[MUSIC] Hello to everyone, this is an opportunity today to talk about staying safe and secure while working overseas. And I put this together on the basis of many pieces of information on various locations. And from my own experience of working overseas for probably 30 years, and starting to travel overseas when I was age 6. We're going to talk about the conceptual framework. So how do we look at this from a high level? What are some of the security issues and various categories for that? Then we'll talk about moving around such as walking and travelling in various ways and your own personal conduct in these situations. Then we'll talk more about staying in places. Where would you stay in hotels, how would you choose housing? Where would you look for offices and so forth? So to start with the first one, we'll look at what a safety concept would be. And they're really three areas that are commonly ascribed to security or safety framework. The first one is acceptance, that is in the community in which you're working, you're being accepted. The second one is protection, what can you actually do to protect yourselves? And the third one is deterrence, and if we look at the next slide we can see some examples of these. Acceptance is the type of thing that many organizations work on. You work with the community, or part of the community, you do things for the community. They accept you as assisting them and helping them and they would undertake your assistance or even your protection at times. The second part is protection and that's what you do personally. In your living circumstances or your personal behavior, not to attract attention and to prevent any untoward things happening from you. And the third one is the area of deterrence. And this is more of a guard's and military and armament kind of thing. And these are set out in the next slide, which looks at the three areas and how they're commonly used. As we mentioned, the NGOs, nongovernmental organizations and research projects usually count on acceptance. So if people see that you're trying to benefit them in various ways, this offers you a lot of protection. On the other hand, there are always in every community, people that wish harm to other people. Whether it's for criminal reasons, or political reasons or other circumstances. So, this is very effective up to a certain point, but it does not give you 100% protection in that sense. The second one is the category of protection, and that is taking the precautions. And not creating the temptations or the opportunities. Not drawing attention to yourself and not creating opportunities for people to do harm to you or to steal your possessions. And the third area of deterrence is that of having armed guards. And this is a big game changer, even in very unsecure areas, most non-government organizations would not use armed guards. They think this sends the wrong message to the community, encourages reliance on something which in the face of concerted attack is probably not going to be any benefit anyway. The type of work that you're doing, people will start making assumptions based on the fact that you have large numbers of guards around with various weapons. So, as a rule, the armed guards are not something that most research projects or non-government organizations would use for their facilities. And this is true even in places like Afghanistan, where violence is very common. Now, let's talk about how do we apply these. And we need to start off by assessing the environment that we're going in. And this is something I'd like to encourage people to think about constantly, not only assessing the situation before you go to a particular environment. But also to constantly reassess your environment and how is it changing? What are new things you have discovered, or what are new events that may change your protection or susceptibility. But, probably, for most of us we would look at a combination of both the acceptance. And the protection and prevention to assure our safety while we're traveling or while we're working overseas. Is there a role for deterrence in your environment? Perhaps in some circumstances, right now, we're seeing in some countries where armed conflict is breaking out. And many people who are from overseas will seek protection in organizations. Maybe military organizations, which do have armed guards. So knowing where to go if things get very violent is really important. Even if your organization cannot provide that type of deterrence, knowing where it is when you need it is critically important. Now where can we look for information before we go? I think the best thing to do is to start with your colleagues. If you know people working there now, you can ask them about questions of personal security. Where to stay, where to live, where to travel, and so on. That's a very good source of things. If you're looking for travel guides, The Rough Guides series is a good source of information on safety for travelers. And covers a lot of things of whether or not that you need to have protection at various times. Where you can go and where you cannot go and that's important. However, these things out date quite quickly, because the environment for security may change quite rapidly in a specific country. I put down here the State Department travel guide. This is a fairly comprehensive approach, and we'll talk about that in a moment. And it also is a very cautious approach. So many of us have reviewed these and see that yes, indeed, these circumstances that they allude to may happen in certain environments. But this is not maybe