NGOs in the anti-terror trap *
LONDON, 11 November 2014 (IRIN) - The US anti-terrorism laws introduced since the World Trade Centre attacks are a minefield for humanitarian agencies and international NGOs, varying widely in their application from one country to another and targeting a whole variety of different political groups and individuals. According to a recent academic paper, one international humanitarian NGO* reported "its headquarters office has six staff members working full-time on grant compliance and reporting relating to anti-diversion policies (two of those staff members spend the majority of their time screening potential and current partners against procurement, counterterrorism, and other lists)." Any guidance is clearly welcome, especially for the smaller charities, and the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), based at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, has now produced a paper Counter-Terrorism Laws and Regulations - What Aid Agencies Need to Know.
Sara Pantuliano, the HPG director, explains: "There's been a lot of research done, a lot of analysis... But we felt there was a bit of a gap to help the practice community get more clarity on this issue. We hope that the paper really helps practitioners understand all these laws and all these measures out there."
What they have produced is not exactly a handbook, and perhaps because its authors are lawyers, they warn that they are not telling people what to do or offering legal advice. Rather, the paper offers suggestions on what NGOs should be thinking about - identifying which parts of their programmes might be subject to sanctions and which country's laws apply, assessing whether they could benefit from humanitarian exemptions and so on, so that they don't run into trouble with the law, but also so that they don't let a general nervousness about the issue hamper their work unnecessarily.
No ban on talking
For instance, even where the law forbids giving resources to banned organizations, you can still talk to them, still negotiate with them, and that in itself may be crucial in those parts of the world where, increasingly, such organizations or armed groups are seeking to control territory and establish some kind of administration. But the inhibiting effect of anti-terrorism laws is such that many NGOs are wary of doing even that.
Humanitarian organizations trying to comply with the law have to decide whose law they are complying with - the country where they operate, the country where they are headquartered or the country which is providing them with funding? New Zealand, for instance, offers a humanitarian exemption for food, clothing or medicine to meet the essential human needs; the USA does not.
At a meeting in London to discuss the new paper, participants were keen to look at the way this variation in law could provide opportunities as well as just headaches. Joe Press, a researcher at Royal Holloway College, told IRIN: "Maybe the financial sector has something to teach us here. Maybe you can move your operation - you 'Google' to Luxembourg, you 'Amazon' to wherever, you change your legal framework."
That might be considered extreme, but Abdurahman Sharif, of the Muslim Charities Forum, confirmed that in the case of Syria, NGOs were already having to pick and choose between donors to comply with donor demands and still keep operating. "In Syria we are talking about one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes ever, and unfortunately agencies have had to refuse money from certain donors to be able to operate in certain areas. And those tend to be the larger, more established organizations; medium or small organizations don't necessarily have that choice." Conflicts with international humanitarian law
As well as often conflicting with each other, these new anti-terrorism provisions may conflict with international humanitarian law, such as the rule that all wounded shall be treated without distinction. Yet in the case of a wounded commander from a group on the proscribed list, the act of offering medical assistance could be criminalized as a form of material support. The sentiment at the London meeting was very much in favour of treating the wounded regardless of this. "The whole basis of international humanitarian law when it was first established was to help wounded soldiers," said the ODI's Scarlett Sturridge. "So if an organization is going to take that as its principle, then they should uphold it." The authors of the paper invite NGOs to think about whether they have any "red lines" which they wouldn't cross; this may well be one of them.
Another issue raised in the paper is whether, if you do break these anti-terrorism regulations, you will actually be prosecuted. The report points out that, in general, humanitarian organizations have not been prosecuted, even where they have been in violation of anti-terrorism regulations, but says this "illegal in theory, tolerated in practice" situation is far from satisfactory. "The fact remains that it is undesirable to have individuals or groups engaging in possible violation of the criminal law... Criminal law is intended to instruct society not to engage in particular acts, regardless of whether those people expect to be prosecuted. The current approach engenders uncertainty and confusion."
Little redress
"There's very little redress for charities which have been burned by the politics of counter terrorism" One thing which emerged clearly from both the paper and the discussion is that the implications of contravening anti-terrorism legislation go beyond official prosecution. The fallout can include having banking services withdrawn and serious reputational damage.
That is something which the London-based NGO Interpal knows only too well. Interpal works with Palestinians, and it was designated by the US Office of Foreign Exchange Control as an organization with which US citizens should not do business, because of alleged links with Hamas. Since then, despite being cleared of impropriety by the UK Charity Commission and winning libel suits against its detractors, it has suffered a barrage of hostile press and had its banking services withdrawn.
