March 2, 2002	Saturday	Zilhaj 17, 1422

UNITED NATIONS: The death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has revived debate here about who bears responsibility for the safety and psychological well-being of aid workers, peacekeepers, and media personnel rushed to war-torn regions.

Experts with long experience in humanitarian and media work say it is a complex issue that calls for sweeping changes, for example, in the way individual aid workers or reporters perceive themselves and in the way organizations that perceive their mandate as benevolent, like the UN, operate.

Equally important, they say, is to prosecute assailants and discourage future attacks against aid workers and media personnel. More than 1,650 military and civilian personnel have died in peacekeeping missions since 1948, according to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Angola, Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Burundi, Bosnia, Indonesia and the former Yugoslavia were top-10 death zones.

Last year alone, 37 reporters were killed while covering stories in these and other conflict areas, according to media reports. The number of aid workers, soldiers, and reporters psychologically scarred by their mission experiences has yet to be tallied.

“Those who put their lives in danger on behalf of others and their families should be protected before, during and after their mission,” says Yael Danieli, a psychologist and scholar of victims’ issues who edited the recent book “Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills.

The book, published with support from the United Nations, argues that a crisis faces international institutions and the media that seek to alleviate or report on human suffering.

Danieli says effective training, psychological support, and protection from attack are essential for aid workers and media personnel. “Above all, (they need) support from upper levels of their organization and from member states. Persons who are guilty of attacking UN and associated personnel must be promptly brought to justice.”

Locally recruited personnel are the most likely victims of attack and other types of trauma, Danieli adds, but “they usually receive the least support. This should be corrected.”

According to one estimate, three-fourths of the 375-odd aid and peacekeeping personnel killed between 1985 and 1998 were local staff. The number could be higher since local deaths are less likely to be reported than those of expatriates.

Equally serious is the psychological health of thousands of others who work in conflict-ridden areas. Burnout, compassion fatigue, and nightmares are common results of witnessing violence and can derail lives and entire families. A study of war correspondents last year found post-traumatic stress disorder among reporters.

CNN and other media organizations are now supporting a new study on those correspondents who covered last September’s terrorist attacks in the United States. “Media is of course affected by stories it covers,” says Chris Cramer, president of CNN’s International Network.

Safety training, flak jackets, and professional detachment are no protection against mental anguish at seeing human suffering, and most journalists are not mentally well prepared to work in dangerous circumstances, Cramer adds.

UN staffers and observers also have decried abuses of local populations by peacekeeping personnel, saying these, in addition to being unacceptable offences in their own right, have contributed to an atmosphere of insecurity and resentment in which UN, humanitarian, and media workers have become targets rather than neutral parties. —Dawn/InterPress Service.