Introduction to Security Management

Ground yourself in the core security management discipline — context assessment, risk thinking and regional literacy — using SARI's own live Nigeria incident-monitoring data as the running case study.

Context & Risk Assessment

Map the operating environment — power structures, armed actors and local perception — then score threats through the likelihood-times-impact method shared by ISO 45001 and HSE-aligned safety programmes.

Personal Profile & Risk Mitigation

Examine how your identity, background, behaviour and digital footprint shape your exposure, and apply concrete tools to lower your signature in complex environments.

Travel Planning

Build a full journey management plan — pre-movement checks, go/no-go discipline, convoy spacing and en-route disruption protocols — to the standards used across the humanitarian security sector.

Incident Management & Reporting

Run incident response on the Incident Command System structure — Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, Finance/Admin — classify severity correctly, and write reports that drive sound decisions.

Checkpoints

Distinguish the types of checkpoint you may face, follow the documented procedure most state and military checkpoints use, and conduct yourself so an encounter stays routine.

Carjacking

Recognise carjacking tactics, including the 'bump and rob' method and high-risk transition points, and know precisely how to act before, during and after an attempt.

Civil Unrest

Operate safely through protests, riots and civil disorder by understanding the documented physics of how crowds turn lethal, not only the political dynamics driving them.

Weapons, Cover & Complex Attacks

Apply the Run-Hide-Fight decision framework used worldwide for armed-assailant response, tell protective cover from false comfort, and respond correctly to complex attacks and arriving armed responders.

Arrest, Detention & Kidnap

Treat kidnap and abduction as distinct threats with different patterns and motives, reduce your exposure, and know what to do if detained, held captive, or caught in a rescue attempt.

Theft & Robbery

Cut your exposure to theft and violent robbery, de-escalate incidents as they unfold, and manage post-incident safety, reporting and operational impact.

Sexual Violence

Recognise, prevent and respond to sexual violence risks in the field, with emphasis on survivor support, organisational obligations and gender-sensitive preparedness in complex emergencies.

Environmental Hazards

Spot the clinical stages of heat and cold injury before they turn life-threatening — using OSHA/NIOSH heat-illness classification and Swiss hypothermia staging — plus water, insect and terrain hazards.

Hostile Surveillance & Counter-Surveillance

Treat surveillance and counter-surveillance as a decision-cycle contest, run a disciplined surveillance detection route, and separate a true indicator from innocent coincidence.

Recognition & Response to Complex Attacks

Identify the pattern of a Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attack, read the extensive reconnaissance that precedes it, and shift from a 30-second survival reflex to a multi-day siege mindset.

UXO & Landmine Awareness

Identify unexploded ordnance and landmines by shape rather than colour, understand why SARI's operating region is so heavily affected, and follow the recognise-retreat-report sequence on contact.

Remote Communications

Plan and run secure, effective communications across remote or contested areas — radios, satcom and fallback systems — when digital infrastructure is degraded or down.

Digital Security

Recognise digital threats, practise safe behaviour and encrypted messaging, cross borders with devices without exposing sources or partners, and respond correctly to device compromise or data loss.

Remote Communications II, Field Protocols

Sustain secure, redundant and disciplined communications in degraded conditions through PACE planning, satcom, radio discipline and emergency comms response.

Self Care

Read your own psychological and physical stress signals, establish daily resilience routines, and head off burnout or collapse across extended field deployments.

Psychological First Aid

Build the knowledge and practical tools to deliver awareness-level Psychological First Aid to colleagues, civilians or communities immediately after traumatic events, short of clinical intervention.

Awareness training — does not replace certified first aid or professional crisis-response training.

CASEVAC

Support the casualty evacuation chain under hostile or degraded conditions at awareness level — decision-making, vehicle setup, triage, movement and reporting under pressure.

Awareness training — does not replace certified first aid or professional crisis-response training.

Interpersonal Skills for High-Risk Environments

Develop the behavioural awareness and communication habits that improve personal safety, reduce misunderstandings and strengthen team cohesion in hostile, culturally complex environments.

Emergency First Aid

Work the DR<C>ABC primary survey at awareness level — catastrophic bleeding control, airway and breathing management, CPR — and recognise burns, fractures, head and spinal injury, and blast trauma.