"We've already been designated in the US," Summereen Khan, Interpal's projects officer, told the meeting, "which means that our position is very different from anyone else's here. We have to work against that constantly, and there's very little redress, despite our being extremely stringent with how we work in Gaza and the West Bank. There's very little redress for charities which have been burned by the politics of counter terrorism."
In practice the banking system has become counter-terrorism's chief enforcer. Tom Keatinge of the Royal United Services Institute worked in the sector for 20 years and says the banks' reaction is understandable, given that the NGO sector is not very profitable and the fines if banks get it wrong can run into the billions. "Banks are looking for opportunities to de-risk, and if you are sitting on the 31st floor of a tower block in Canary Wharf (London's financial district), and you're presented with a situation where a client may or may not be doing something which may or may not be illegal, in the context of various different laws which may or may not be compatible, that uncertainly generally leads to one very simple risk-management decision, and that is 'No'."
eb/cb * Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article wrongly identified this NGO as Interaction. IRIN regrets the error. Access report online |
| Ebola survivors work to improve response
FREETOWN/KAILAHUN/MONROVIA/DAKAR, 12 November 2014 (IRIN) - The Ebola epidemic has killed some 5,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but it has also left many survivors who are playing a key role in the Ebola response. Scientists believe that once someone survives Ebola that person will become immune to that strain of the virus for many years. Many public health officials see survivors as a highly valued commodity in a struggle against a disease that has decimated so many people on the front line. In Sierra Leone, the Ministry of Health says it has been working with survivors to see what role they can play in Ebola response and treatment efforts. In October, along with UNICEF and other partners, they held the first in a series of survivor conferences in Kenema, where survivors come together to tell their stories and discuss what they can do to help current patients. "We really want to see how we can utilize survivors more as mobilizers and contact tracers," said Sidie Y. Tunis, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health. Survivors are already working in roles perceived by many as dangerous. Fanta Lavaly, for example, works in an interim care facility for children who have lost their parents to Ebola in Sierra Leone's Kailahun District. Many of the children there have been living as outcasts in their own communities. "Some of these children may be infected with the virus without anyone knowing about it," Lavaly told IRIN. "As such, it's very difficult for a non-survivor to touch these kids." These children, sick or not, especially need someone to comfort them when they are sad, or play with them when they are happy. "As a survivor doing this work, taking care of other people's children who have died of the Ebola virus makes me feel that I'm representing those parents and giving comfort and hope to their children," said Lavaly, who lost several members of her family, including some of her own children. In Liberia, UNICEF has been working on a similar programme and has trained survivors to look after children who are under 21-day isolation watch. "It gives them something to do and helps the children," said Rukshan Ratnam, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Liberia. "Children require a hug and not from someone coming towards them in a space suit." Saa-Quatre Kamano sometimes works on the intake desk at the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treatment unit in Guéckédou, the town in the forested region of Guinea where the outbreak started. He also still does community outreach and education about the disease in the surrounding villages, the job that first got him sick. "I thought about doing something else after I recovered from Ebola," Kamano told IRIN. "But MSF still accepted me and since my role has been as an activist, I could not just leave it." When he first recovered from the Ebola virus and left the MSF treatment unit, life was tough. "I was rejected," said Kamano. "The friends that I used to have, they would not eat with me or walk with me." However, when he goes to work, he forgets all about his personal struggles. "I am a hero now," Kamano said. Motivating others
At the Bomi Ebola Treatment Unit in northwest Liberia, survivors like 19-year-old Patience Kamara have been working as orderlies, cleaning up after the highly contagious Ebola patients. "I'm happy to be working here, because I want for other people to not die too," Patience told IRIN. She lost four members of her family to Ebola, as well her unborn child after she got Ebola when she was six months pregnant. Gobee Logan is the chief medical officer of Bomi County and head of the Bomi County Ebola Treatment Unit. He says encouraging people like Patience to work at the treatment centre will motivate other Ebola patients to take their medication. "If you tell a patient, 'Look this person was sick like you, now you see them helping to treat you,' that patient will be encouraged to take their medication, hoping to be well too," Logan told IRIN. In short, survivors can lead by example. By sharing their experiences with others and helping more people understand that Ebola is not always a death sentence, survivors can motivate reluctant people to get treated. UNICEF-Liberia has been working with survivors to do more messaging within their communities in order to counter the rumours that have led many people to be afraid of treatment units and shun medical help. Survivors have been speaking out about how well they were treated in the treatment centres and how it is the best way to beat the virus. Beyond the advantages of their immunity, some survivors feel a moral obligation to work on the Ebola response. Back in Guéckédou, Eloi Tadjino is a psychologist with an MSF treatment centre and got infected with Ebola while doing community outreach in the region. He said there was never any doubt in his mind that he would go back once he had recovered from the virus. "It's my community that is in danger, and the homeland is priceless." jkl/jl/js/sf/cb Access report online |
