United Nations staff security: Testing the role of automated reporting systems with UNICEF

The post-Cold war has witnessed an explosion in United Nations response to complex humanitarian emergencies around the world. Increased UN presence in emergencies globally has led to a more dangerous environment for humanitarian aid workers. UN agencies have spent the last decade trying to improve their capacity to address this new security problem. Unfortunately, UN agencies lack even a basic understanding of the field security environment, due at last in part to the fact that they have not instituted an effective means of collecting security data from the field. While individual staff members gain expertise in the field, their knowledge of security matters has not been translated into standardized data that would provide a baseline of activity that analysts could use to monitor and interpret changes in the field security environment. The result is that there is essentially little or no institutional learning that goes on regarding security in the held.; This study outlines the attempts of one UN agency, UNICEF, to create a systematic assessment of the field security environment through the implementation of routine, standardized security incident reporting. Specifically, I look at the impact of introducing an automated security incident reporting system, the UNICEF Field Reporter, on the capacity of the organization to analyze the Field security environment. I begin first with a discussion of numerous UN attempts to implement an early warning system as the cornerstone for a UN preventive action capacity. Then, I turn to a theoretical discussion of early warning systems and discuss their inherent strengths and weaknesses. Having established a framework for early warning, I turn to an analysis UNICEF's attempt to implement an automated Field security reporting system as a means of addressing staff security in the field. I look at various UNICEF initiatives to address staff security, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each, comparing these initiatives to the testing of the UNICEF Field Reporter. Finally, I assess the utility of routine, standardized field reporting for interpreting field security by addressing UNICEF's evaluation of the system and by comparing security incident reports prior to and after implementation of the UNICEF Field Reporter.