the overall picture that one might get from reading these. Though nevertheless, it's a very valuable source of information. But probably the best thing, once you're in a country, is to assemble your own kind of dictionary of risks, and dictionary of hazards. Be inquisitive, find out what other people are doing, where other people get into trouble. What other people have done to stay safe over their period of time in a specific country. Now on the next page, we'll look at the travel guide for South Africa. And here you can see it has multiple sections, starting with a description of the country. And then this smart traveler enrollment program which you see noted in the right. That might be fairly useful for you to think about especially in countries where there's a number of American citizens or our foreign expatriates there. Because this can link you up to web alerts, as well as sms text alerts if there's problem in a specific area. And you could go down through to see the threats to safety and security, crime issues. Issues about medical insurance or medical care, traffic safety and so forth. So on the next page we've broken out some of this on safety and security. And you can see the whole thing on the website if you want to go into that site. And there's a section on terrorism and we have to face the fact that even though we may have not strong political views one way or the other. We may be perceived to be a representative of a specific country, and its perceived foreign policies, which would put us at potential risk as we travel in certain locations. Then we have the issue of xenophobic attacks. This is, particularly, a problem in South Africa, but it probably wouldn't be much for visitors from North America. But if you were coming from Zimbabwe, or Mozambique or Rwanda this might be a major trouble area. And then the area of public demonstration and strikes, we'll come back to touch on that a little bit later. But this can be a very serious situation, even if you're an innocent bystander that just happens to be in a place where these take place. Then we'll look at public transportation. People want to get around and public transportation is usually a very good way of getting around. So what are the risks and what are the hazards in using that. And then something specific to South Africa is if you want to go to a Kruger park or one of the game parks. What's your risk of being eaten by a lion or what do you have to do to not be trumped on by an elephant. Or looking at some of the crime events that happen in these situations as well. So this is just an example, one from South Africa, you could pick this up for just about any country you'd want to look at. On the next slide, I put a little bit in about arriving and settling in. And right from the beginning, we want to look at what can be the acceptance policy. How do we build that in most locations, because that's the appropriate thing to do. Think about our own behavior to start with, our own personal behavior. And one has to be very culturally sensitive in these things. Some of these things you may not know from the beginning. And inadvertently you may do things that may be perceived to be incorrect. But generally, if you can be perceived to be working in the interests of a local population. People will forgive you these for a while until you get used to things. So what are the dynamics of social relationships here? Can men speak with women, can they interact in some way, or is this not permitted? What are the messages that dress that you may think is perfectly normal for you, what do you think that sends to other people? Because that may stand in the way of your effectiveness in a particular situation. Some of the things that you may not find out until later on is what can you do in some cultures with your left hand? And what do you have to do things with your right hand in? And when is it appropriate to shake hands with women? When is it appropriate to ask after somebody's wife or their sister or how they are and what cultures is this not appropriate to do. It takes a while to learn these type of things. A safe bet is to maintain your own personal reserve. If you're a very loquacious and outgoing person, it may be important just to try to be a bit reserved for a while until you understand this environment. And you can see what's being perceived from your behavior that might be incorrect. Then we talked about wealth, this is an important thing to do is not display your watches, your expensive cameras, your other type of things that might create a target for you. And to dress down if you have a choice, not to be looking like you're expensively dressed. Keep a low profile, sometimes if you're in a culture where 99% of the population has a different skin color than you are, this might be a bit hard to do. But wherever possible, it's important to try to blend in and to not stand out. A final point here is don't be too trusting until you know the environment. You're going to go to a place anxious to fit in, anxious to have a good reception, anxious to participate in a local environment. But there's some things that you may not know. There may be code words, there may be certain types of behavior that experienced people can tell you are really in area of grey zone, an area where you may get into trouble. So just keep things to yourself until you're really comfortable about that. Now, I think we'll take a break at this point. And then when we come back, we'll talk about traveling around what you should and what you should not do. And how to be careful when you're moving.