| Ebola: Diagnostic capabilities need boosting
FREETOWN/DAKAR, 12 November 2014 (IRIN) - Critical gaps in "behind-the-scenes" infrastructure are hampering Ebola response times and containment efforts in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, aid agencies and health workers say. In addition to the obvious need for more beds, medical equipment, and qualified doctors, nurses and lab technicians, they say the ability to quickly and accurately confirm or deny suspected Ebola cases is vital to getting this outbreak under control. "The country really needs to ramp up its access to diagnostic capabilities," said Alan Kemp, head of South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases, which is running a mobile laboratory at the Lakka Ebola Treatment Centre in Freetown. "And that's not just for Sierra Leone, but for the whole West Africa region." While for a long time there was a backlog of samples needing to be tested, there are now 13 laboratories - five each in Sierra Leone and Liberia and three in Guinea - that have the capacity to test up to 1,170 samples per day, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But even as the number of functional labs increases, diagnosing a patient remains difficult. "The challenges are not so much in the laboratory, as the situation with getting the specimen that needs to be tested," Kemp told IRIN. Sample collection Collecting a specimen from someone suspected of having Ebola - usually blood from the living or a saliva swab from the deceased - is a highly risky procedure, which must be performed by specially trained doctors or nurses while wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE). Each sample must be triple packaged in special watertight containers and then decontaminated before being sent to a laboratory. "The chain of systems to obtain samples. and transport them to and from the labs has been difficult," said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson in Sierra Leone. "From the moment the sample is taken, sometimes it is not packaged properly or not labelled clearly," she said, explaining that this is often the result of reduced dexterity while wearing the PPE. Some of the samples are not usable. Other times, mislabelled samples mean that the lab might not know who to return the results to, delaying diagnosis. Overwhelmed referral hotlines and a lack of ambulances mean that many people can't make it to treatment centres for testing, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says. Other people are still scared to be tested. "Fear is not quite infrastructure, but it's still a challenge in getting people to the centres, which are often shrouded in mystery," said Natasha Reyes, a medical coordinator for MSF in Liberia. Obtaining samples from the deceased poses particular problems, as many communities still resist body collectors, often refusing to let them take samples from the body for cultural reasons. "In the case of collecting swab samples from dead bodies, the burial teams have at times had to choose between getting into a confrontation with the family or quickly burying the dead - the priority in stopping transmission - and getting out of town," Harris said. Transporting samples In many treatment centres, there are now on-site labs, which mean samples need only to move within the unit or to a neighbouring building for testing. Problems arise, however, when there is no lab nearby. Only 62 percent of Ebola-affected districts across the three countries have access to lab services, according to WHO. "The logistical challenges are similar to any area with poor infrastructure. We need to access remote villages, over difficult terrain...which may only be 10 miles [away] but take several hours [to reach]," Harris said. In big cities, traffic jams and accidents can delay testing by hours if a sample must be sent across town. Sometimes even finding a vehicle to transport the samples is a problem. "What's important is to have the treatment centre near the diagnostic centre," said Noel Tordo, a virologist with the Institut Pasteur in Guinea. "You can't really accelerate the sending of the sample because of road conditions and other transportation issues. You can give the results by phone, but if the diagnosis centre is far away, the time that you will need to get from one to the other is difficult to reduce." Relaying results Once samples arrive at a lab, it takes technicians 4-6 hours to get preliminary results. While new technologies are being tested, such as a finger-prick test, which would diagnose Ebola within as little as 30 minutes and without the need of a lab, they are not yet widely available, and have not yet been thoroughly tested for accuracy or sensitivity. For now, positive cases are logged into a system, which then initiates a chain of measures such as contact tracing, quarantine procedures, and food distribution, before the result is finally sent to the clinic. Passing on the results to families and burial teams can take even longer. In Sierra Leone, one of the major challenges that burial team volunteers face is that they are often sent to collect bodies that haven't yet been confirmed as Ebola-positive, Patrick Massaqoui, a spokesperson for the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society, told IRIN. While health officials say it's better to err on the side of caution and suppose that all suspected cases are positive, collecting the bodies of those that died from malaria or other diseases with similar methods, is taking away valuable time and resources in areas where burial teams already cannot