Cite as www.jha.ac/articles/a060.pdf BEYOND SECURITY PLANNING: TOWARDS A MODEL OF SECURITY MANAGEMENT COPING WITH THE SECURITY CHALLENGES OF THE HUMANITARIAN WORK Luis Enrique Eguren © July 2000 SUMMARY The challenges faced by humanitarian agencies working in violent scenarios pose the need for comprehensive and dynamic systems to cope with the security requirements. Security planning cannot answer all the questions: we must take a step further and discuss a model for security management. In this paper we propose an overall framework for a security management process and an incremental approach to security management. Both topics should allow agencies and practitioners to better undertake strategies for coping with the security challenges of humanitarian work. SECURITY MANAGEMENT VERSUS SECURITY PLANNING Some of the most effective humanitarian agencies have a Security Plan carefully stored in the fifth drawer of the senior manager desk (of course in many agencies that fifth drawer is full with other documents, and there is no a drawer for security plans). Even that Security Plan may consist of a series of protective measures, contingency plans and safety rules, which may be useful as security guidelines but do not grasp the fact that that security requires an adequate overall management, and it means much more than a security plan. Security cuts through all aspects of an agency´s work in a conflict scenario: it has to do with operations (as any targeting the agency may suffer can be consequence of its operations), with assessing a changing context (and conflict scenarios can change quickly), with flows of information (recording and assessing security incidents), with personnel (from recruiting to training and team building), with budgeting and funding and so on (for an in depth analysis of security management see Koenraad van Brabant´s manual 1 and other relevant initiatives 2 ). The still pending question now is: how can we handle the necessary integration of security in all the management levels of an agency´s work? We have already mentioned the security plans, which usually run separatedly from the work plans and often become a static document, disconnected from the operations or from the headquarters management activities and far from the dynamic approach security requires. But having such plans may lead to a sense of good practice in security which may prevent agencies from undertaking the necessary holistic approach to security. In other words, what we are posing here is that such security plans may actually be an obstacle in achieving a real level of security while working in a violent enviroment: We 1 “Operational Security Management in Violent Enviroments” (2.000), Koenraad Van Brabant, Overseas Development Institute, London. 2 We can quote at least the leading work in training in security management done by REDR (Registered Engineers for Disasters Relief, London) and the Interaction/OFDA initiative for developing a training curriculum in security.