Humanitarian organizations premisses for civil-military information sharing – An interview study of some humanitarian organizations experiences from Afghanistan

Authors:

  • Anders Noren

Publish date: 2011-12-15

Report number: FOI-R--3304--SE

Pages: 32

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • Civil-military cooperation
  • information sharing
  • comprehensive
  • approach
  • military interventions
  • humanitarian organizations
  • Afghanistan

Abstract

From the perspective of a handful of humanitarian organisations, the report describes the needs and possibilities for, and some of the obstacles of information sharing between humanitarian and military actors in Afghanistan. Despite that humanitarians are to refrain from collaboration with warring parties, a flow of information nevertheless occurs. The interviewed humanitarian organizations need for information sharing with military actors derive from security concerns for the own staff, and for this reason the information sharing primarily concerns military activities that may affect or hamper the work of the humanitarian actors. From the perspective of the studied organizations, the need for military security assessments or to share a common understanding of the conflict is limited. The main obstacle for information sharing is the warring parties' conception of the humanitarian actors as being neutral and impartial, a prerequisite for the ability to work in areas with a high level of violence. By sharing information regionally rather than locally, through mediating organizations and outside the conflict area, some of the obstacles with civilmilitary information sharing can be avoided.