keep up with the rising death toll. Other times, there is a delay in collecting bodies that have been confirmed as positive for Ebola. There are now 140 trained burial teams, of about 8 people each, on the ground across the three countries, WHO says. But 528 are needed and there are often delays between the time a body is reported and the time a team arrives to collect the body and take a sample for testing. "It's not that our team delays to collect bodies, but early in the morning we have to wait for calls from our focal point at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation because they are the ones that are taking the lead," Massaqoui said. In both instances, responders say that if the timetable to test for Ebola was sped up, it would allow them to react more quickly and more efficiently. The WHO's Laboratory Technical Working Group in Sierra Leone says it has just approved a plan to increase the speed with which lab results are reported back, by harmonizing databases and integrating lab teams into the central Western Region Command Centre. They also plan to train 50 lab technicians and 20 drivers on protocol for sample collection, packaging and safe transport. But even with improved speed and accuracy in confirming suspected cases, health workers say that beyond infrastructure challenges, containing the outbreak will depend a lot on people themselves. "Through public information campaigns, there is significant awareness of what Ebola is," Harris said. "However this has not translated into a change in behaviour. The pull of cultural traditions continues to be stronger than the statements by public officials," she said. jl/sf/pt/cb Access report online |
| Crypto-currencies and the aid industry
BANGKOK, 13 November 2014 (IRIN) - Meet Bitcoin: An encrypted digital currency the value of which has fluctuated sharply in recent years. It does not exist physically, there is no authority that oversees it, and you need Internet access to manage it. This might not sound like a formula for humanitarian success. However, experts say, Bitcoin offers important lessons for aid delivery in situations with weak (or destroyed) institutions. For example, Bitcoin has been used in a small way to raise money for the Ebola response in Sierra Leone: Funds donated digitally were exchanged in the US and wired to NGOs on the ground. "Bitcoin as a currency certainly offers potential for the aid industry as a collection site. But as far as distribution of funds [is concerned], it won't work," Ignacio Mas, a senior research fellow at Oxford's Said Business School, told IRIN. "People want a currency they can use. In developing countries, that means local currency. If there is no local Bitcoin ecosystem in places we are trying to send aid, then what would Bitcoin aid distribution do except to replicate the Western Union problem it is trying to solve?" However, Mas insisted, Bitcoin is not just a type of money, but a system of how money gets shared: "It's a currency, which is complicated and volatile and probably not going to work out in the long run. But it's also a protocol, a way in which we exchange money peer-to-peer." In a paper entitled "Why you should care about Bitcoin - even if you don't believe in it", Mas argued that the five-year-old virtual currency's "key engineering elements offer us the possibility of imagining a radically different approach for architecting electronic payment systems". For aid distribution, such "radical" ideas could influence the way money is transferred to (and between) people in need. Electronic cash transfers - often by SMS - have become an increasingly popular aid tool in recent years. A 2014 World Bank and Gates Foundation report argued that the "rapid development and extension of digital platforms and digital payments can provide the speed, security, transparency and cost efficiency needed to increase financial inclusion." One third of all World Food Programme (WFP) food assistance is now given in the form of cash or vouchers. The Cash Learning Partnership's (CaLP) " Cash Atlas" lists 592 projects with more than 23 million beneficiaries around the world. But cash transfers - from agencies to people, governments to people, or people to people - are rife with rip-offs and complications. In short, they depend on institutions that do not necessarily work in their favour. For example, in some parts of Africa where cash transfer infrastructure is dominated by one or two companies, up to 12 percent of the money is lost to transfer fees. And cash transfers via SMS have been accused of cutting costs for aid agencies, but shifting risks onto vulnerable recipients. This is where Bitcoin (or other crypto-currencies) - which have only negligible associated costs and require no institutions - could spark change. "Bitcoin will have a huge impact on the world - on how money moves around," said Mas. According to Andrej Verity, an information management officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), "Things will begin to change when power [electricity] becomes more predictable in emergencies, and technology, like smart phones, become part of the standard aid package. When such services are in place, we may be ripe for a crypto-currency dedicated to humanitarian aid." For humanitarians, digital currencies such as Bitcoin raise questions of effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, and sustainability. But the jury is still out on Bitcoin's benefits. IRIN looks at the issues. What is Bitcoin? The US Department of the Treasury calls Bitcoin a "decentralized virtual currency". The label highlights its key aspects: it is a currency with value, and it exists completely and solely online. Or, as a US public radio podcast, Planet Money, explained, "Everybody who uses Bitcoin has a digital wallet. And when you buy something you send your coins to someone else's wallet, [for example, an online merchant or another person]." Each coin is encrypted and unique, meaning exchanges cannot be duplicated. Dozens of other electronic money transfer programmes exist. However, Bitcoin is unique in some important ways. Mas explained: "Bitcoin is different from all other electronic money transfer systems because it allows secure peer-to-peer exchanges." Said Mas: "Think about it in terms of a traditional cash exchange: if I have a debt to settle with you for US$10, I can give you a bill for $10 and the debt is settled. The [government] embeds technology in that physical cash which makes it such that it cannot be copied - and we trust that, so the exchange is valid between us."  