Methodology

Aid Worker Security Codebook

A more in-depth explanation of the Aid Worker Security Database methodology is available in the codebook. 

Sources

Incident data is collected both from public sources, through systematic media filtering, and from information provided directly to the project by aid organisations and operational security entities. The project also maintains agreements with a number of regional and field-level security consortiums for direct information sharing and verification of incidents.

Incident reports are crosschecked and verified with the relevant agencies on a quarterly basis. The latest, unverified incidents are provided on the online database with the qualification that the numbers are provisional and may change.

Parameters and definitions

The AWSD is a global compilation of reports on major security incidents involving deliberate acts of violence affecting aid workers.

"Major incidents" are defined as killings, kidnappings, and attacks that result in serious injury.

"Aid workers" are defined as the employees and associated personnel of not-for-profit aid agencies (both national and international) that provide material and technical assistance in humanitarian relief contexts. This includes both emergency relief and multi-mandated (relief and development) organizations: NGOs, the International Movement of the Red Cross/Red Crescent, donor agencies and the UN agencies belonging to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on Humanitarian Affairs (FAO, OCHA, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UN-Habitat, WFP and WHO) plus IOM and UNRWA. The aid worker definition includes various locally contracted staff (e.g., drivers, security guards, etc.), and does not include UN peacekeeping personnel, human rights workers, election monitors or purely political, religious, or advocacy organizations.

High insecurity for aid workers can significantly reduce access to a needy population and limit both the amount and quality of aid provided. To better understand and measure this serious implication of aid worker attacks, the research team is, therefore, increasing documentation of the impacts of this insecurity, such as suspensions of programmes and withdrawals.

For each incident, the database records the:

  • Date
  • Country and specific location, including geocodes
  • Number of aid workers affected (victims)
  • Sex of victims
  • Institutional affiliation of victims (UN/Red Cross/NGO/other)
  • Type of staff (national or international)*
  • Outcome of the incident (victims killed/wounded/kidnapped)
  • Means of violence (e.g. shooting, IED, aerial bombardment)
  • Perpetrator 
  • Context of attack (ambush, armed incursion, etc.)
  • Summary of incident (public details)

* Note: there are a small number of reports in which the information is unclear whether the victim was a national or international staffer. In these cases they have been entered as national staffers, pending verification, given this greater likelihood.

For all of the above categories, blanks indicate it was not possible to make a reasonable determination given the information available.

Confidentiality and anonymity

The database does not include the names of individual victims or the agencies affected by an incident. This is done in consideration of the victims and their families who may not wish to have the names publicised in this format, and to afford equal respect to the many victims for whom this information is not available. The institutional affiliations are listed within broad categories (UN/Red Cross/NGO/other) to encourage open sharing of what is considered sensitive information from an organisational perspective.

Requests for specific incident information for a particular agency can be made directly to the research team, but only by representatives of that agency.

Spatial data information

Humanitarian Outcomes would like to thank Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) for undertaking a major effort in providing much of the geospatial information of aid worker incidents going back to 1997. Their efforts captured geocodes for over 1,000 incidents. Geocodes were attributed to locations by using OpenCage, Nominatim, Open Street Map, and GeoNames, which were used under Open Database and Creative Commons licenses. 

Best efforts are always made to provide precise coordinate locations. However, occasionally, precise location information is unavailable. In those incidents, where only the general area location are known, the geocodes were placed at the closest center-point to the location. In instances where multiple events occurred in the same location, there may be some offset so that incidents could be better visualized once imported onto a map.

Terms of use

AWSD data is intended for research purposes and non-commercial use only. It is provided free of charge and in the spirit of open data. For information on our API contact monica.czwarno@humanitarianoutcomes.org