Security, Arms and Power and lack of Accountability

Lack of accountability is when we fail to accept our own shortcomings and mistakes. This can take the form of an outright rejection of them, or it can be an unwillingness to change. Accountability means that when we make mistakes, we want to know it and to fix them. This requires a willingness and the capacity to learn from the mistakes. Believing we have the capacity to act is also a form of accountability. Accountability is essential to learning.

Security, Arms and Power and lack of Accountability

Security is fundamentally an area of intervener accountability. We need to protect staff and aid recipients from violence and from theft. Yet, paradoxically, many of the approaches interveners take to ensure security can actually lead to increases in both. This reality is linked to that discussed above—namely, that mistrust breeds mistrust and disrespect. When an agency lives behind barbed wire and armed guards, it signals communities that there are things of value “inside” the protected zone and that they “know” people will try to take them.

In addition, the responsibility for security is often handed over to others.

When organizations turn their security over to armed guards, they send messages about the power and authority of those with weapons. They reinforce the conflict mindset that those with weapons have power—and that they are allowed to use the power to take what they want or to use resources for themselves.

An organization in Iraq chose to not have armed guards outside. Instead, they hired an older man from the neighborhood to sit beside the door, out on the street. All day, he engaged with passersby, talking and drinking tea. This office of this organization was never threatened.

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