How it all began

In the early 2000s, Robin Coupland, an ICRC physician, Nathan Taback an academic statistician, and Christina Wille, working on small arms and light weapons issues, connected and decided there had to be better ways of documenting, presenting and using data on violence for programme development, policy guidance and personal security.

After the ICRC decided in 2007 to document attacks on health care, Insecurity Insight was born as an association of experts who shared the same vision to develop innovative methods for generating data on the impact of insecurity on people’s lives and well-being that would help to plan and monitor programmes and help protect health workers.

Working as consultants for the ICRC, Christina and Nathan collaborated with Robin to produce the 16-country case study that became the basis for the ICRC’s Healthcare in Danger project. Together they set up media monitoring used to produce this data.

In 2009, Robin introduced Larissa Fast to Christina. She joined Insecurity Insight and Christina and Larissa began developing the Aid in Danger project to work with aid agencies on aid security. The project name derives from Larissa’s book, titled Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarian Action, which examines the causes of violence against aid workers, and the consequences of aid agency security management

Robin Coupland made this possible by donating the proceeds of the sales of his pictures. The project grew and over the years, we have benefited from the support of numerous individuals, including: Josh Kearns, Lauren D’Amore, Lisa Reilly, Maarten Merkelbach, Mark Harris, Michael O’Neill, Pascal Daudin, Peter Lehmann, Rafael Khusnutdinov, Raffaela Schiavello, Simon Bagshaw, Trevor Hughes and Val Flynn.

Over the years, we have supported the work of the International Federation of Journalists, the WHO in setting up the monitoring of attacks on healthcare, established data collection mechanisms for Action Against Armed Violence (AOAV) on explosive weapons and supported DARC among other past projects.

Today, Insecurity Insight works with the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC) to protect healthcare and the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). Our mobiles apps, developed in collaboration with Disaster Ready bring our insights to individuals.

By working with aid agencies through the Aid in Danger project, we bring the personal experiences of individuals together for people-centres security risk assessments.

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