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A Brief Note On The International Staff And The Movement Of Assets

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For highly insecure contexts, these standard measures may be enhanced or adapted. In doing so, agencies will differentiate between approaches to transporting staff versus moving goods or cash, particularly for long supply routes. There are however exceptions, such as in contexts like Syria where international staff need to be present to negotiate checkpoints in the movement of assets.
Road security in high-risk settings requires advance preparation, substantial logistics capacity, programming flexibility, adaptability, and increased resources. Planning is also time-consuming and can result in a decision to not move, meaning that the process of assessment, and its related logistics, has to start over.
Agencies have invested in a range of …show more content…

As one interviewee explained, ‘This is the canary idea: if the Land Cruiser is stopped, he can alert the car behind him.’
A low-profile approach is increasingly favoured by some organisations in insecure areas.
To mitigate against strong surveillance and opportunistic targeting, they will eschew the standard white 4x4 vehicles and instead use taxis or rented vehicles, rotate license plates, or only approve travel on public transport.
Specific vehicle types can also be important where some vehicles make less-desirable targets for theft and carjacking, including vehicles that require specific training to drive or hard-to-get spare parts, or that stand out and are easily identifiable. To reduce the likelihood of carjackings in Darfur, one NGO used pink cars because they were unattractive and no one wanted them; another utilised a truck that required specialised training to drive. Vehicles that have hard-to-get spare parts are seen as effective but can also be expensive for the agency to maintain.
Alternating routes is a standard practice but made more difficult in small urban areas where alternatives are limited for getting to places that need to be visited frequently. In Mogadishu and cities throughout Afghanistan, for example, changing route, day, or time of travel, as well as the number of staff and where they sit in

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