Security Tidbits

Humanitarian security news from around the world...

In addition to rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray, NGO security practitioners should be aware of a new, hi-tech crowd control device. Authorities in Georgia (the country, not the U.S. state) are now using non-lethal sound weapons against protesters. This technology has been recently used by ships against pirates, but this is one of the first wide scale, land deployments.

Tip of the hat to tbb for sending in a link to an article about the joint African Union/U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur and how it's likely to fail. Good background reading for anyone doing work in the area.

And in legal news - Canadian charges against a U.S. aid worker were dropped for smuggling Haitian refugees into the country. The French NGO child kidnapping scandal in Chad continues, with essayist Jacques Attali saying it is the duty of NGOs to disobey laws. And today, the French government issued a travel advisory after anti-France demonstrations in Chad's capital.