Nervous, she sipped at water before speaking. Sharon Commins did not seem used to facing a room of eager faces, all ready to hang onto every word she spoke.
We were not to press discussion on her own personal ordeal abroad working in the international aid realm but Sharon would speak to us about the risks and threats of working in international aid, global security and humanitarian work.
Sharon Commins began as a press secretary for GOAL after completing an undergraduate degree in journalism and a masters degree in international relations in Dublin. Looking back now after so many years of working first-hand abroad with international aid, she says she cringes when she sees some of the press releases she wrote at the beginning of her career. Everything was so simple, either black or white, she now knows that's not the case.
Sharon Commins was kidnapped from a compound run by the GOAL aid agency in Darfur, Sudan with her Ugandan colleague Hilda Kawuki on July 3, 2009. The kidnap lasted until October 18, 2009 and was Darfur's longest running kidnapping involving foreign humanitarian aid workers. It was the first time any of GOAL's charity workers had experienced a kidnapping whilst in action and the Irish, Sudanese and Ugandan governments all refused the demand for a ransom to be paid. The kidnapping ended peacefully and Sharon returned home to Ireland and was reunited with her family late in the night of October 19, 2009.
But this is not to say Sharon's ordeal was easy. Nor is it to say all is well now in the world of humanitarian and international aid.
The recent death of Marie Colvin, the award-winning American journalist who worked for the Sunday Times, at the siege of Homs in Syria has placed even further emphasis on the dangers of supplying humanitarian aid and reporting the story from areas of violent dispute abroad.
Regarding the risks and threats of working abroad, the three most violent countries to work in are Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. The definition of a risk or threat in international aid accounts for anything from kidnappings to personal health or stress.
2008 has been the most violent year in recent times with an estimated 165 violent incidents affecting aid workers taking place. 2010 had 129 violent attacks, affecting 242 victims in total. Although Sharon has an avid interest in these statistics and regularly checks reports on the risks of international and humanitarian aid, she admits herself she does not know how these attacks are counted, kept track of and even if her own kidnapping has been taken account of in reports.
There are two reasons international staff from aid agencies are targeted abroad; the first being political, for the kidnappers in question to promote their cause to the media, the second being purely financial. Sharon knows her kidnappers' intentions were purely financial, they did not have any political motives in mind.
The new attitude on the aid agency scene is to manage risk, not avoid it. This change in thinking has arrived in the last decade. New measures like military escorts in countries of high safety risks did not come as an easy decision for most aid agencies. Sharon believes humanitarian work is more dangerous now than it was ten years ago. This has come as a result of the new war of terror, the often negative perception of humanitarian work and the blurring of lines between politics, military and humanitarian action.
New initiatives for international aid workers have been appearing recently like a hand-held security and information device quite like this one of the US Marine Corps. Times are changing, international politics is changing and the degree of danger in which international aid and journalists are placing themselves in is changing also.
The work has to be done. The story has to be told. But a priority for governments, international aid agencies and newsrooms across the world should be the safety and the learning of effective survival skills for the people who place themselves in this danger.
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