Armadillo at Large

Armadillo At Large have run a number of successful 3 day residential courses based in North Yorkshire. The courses focus on the essential skills that humanitarian workers need in order to operate effectively in hostile environments. Using Koenraad Van Brabant’s work on “Operational Security Management in Violent Environments” as its starting point, the course examines the Security Management Framework as a way of enabling staff to minimise the incidents they might be involved in. Here is a guide to the usual itinerary:

Security Management

An introduction to the skills needed in order to be responsible for the security of yourself and others. Security management modules include:

• Situational Awareness:

  • Understanding the situation and knowing how to react is possibly the most important skill you can have. This module will teach you how to recognise and read the subtle changes in the threat environment.

• Context Analysis

  • Truly understanding the answers to the questions; “who are we?”, “where are we?”, and “what is happening?”, enables you to predict what might happen next and plan accordingly. This module explores how to write the detailed context analysis that will give you the answers.

• Risk Threat and Vulnerability

  • Good security is about keeping you and your team in the field implementing humanitarian programmes until the last safe moment. Understanding the threats that exist and your vulnerabilities to them enables you to better understand the risks that you and your agency face. Combined with situational awareness this enables you to make the best decisions.

• Security strategy

  • Good security should provide maximum risk mitigation in a way that does not conflict with your agency’s humanitarian image. Security isn’t all about razor wire and body armour and this session covers the alternatives that we have available to us, discusses the advantages and disadvantages and the method for determining the right one.

• Image and Acceptance

  • Here we discuss how personal and agency image can profoundly affect our ability to stay safe in a hostile environment.

• First Aid

  • In areas where there is no doctor and professional help can be many hours drive away having the ability to carry out first aid can make the difference. These sessions will give you the skills and knowledge you need to administer first aid with confidence. Our highly experienced medics will teach you how to give first aid in the kind of conditions you are likely to meet.

• Travel Security

  • Most security incidents happen when travelling. These modules look at route planning, vehicle preparation, ambush drills, and what to do when you lose communications.

• Communications

  • Your ability to communicate with the base is vital. Here we discuss the various means of communication found in the field and their pros and cons. For those who would like it there will be an opportunity to receive tuition in the correct operation of a VHF handset.

• Negotiation skills

  • It is always better to avoid an incident so we look at how to negotiate in violent environments and give you tools and techniques that will improve your ability to talk your way out of a situation before it goes wrong. However because sometimes no matter how well prepared you are sometimes things just do go wrong we also include sessions on:

    • Conflict survival

      • We look at the kinds of weaponry that you might be unlucky enough to see and discuss practical measures that you can take to mitigate the effects that they can have on you, your vehicle and your office or house.

    • Landmines and UXO awareness

      • What they look like, why they are used, where they are commonly found, and how to avoid becoming another landmine victim

    • Hostage Survival Strategies:

      • Of course the best thing of all is not to be taken hostage so we will look at strategies that minimise abduction risk, however, we also analyse ways of surviving what can be an appalling ordeal.

Practical Exercise

On the last day, course participants are challenged in a real-time role-play exercise. This final exercise is carefully managed to allow agency staff to succeed - if they use the skills and knowledge gleaned from the preceeding two days. The aim of this exercise is to give participants the confidence to use the techniques that will make a difference in the field.