Security screenings: risk-mitigation in the context of aid work
In this post, Beáta Paragi reflects on her article ‘The Art of Screening: Reasonable Efforts and Measures at the Nexus of Aid Work and Counterterrorism’, which appeared in the 22(2) issue of Surveillance & Society.
While it is common to associate surveillance with control, not only social scientists but people with responsibility for others can easily acknowledge that care and protection can also motivate surveillance. Typical targets of such surveillance can be individuals with limited capacity to take responsibility for themselves: babies monitored by baby alarms, teenagers followed by family links on their parents’ mobile or seniors whose health and movement are supervised by elderly monitoring systems.
While contemporary parents and children can hardly envision life without such solutions, various surveillance practices also prevail among aid organizations, as I write about in my article recently published in Surveillance and Society and in my book as well.
The aid sector could not escape the widespread digitalization of identities and identity management systems either. However, it is less known that control over beneficiaries’ personal information is not limited to registering their identity or providing services at a more cost-effective way, but aid organizations increasingly rely on tools providing them with background information on individuals whom they (may or may not) engage with.
The term used for such background check is screening, the essence of which is running a search online, that is, checking whether lists of personal data match various watchlists — lists of UN-sanctioned individuals; people and entities designated as terrorist by governments; law enforcement lists of fraudsters or sex offenders, among others — in consolidated databases to sort out the potentially risky individuals from the reliable ones mostly in the context of counterterrorism and anti-money laundering.
The use of commercially available ‘spying tools’ by aid organizations deserves attention because the civil space enjoys attention, if not immunity, only in two main cases: when NGOs become victims of governmental or financial surveillance, or when they advocate for human rights to prevent harmful surveillance, in many cases by implementing countersurveillance measures. However, NGOs’ subscription to databases the content of which is highly criticized in other contexts too, raises a range of questions from transparency matters through privacy-related rights (such as the right to information) to the asymmetric power relations between (Northern) aid organizations and individuals working or benefiting from aid work in the Global South.
Although humanitarian organizations consistently reject donors’ requests for screening (humanitarian) beneficiaries arguing that it is inconsistent with their obligations under international humanitarian law, exemptions and reservations do not apply to their staff and potential transaction partners. As illustrated by the case of UNRWA (p 20–22), which has been accused by Israel of employing Palestinians that participated in the October 7 terror attack against Israeli civilians, not only larger non-governmental organizations, but governmental organizations, that is, certain UN agencies, the European Commission (page 9, 17) and the IFRC (p. 24) may also screen their employees, third party contractors or people benefiting from their projects. They do so either to comply with legal-regulatory requirements (to see whether individuals or legal entities are designated as terrorists or sanctioned as individuals, perhaps listed as criminals by law enforcement agencies) or to pursue other organizational interests, for example, to ensure operational security and to mitigate reputational hazards.
While the challenge is acknowledged by practitioners (see for example, VOICE, p12–13), reliable data is not available on the effectiveness of screening for the secrecy prevailing around this subject, nor on the steps taken by aid organizations in case of positive hits. Most aid organizations, regardless of their profile (humanitarian, development, refugee protection), treat such mechanisms and practices confidentially. However, unlike financial institutions that usually openly communicate the existence and purposes of their AML/CFT procedures directly to their clients and publicly via their websites, aid organizations’ communication practices are rather opaque. If publicly available information is available on screening in rare instances, that usually means a line or two in publicly available privacy notices posted on websites.
Recalling that aid organizations may also be subject to governmental (state) or corporate (bank) surveillance, their counter-efforts are understandable. However, screening — in secret or with minimum information provided to concerned individuals — further strengthens the otherwise asymmetric power relations and weakens the otherwise weak accountability between aid organizations and the individuals whom they serve either via employment, contract or by providing various donor-financed services.
