With recent criticisms of the industry’s level of mental health support for staff, the case is also significant in holding the NRC liable for the psychological injuries Dennis received as a result of the incident. “Whether you have a mental or physical injury shouldn’t make a difference to your insurance,” says Dennis. “It is a bit intimidating to talk openly about PTSD but it is not that difficult to talk about a leg injury. I want them to be treated equally – so I’ve been open and taken a stand.”

Now that the battle is won, what next? “I just want this whole thing to be over,” says Dennis. “The prolongation of my case has been an obstacle to getting better.”

“I was an extremely passionate aid worker, but this case has left a really bad taste in my mouth. I have strained myself with this case and I need to get back to full health. I can’t do this work now. As they say, ‘put on your own mask before assisting others’.”

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Photo: RPS in Ivory Coast