The promise of acceptance as an NGO security management approach

This paper explores three questions related to acceptance as a security management approach. Acceptance draws upon relationships with community members, authorities, belligerents and other stakeholders to provide consent for the presence and activities of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), thereby reducing threats from these actors. Little is documented about how NGOs gain and maintain acceptance, how they assess and monitor the presence and degree of acceptance, or how they determine whether acceptance is effective in a particular context. Based on field research conducted in April 2011 in Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda, we address each of these three issues and argue that acceptance must be actively sought as both a programme and a security management strategy. In the paper we delineate elements common to all three contexts as well as missed opportunities, which identify areas that NGOs can and should address as part of an acceptance approach.