Kidnapped Canadian aid worker wins lawsuit against 'negligent' NGO

It's being described as a wake-up call for aid agencies.

In June 2012, Steve Dennis was abducted from a refugee camp in Kenya, along with three other aid workers. A fifth aid worker was killed in the violent kidnapping. He says a leg injury and post traumatic stress disorder has made it difficult to find new employment.

Now, a court has ordered the Norwegian Refugee Council, or NRC, to pay Dennis 4.4 million Norwegian Krones ($678,000 CDN). The court ruled the aid group was "grossly negligent" in its handling of the kidnapping. 

Dennis spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about the ruling and the precedent it sets for the future of his profession. Here is part of their conversation.

Carol Off: Mr. Dennis, the Norwegian Refugee Council was the NGO you worked for and you've worked for other ones before. So was the NRC more egregious than others, was it worse or was it typical of the support and the security that you have when you work for an NGO?

Steve Dennis: My experience with NRC was only in that one location and I've heard some very positive things in other work that they do elsewhere. However, since 2002 I've been a field humanitarian aid worker and this was the first place that I felt that there was very reckless operations. This incident wasn't the first fatality that happened there in my time. Ten months before there was another fatality that I believe was due to some identified reckless behavior. Many, many warnings and reports were written about it. I felt that this was the first time that I was in a reckless operation and that really matched with a lot of the things that I was seeing in the follow up after the incident. So that's why I didn't let go of this issue.

CO: What do you say to those who point out that working for an NGO that this is what you might expect? That it's often a very dangerous job, as it is for journalists...

SD: Well I think there's a lot of high risk professions out there. Looking domestically we have firefighters that we expect to go into burning buildings sometimes to assist people who are in danger. I think there are a lot of analogies like that and the key question comes down to: what is a reasonable amount of care for those staff and attention to preventing incidents? In this case there were some things that were absolutely not put forward as measures to care for people. Some things that actually are perfectly free and I think there is a level of care that's reasonable.

In every other high risk industry I think there is appropriate security measures or safety measures that are put in place and aid workers don't wave that right.- Steve Dennis

I don't expect all aid workers to be in bullet proof vests in armed vehicles never being proximate to beneficiaries but I would look at Ebola for instance. It's unreasonable if people went to clinics working on Ebola if they didn't have those suits on and didn't have training and procedures. There's things you can do to reduce, significantly, your risk.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

To hear the full interview please click on the Listen audio link above.