Awareness training — does not replace certified first aid or professional crisis-response training.

Kidnap-for-Ransom in Nigeria

Treat kidnap-for-ransom as Nigeria's most frequently recorded incident type, drawing on SARI data for where it concentrates, who drives it, and what follows once someone is taken.

Northwest Nigeria: Banditry & Rural Insecurity

Work through the mechanics of Northwest Nigeria's banditry economy — the deadliest zone in SARI's monitoring data — and how to move safely across Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi and Niger.

Northeast Nigeria: Insurgency and IED Awareness

Study the still-active Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgency across Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, including named IED corridors, SVBIED tactics and the movement discipline this zone demands.

Niger Delta: Oil Infrastructure, Militancy & Waterway Security

Grasp the Niger Delta's resource-driven risk profile across Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom — oil theft, pipeline sabotage, waterway travel and the industry-worker kidnap threat that has defined the region.

Emergency Preparedness & Response Planning for Nigeria Operations

Apply the IASC-aligned EPRP framework to Nigeria's multi-region risk picture, building a country-adapted preparedness plan grounded in SARI incident data across the northwest, northeast and Niger Delta.

Hostage Negotiation Posture & Family Liaison for Nigeria Operations

Build the crisis negotiation posture, family liaison and organisational discipline a Nigerian kidnap-for-ransom incident demands, grounded in SARI's documented banditry and kidnap patterns and established negotiation principles.

Awareness training — does not replace certified first aid or professional crisis-response training.

South Lebanon: Israeli-Hezbollah Border Conflict Awareness

Read the dominant threat pattern across South Lebanon and Nabatieh through SARI's monitoring — airstrikes, drone activity and artillery exchange that account for most recorded incidents in the zone.

Beirut and Urban Lebanon: Political Instability & Crime

Work through Beirut and central Lebanon's distinct urban risk profile — political instability, economic-crisis-linked crime and civil unrest — set apart from the border-conflict pattern covered elsewhere in the series.

UXO and Ordnance Contamination in South Lebanon

Apply the general UXO and landmine curriculum to South Lebanon's documented contamination, using SARI incident data on where explosions concentrate and what that means for movement in the zone.

Political and Sectarian Volatility in Lebanon

Make sense of Lebanon's confessional political system, the actors driving its instability, and how sectarian dynamics convert into operational risk, distinct from the conflict and urban-crime patterns covered elsewhere.

Emergency Preparedness & Response Planning for Lebanon Operations

Apply the IASC-aligned EPRP framework from the Humanitarian Affairs series to Lebanon, building Minimum and Advanced Preparedness Actions grounded in SARI's Lebanon incident data.

Southern Syria: Dar'a and Quneitra Post-Conflict Risk

Read the dominant threat pattern across Dar'a and Quneitra through SARI's monitoring — a post-conflict zone still shaped by Israeli military activity, armed actor presence and unresolved ground-level volatility.

As-Sweida and Communal Violence Dynamics in Syria

Work through the communal-violence pattern recorded in As-Sweida using SARI data, and build the verification and access discipline needed to operate safely and neutrally in a sensitive local context.

Northeast Syria: Transition, Contested Control and Residual ISIS Risk

Read northeast Syria's shifting threat landscape through SARI data as former SDF structures integrate into the Syrian state, with residual threats from non-state actors and ordnance outlasting whoever holds the checkpoints.

UXO and Post-Conflict Ordnance Contamination in Syria

Build the field discipline to recognise, avoid and respond to unexploded ordnance across Syria, drawing on SARI's nationwide UXO data for the governorates where contamination concentrates.

Emergency Preparedness & Response Planning for Syria Operations

Apply the IASC-aligned EPRP framework to Syria's multi-zone risk picture, building a country-adapted plan for the distinct signatures of the south, As-Sweida and the northeast, grounded in SARI incident data.

Introduction to Humanitarian Affairs

Map the architecture of humanitarian work — the four principles, the Core Humanitarian Standard, the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, the cluster system, localization, access and accountability — the foundation the department's other courses build on.

PMEL for Humanitarian Programs

Work the evaluation methodology used on live humanitarian evaluations: OECD-DAC criteria turned into working questions, mixed-methods collection, participatory tools like the River of Life, and the path from findings to recommendations.