Iraqui refugee after buying eggs with a mobile phone voucher Concerns change, however, when the transaction is virtual. When in 2012 WFP launched a partnership with MasterCard, the agency emphasized that the company's "payment and technology expertise will help WFP to refine and improve its systems that deliver food vouchers via mobile phones or banking cards to people without regular access to banks or financial services." This kind of expertise is necessary to provide security to financial exchanges. Explained Mas: "What a bank or transfer service company has to offer is the guarantee that the transfer is real and not duplicated digitally." However, he added: "The problem with these big institutions is that they have no interest in helping the poor. The Bitcoin protocol [method by which currency is exchanged], by ensuring these exchanges cannot be duplicated, gives peer-to-peer financial transactions that same kind of security." Why use digital currency instead of hard currency? Kenya's mobile phone-based monetary system M-Pesa has made in-country transfers much easier and cheaper. But regulatory systems that mandate that all international transfers be made through conventional banks limit such applicability internationally. Bitcoin is not affiliated with any government, but its legality remains varied around the world, and governments have reacted with everything from all out bans to cautious permissions. For example, in March 2014, Mexico's central bank banned the domestic use of digital currencies; that same month the government of the Philippines, one of the world's most disaster-prone countries, issued a warning that Bitcoin was both unregulated (making investments impossible to insure against fraud or bankruptcy) and highly volatile, but stopped short of attempting to regulate it. A new Bitcoin Wallet app was launched in October designed to target the Philippines' huge remittances market. However, such assessments tend to focus on the currency of digital crypto-currencies, not the protocol. Or, as Bloomberg analysts put it: "the value of bitcoins is in their usefulness as the basis of a new kind of payment system." OCHA's Verity argues that digital currencies "can facilitate [online] payments at lower costs and with greater security and privacy than existing electronic payment methods." He also pointed to technical benefits specific to the aid industry when conducting cash transfers - including "the ability to trace exactly where the currency is spent." CaLP, a consortium steered by Oxfam, the British Red Cross, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Action Against Hunger (ACF), argues: "The use of 'new technology' is increasingly seen as a critical factor to enable cash transfer programming at scale and to implement cash transfer programmes in remote and insecure areas… [and] instrumental to improve monitoring and evaluation systems, early warning and preparedness initiatives and assessment data collection, amongst others." At a 2013 briefing hosted by the World Bank and the Global forum on Law, Justice, and Development, David Mills, an economist, cautioned that Bitcoin may be more prone to use in illegal transactions, vulnerable to theft (akin to carrying a large amount of cash on one's person), and also to cyber-attacks. Emory Krober, deputy director for strategic policy in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the US Department of the Treasury, countered: "Virtual currencies are not necessarily riskier than any other electronic payment system." What to spend it on?
Despite the promises of security, transparency, and rapidity in distribution during a humanitarian crisis, Bitcoin-style digital currency use would be limited to marketplaces that accept the currency (online merchants, for example) or the sufficient construction of currency exchange points that can turn it into useable cash.
Crucially, Mas warned: "Converting Bitcoin into usable services requires the creation of a whole range of complementary capabilities."
But, he emphasized, the aid industry focus should be on how to use the protocol, not the currency. He explained: "If we had a situation where Bitcoins were issued with US dollar values, for example, but with a similar peer-to-peer sharing protocol, eliminating the central bureaucratic hurdles of traditional banking, that could be quite powerful."
Meanwhile, Verity is confident that, "by the time the humanitarian community is ready for a digital currency, companies like these [that provide crypto-currency related services] will have mature solutions and many of the crypto-currency challenges will be addressed."
kk/cb Access report online |
| Inside the Ebola hot zone
NAIROBI, 13 November 2014 (IRIN) - IRIN has been covering the West African Ebola outbreak since March 2014, producing dozens of articles on many aspects of the crisis, including frontline reportage, critical analysis of the international response, and explanations of the disease's ramifications for the region's economy and food security. Now we are proud to present a multimedia production, Inside the Ebola Hot Zone. Here you will find short films portraying the work of two veritable local heroes of the response in Sierra Leone: a body collector and a social worker; interactive maps with epidemiological and other data; IRIN reporter Anna Jefferys's Sierra Leone diary; and the most recent IRIN reports on the epidemic. Am/ Access report online |
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