Guidelines for Relations between U.S. Armed Forces and Non-Governmental Humanitarian Organizations in Hostile or Potentially Hostile Environments

Interaction is promoting a new set of Guidelines which hope to servie as "rules of the road" for civil-military operations in peace operations. Although firmly centred on US agencies and the US military, they make interesting reading.

Facilitated by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Guidelines seek to mitigate frictions between military and NGO personnel over the preservation of humanitarian space in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Principles in the Guidelines include ensuring that military personnel wear uniforms when conducting relief activities to avoid being mistaken for nongovernmental humanitarian organization representatives. Conversely, it recommends that, to the extent practical, humanitarian relief personnel avoid traveling in U.S. Armed Forces vehicles with the exception of liaison personnel.

The document is available for download from the Reliefweb website (402KB pdf).