Adele Harmer

Research Associate, Humanitarian Policy Group

Adele is a Humanitarian Policy Group Research Associate based in Kampala, Uganda and a partner with Humanitarian Outcomes. Her work has focused on humanitarian financing and institutional reform, and security of aid operations. She has previously worked for the Australian Government’s international aid agency (AusAID) and with the Australian Defence Force as a civilian peace monitor.

Outputs

Providing aid in insecure environments: trends in policy and operations

Publication - Research reports and studies - 15 September 2006

HPG Reports 23

Abby Stoddard, Adele Harmer and Katherine Haver

This report presents findings from a two-year study examining aid in insecure environments. Drawing on the most comprehensive global dataset to date of major reported incidents of violence against aid workers from 1997 to 2005, it provides a quantitative analysis of the changing security environment for civilian aid operations. It then examines the related trends in policy and operations over the last decade, in particular how perceptions of increased risk to aid operations have affected the development of security measures. Lastly, it explores the way in which aid operations have adapted to working in highly insecure contexts through a growing reliance on national staff.

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Providing aid in insecure environments: trends in policy and operations

Projects - April 2006 to March 2007

This study provides the first comprehensive empirical analysis of violence against aid workers relative to their numbers in the field and examines related trends in security policy and operations over the last decade.

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Resetting the rules of engagement: Trends and issues in military–humanitarian relations

Publication - Research reports and studies - 16 March 2006

HPG Reports 21

Victoria Wheeler and Adele Harmer

While humanitarians and military actors have long shared operational environments, increasing support for military involvement in assistance and protection strategies is challenging the capacities and security approaches of the humanitarian system in new ways. These changes pose important questions for both humanitarian and military communities, including how to maintain the integrity of humanitarian principles in combined political, military and humanitarian efforts; how to design and resource military roles in protecting civilians from violent harm; how to manage the impact of, and hold to account, the private security industry in crisis response, and how to manage the security of aid operations generally. HPG’s latest Monitoring Trends report, the fourth in HPG’s annual series, reviews these trends, and makes recommendations to the humanitarian and defence sectors to progress issues of mutual concern to both communities.

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