DoD Doctrine on Foreign Humanitarian Assistance
The diverse factors that shape the execution of disaster relief and other foreign humanitarian assistance missions by the US military are described in a newly updated Department of Defense publication on the subject.
See Foreign Humanitarian Assistance, Joint Publication 3-29, January 3, 2014.
“Although US military forces are organized, trained, and equipped to conduct military operations that defend and protect US national interests, their inherent unique capabilities may be used to conduct FHA [Foreign Humanitarian Assistance] activities,” the publication said.
FHA “consists of Department of Defense activities conducted outside the US and its territories to directly relieve or reduce human suffering, disease, hunger, or privation.”
The publication said that DoD FHA operations necessarily include “intelligence collection concerning political, military, paramilitary, ethnic, religious, economic, medical, environmental, geospatial, and criminal indicators…. Intelligence operations during FHA operations are generally conducted in the same manner as in any other military operation.”
At the same time, however, “Information sharing is critical to the efficient pursuit of a common humanitarian purpose… The sharing of information is particularly critical because no single responding entity– whether it is an NGO [nongovernmental organization], IGO [intergovernmental organization], assisting country government or host government– can be the source of all of the required data and information.”
“Tensions between military needs for classification (secrecy) of data, versus the civilian need for transparency… often complicate effective civil-military coordination,” the DoD publication noted.
Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Data Policy Institute lead at the Federation of American Scientists, will be honored for her stewardship of public data by the National Academy of Public Administration, where she has been named a Fellow.
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
The strength of our nation’s data policy isn’t just in the rules we write, but in how effectively we translate those rules into a system that prioritizes the public good. Join us in this movement to design and build more resilient national data policies.