Security Facts for Humanitarian Agencies: Comparing Urban and Rural Security Incidents

Is it more dangerous for aid agencies to operate in urban or non-urban environments? What are the characteristics of typical events that happen in densely populated places and those that occur in small towns and villages? To help agencies anticipate what kind of events may affect their staff or their operations depending on where they work, Insecurity Insight used its Security in Numbers Database (SiND) to analyse and describe differences in the patterns of events that occur in places with more than 100,000 inhabitants (urban), and in places with fewer than 100,000 people living closely together (rural) using the 963 security events in the database. The description of the "six Ws" - who did what, to whom, where, when and with what weapon - are compiled from aid agency reports (56.8% of the total reports) and collected from media and other public sources over a period of 24 months, between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2010.