Humanitarian Notification Systems: unpacking the complexities and possibilities

The GISF Podcast - Global Interagency Security Forum

About this Episode:

'Humanitarians operating in conflict settings seek to cultivate relationships with armed actors to enable humanitarian access, mitigate humanitarian insecurity, and promote civilian protection'. In this episode, Rob Grace delves into some of the operational challenges of humanitarian notifications systems (HNS) and their effectiveness by providing a historical overview and discussing how we may see humanitarian organisations use these systems in the future. You will also hear about Rob’s interesting journey that led him to explore HNS.

‘For the purposes of this conversation, humanitarian notification systems are mechanisms by which humanitarian organisations share geographic coordinates, with parties to armed conflict [concerning the locations of humanitarian] activities. With the ideal result being that fewer humanitarian organisations are accidentally struck or impacted by military activity... in volatile environments, such as armed conflict settings.’ (HNS)—also sometimes called ‘humanitarian deconfliction’ or ‘humanitarian notification systems for deconfliction’ (Rob Grace, Brown University).

To further explore HNS you can also read Rob's blog on GISF's website here: https://www.gisf.ngo/resource/evolving-ngo-security-risk-management-ep3-humanitarian-notification-systems-unpacking-the-complexities-and-possibilities-gisf-podcast/

You can access a transcript for this episode on the GISF website, here: https://www.gisf.ngo/resource/evolving-ngo-security-risk-management-ep3-humanitarian-notification-systems-unpacking-the-complexities-and-possibilities-gisf-podcast/

About this Series:

Welcome to the official launch of GISF’s new Evolving NGO Security Risk Management (SRM) podcast series. We invite you to follow along and not miss an episode of this dynamic series by subscribing to The GISF Podcast on your preferred listening platform, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

This podcast series ’Evolving NGO Security Risk Management’, looks at the innovations, transformative developments, and dynamic trends facing the humanitarian and development sector. We have elected to explore the facets of ‘Evolving NGO SRM’, to unpack the changing environments, practices, discussions, and technical considerations impacting the safety and security of aid workers and operations. These conversations are enriched by expert guests spanning security professionals, humanitarians, and more.

In an ever-changing humanitarian and development space, we ask what does the security and safety of aid workers look like? And what might it look like in the future? Join us as we unpack the evolutions of NGO security risk management.