“Deconfliction” is a term familiar to anyone involved in wars around the world. It’s an arrangement by which non-combatants, including aid workers and journalists, try to ensure their safety by informing warring parties of their movements to prevent themselves becoming targets.
We heard about deconfliction in the wake of the recent killing of seven humanitarian workers by the Israeli military. The organisation for which they were working, World Central Kitchen (WCK), insisted it had informed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of its workers’ route as they collected aid supplies to deliver to depots for distribution.
Tragically, due to what Israel has called a “grave mistake”, the convoy was hit and the seven humanitarian workers were killed in an airstrike that targeted vehicles bearing the WCK logo.
Read more: More than 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, making famine more likely
Deconfliction has clearly not been working well during Israel’s assault on Gaza. On April 2, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said 196 aid workers, including 175 from the UN, had been killed in Gaza. The New York Times has published a visual investigation describing six Israeli attacks on aid workers.
The concept of deconfliction – and its shortcomings – will be sadly familiar to journalists with experience of Middle East wars. I have been researching the safety of journalists since the early 2000s, when their deaths caused by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan became a regular occurrence.
Two decades ago, BBC journalist Nic Gowing, who went to Washington in an attempt to........