In the past fifteen years, millions of civilians have died beyond our reach. The Locally Led Advance Mobile Aid (LLAMA) monograph describes an archetypal NGO that delivers aid through local teams who return to conflict-affected areas to aid their own people. LLAMA is deployed when civilians trapped in conflict are dying and the chance of reaching them in time with conventional relief and protection is unlikely due to the insecurity. Aid is provided by local civilians-not by conventional agencies, yet the opportunities for mutual benefit between the two are enormous. Local teams are recruited, trained, and equipped by the LLAMA organization, with discreet but vital support from patrons in the international and national aid community. In turn, LLAMA helps the aid community during its most deadly lapses in emergency response, by. bringing resources and bolstering local capacity.
A LLAMA NGO has three parts:
- Headquarters, which stresses humanitarian intelligence and conflict zone training. More than typical aid NGOs, it has unique in-house assets and information-sharing arrangements with conflict monitoring groups from which it prepares forecasts. It then consults with members of the aid community about crises in which risk to civilians is very high and the prospects for conventional aid reaching them in time is forecast to be very low. Headquarters may then put pre-deployment training in motion. Upon deployment, it has a "remote programming" relationship with teams in the field. Post-deployment, it engages in debriefing, evaluation of results, and refinement of the training curricula.
- Training and Support Units (TSUs) are staged either in the affected country or in an outside sanctuary. LLAMA recruits trainee candidates from refugee camps, displaced or intact populations in the affected country, and from local staff of international NGOs that plan to evacuate. LLAMA carefully screens recruits and continues to observe them as they train over an extended period. Recruits learn aid skills and the basics of information management, communications, safe movement, encampment, and threat response. After teams deploy, the TSU often remains their "umbilical cord" for support, although the locus of authority between TSU and team leaders lies with the team. The teams are thus networked, responsive, and maneuverable.(
- Indigenous LLAMA teams bear the risks and responsibilities on the ground. As with the "backpack" volunteers that now get discreet aid into Burma, LLAMA members have the respect of the civilian population and possess the necessary skill sets, aptitude, motivation, and readiness for risk. Their tasks include fostering security and economic self-reliance; channeling resources (from shadow markets, cash transfers, remittances and subsistence); and providing the aid community information, a conduit, and coordination support from the inside-out.
The LLAMA monograph is heavily cited and replete with details on the relevant precedents and best practices, its arguably safer mode operation, and its comparative advantages in observing humanitarian principles. These make the LLAMA approach a viable alternative for those running out of options when civilians are trapped on the inside of conflict and aid agencies are trapped outside.
To obtain a copy of the LLAMA monograph, please contact us.