Japan provides ODA to more than 150 countries worldwide. In order to implement aid projects smoothly, it is crucial to ensure the safety of the personnel involved. Japan has been taking every possible step over the years to protect its aid personnel from harm. However, the reality for aid personnel on assignment abroad is that conditions of personal safety vary from country to country and also vary even in the same location day by day. Many factors such as acts of terrorism, riots, civil war, other extreme situations and more common crimes pose a risk to their personal safety. Among the serious recent cases, in 1998 a JICA expert on assignment in Tanzania was shot to death in a car holdup, and in August this year four Japanese nationals, who were engaged in the JICA Mineral Exploration Development Study, were abducted by armed groups in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Drawing on the lessons from these and other incidents to date, MoFA has enforced various measures to ensure the safety of aid personnel in the field through close coordination with JICA, Japan's core agency for the implementation of projects in technical cooperation.

In particular, before sending experts and other aid personnel abroad, steps are taken in advance to confirm conditions of law and order in the host country. Decisions to send personnel to high-risk countries are now preconditioned on the local provision of safety guarantees. Aid personnel are also given instruction in safety countermeasures during the training they undergo before taking up their overseas assignments. Study teams are briefed on personal safety fundamentals and the conditions of law and order in the destination country before they leave Japan. Further, experts and study teams dispatched to countries where there are no local JICA offices or Japanese diplomatic missions are supplied with Inmarset phone sets as a means of maintaining their lines of contact with the outside world.

In addition, JICA headquarters selects four or five countries from extremely high-risk countries every year and sends study teams to assess crime rates and other trends in public security, and to discuss security measures with local counterparts. Further, JICA's overseas offices analyze local trends in public order, compile manuals on safety countermeasures, and regularly update their emergency contact networks in consultation with embassies and people involved. Efforts have also been made to improve the safety of JICA personnel in their homes: e.g., through the installation of home security and alarm systems and the assignment of private guards.

However, considering the recent abduction in the Kyrgyz Republic, Japan needs to strengthen its safety measures for its aid personnel and implement strategies of safety management. In particular, Japan is striving to improve and strengthen its security measures on several fronts: (a) reinforcing its ability to gather information on personnel safety near project sites; (b) strengthening the ability of JICA headquarters to effectively evaluate security-related information and maintain close contact with personnel overseas; and (c) reinforcing the conditions regarding public security and adapting its entire safety framework of receiving local conditions of law and order.

Next Page