Grant Writing for NGOs

Master the craft of a fundable grant proposal — donor alignment research, a data-backed problem statement, the architecture funders expect, budgeting — and why most rejected bids fail for the same few reasons.

Protection Analysis & Information Management

Apply the Global Protection Cluster's Protection Analytical Framework and Protection Information Management principles to identify, prioritise and responsibly handle data on protection risks during a crisis.

Emergency Preparedness & Response Planning (EPRP)

Work the IASC Emergency Response Preparedness framework used across the UN system and major INGOs: Minimum Preparedness Actions, risk monitoring, and when contingency planning gets triggered.

Advanced Contingency Planning & Scenario-Based EPRP

Move past EPRP basics into advanced work — multi-actor scenarios, a full contingency plan document, pre-positioning and standby agreements, simulation exercises, and the documented reasons such plans fail.

Business Continuity & Recovery for Humanitarian Organisations

Apply ISO 22301, the international business continuity standard, to an NGO setting: Business Impact Analysis, RTO/RPO/MTPD/MBCO, critical activity identification, and building a workable continuity plan.

Advanced Business Continuity: Disaster Recovery & Organisational Resilience

Push past BCP fundamentals into advanced recovery — degraded-mode operations under MBCO, IT and data recovery, supply-chain continuity, exercise typology, governance ownership, and integrating BCP with EPRP.

Theory of Change, Logframes & Indicator Design

Build the M&E architecture under any funded programme — a working Theory of Change, a Logical Framework and SMART indicators — using donor logframe conventions rather than a generic template.

Data Collection Tools & Quality Assurance for M&E

Build the data collection and quality-assurance systems that make a Logframe's indicators measurable in the field: tool design, mixed methods, digital collection, and the checks that catch errors before a donor report.

Evaluation Design & Donor Reporting for Humanitarian Programs

Design a credible evaluation on the OECD-DAC criteria and standard approaches, then translate monitoring and evaluation findings into the reporting formats major humanitarian funders require.

Data Protection & Field Data Compliance for Humanitarian Actors

Build the data protection discipline humanitarian actors now need, applying GDPR-adjacent principles and IASC data responsibility guidance to beneficiary, biometric and field-collected data in insecure settings.

Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Compliance & Certification

Apply the nine commitments of the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability, building the organisational systems to meet — and where relevant be verified against — the sector's leading accountability framework.

Introduction to Political & Risk Analysis

Pick up the transferable toolkit of political and risk analysis — actor mapping, structured context scanning, scenario planning, early-warning indicators — and the analytical biases that quietly wreck good judgement.

Scenario Planning & Political Forecasting

Build the structured scenario-planning and forecasting methodology that turns introductory political and risk analysis into a forward-looking planning tool for organisations in volatile environments.

Introduction to OSINT & Digital Investigation

Work the disciplined open-source intelligence cycle used by professional analysts and investigative journalists — planning, passive and active collection, verification, reverse image search and geolocation — and where it goes wrong.

Introduction to Corporate & Business Travel Security

Apply ISO 31030, the international standard for corporate travel risk management, and the duty-of-care obligations, risk assessment, tracking and incident response every organisation sending staff abroad needs in place.

Duty of Care & ISO 31030 in Practice

Go past the ISO 31030 overview to build a working Travel Risk Management programme — risk classification, pre-trip approval workflows, and the legal duty-of-care standard increasingly binding any organisation sending staff abroad.

Executive & High-Net-Worth Travel Risk

Apply protective travel principles to executives, high-net-worth individuals and other high-profile travellers, whose visibility, predictability and digital footprint create risks well beyond standard business travel.

Introduction to Journalism & Media Safety

Build the safety discipline newsrooms rely on, drawn from CPJ and RSF guidance — pre-assignment risk assessment, covering protests and hostile communities, PPE basics, digital safety, source protection and psychological safety.

Conflict Zone & War Reporting

Examine journalists' legal status under international humanitarian law, the PRESS-marking and armed-security debates, and why local fixers, translators and drivers carry more risk with less institutional support than correspondents.

Disinformation & Media Manipulation Detection

Work the current framework journalists and fact-checkers use against disinformation: the seven types of information disorder, verification tooling, coordinated inauthentic behaviour and synthetic-media detection.