I. Introduction

Approaches and understandings of duty of care in the aid sector reached a watershed moment in 2015 when the Norwegian courts ruled that the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) was grossly negligent in meeting its duty of care towards a staff member, Steve Dennis, in relation to the organisation’s actions around his kidnapping in 2012.6

Many aid organisations had already been considering their legal duty of care obligations towards staff members before the court case, but in its aftermath, this study has found that organisations' senior management invested more time and resources to review and improve their security risk management systems and processes.

Along with other initiatives across Europe, the Swiss Security Network@cinfo, a Community of Practice of NGOs active in International Cooperation, has initiated a project aiming to better understand the legal duty of care obligations under Swiss law.

This study was developed as part of this project and aims to develop a maturity model tool for Swiss non-governmental organisation (NGOs) active in international cooperation to understand and assess what safety and security risk management processes to undertake to systematically improve their duty of care towards employees working outside of headquarters (i.e., those travelling or based overseas).

In order to develop this tool, this study aimed to understand what aid actors’ obligations are under Swiss duty of care legislation, what experts describe as good practice within duty of care, and finally, what NGOs operating in developing countries have put in place in order to meet their duty of care obligations from a safety and security risk management perspective. On the basis of this information, this study has developed a maturity model framework to help NGOs understand what the key elements of duty of care are from a safety and security risk management perspective within the Swiss context.

A working group led by cinfo and composed of NGOs from the Swiss Security Network used this framework to jointly develop a duty of care maturity model matrix with input from EISF. This matrix aims to serve as a learning tool for Swiss NGOs to understand and improve their maturity in safety and security risk management-related duty of care processes.

Although the parameters of the study resulted in a focus on the Swiss legal framework, safety and security risk management and the employee-employer relationship, there is scope to use the content gathered to expand the scope of the maturity model as a future step within this project. Please note that all reference made to risk or risk management within this document will specifically refer to safety and security risks.

6 Case No: 15-032886TVI-OTI R/05, Steven Patrick Dennis v Stiftelsen Flyktninghjelpen [the Norwegian Refugee Council], delivered on 25 November 2015 in Oslo District Court – Translation from Norwegian (Hereafter: ‘Dennis v NRC’).