The Somari Blog
How Security Risk Management digital tools can support localization
We discuss how digital tool scan help the humanitarian community shift from risk transfer to risk sharing in Security Risk Management.
Introduction
Security Risk Management (SRM) plays an important role in the challenges of localizing humanitarian aid. Often preceding the localization of delivery, funding or advocacy, security management is often cited, rightly or wrongly, as a reason to engage with a local partner. However, this could lead to a highly detrimental consequence: the transfer of risk from the members of an international NGO to those of a local NGO. To mitigate this, our goal should be to move towards risk sharing rather than outright risk transfer.
We believe that digital tools can help achieve this goal.
The wrong reasons for localization in SRM
To provide reassurance, we often assume that national and local humanitarian workers are less targeted than international humanitarian workers in many contexts, particularly due to the involvement of foreign countries in politics and armed conflict. However, this consideration reaches its limits in violent conflicts with artillery fire, drone strikes and bombings that do not discriminate on the basis of nationality. This includes the assimilation of humanitarian workers to the interventionism of warring countries, such as the Islamic State kidnapping humanitarian workers regardless of their identity, or the perception of wealth among employees of humanitarian organizations.
The legal responsibility of an international NGO does not extend to the staff of local NGOs. In the event of a security incident, despite outraged public denunciation by international organizations, the burden of responsibility is on the local NGO, as the employer, to demonstrate that measures have been taken to protect staff.
Prerequisites for risk sharing
We believe that they are 3 fundamental prerequisites for organizations ahead of engaging in risk sharing:
- Accept to share information. Provided that INGOs have the means to produce processes, analyses and SOPs, they can share them. They are often reluctant to share information that is considered confidential, but in fact they are full of common sense.
- Integrate and create an open dialogue with local partners for SRM. Develop and validate security plans with local partners, and decide together on the most appropriate measures and actions to take.
- Agree to pay. INGOs are able to access funding to pay for the human resources and the tools needed to properly implement SRM practices.
Digital tools open up new opportunities
With that in mind, one of the key operational challenges in implementing risk sharing is making information available to all partners.
This is where digital tools can play a pivotal role. Here are some of the most noteworthy ones:
- Content availability. Provide access to useful resources on a web or mobile application such as maps (go, no go areas, front lines, areas where armed groups are present), lists of security incidents, briefings (as recorded videos), context analysis or online training courses.
- Collaborative content creation. Embrace all dimensions of partner integration and share the same tools to create SRM content (context analysis, risk assessments, …) with live editions capabilities.
- Improve notifications. Using a mobile application and providing joint crisis management features between local and international NGOs
- Movement tracking. Share information and resources to provide the same level of tracking for all partners.
It’s not that easy in practice
So digital tools can help but the digital revolution has not reached all places equally. It is still surprisingly challenging to use them internally, let alone share them with partner organizations. You’ll face problems related to the digital proficiency of users, complex user interfaces, poor user experience, connectivity, old/slow smartphones, etc.
Enter Somari
We built Somari to support the humanitarian community in sharing the risk by improving your ability to simply provide access to SRM information.
Somari is built with robust user management that matches the way humanitarian organizations are structured and work. It is designed to easily share information within your organization and to your implementing partners.
Somari’s pricing model is not based on the number of users (as most online tools are), but on the number of sites that an organization operates from. This means that if you’ve purchased Somari and work with local partners, extending them access to Somari would not generate additional costs. We believe that security should be for everyone.
We’ve built Somari with the latest web and mobile technologies. The web application is optimized for low bandwidth internet connections and the mobile application can operate fully offline. Both are hard requirements to make SRM information accessible at all times in the most remote areas.
We design Somari’s user interface and navigation principles taking into account the very wide range of digital proficiency of its users. This makes the application more inclusive and directly supports the engagement of all types of users with the available SRM information.
Conclusion
Digital solutions can help your organization share the risk with implementing partners. But they are only a means to an end. Without organizational commitment, things simply won’t work. On top of that, you’ll need purposely built tools.
References
Sharing Risk for Equitable Partnerships: a case study from Nigeria