Securitization and Compliance in Aid Work

This chapter provides a contextualization of screening by briefly summarizing the historical background of securitization characterizing the contemporary aid sector and recalling the main legal instruments and mechanisms used for this purpose. The mechanisms by means of which aid organizations are (in)advertently dragged into the counterterrorism game cover international and domestic laws regulating sanctions and terrorist listing, ‘reasonable efforts’ expected, conditional clauses in grant agreements and internal compliance procedures. Yet, it must be remembered that the donor side of the aid market is strongly concentrated: most of the contracts facilitating the implementation of aid projects with (conditional) funding in the Global South are signed with only five to ten OECD DAC donor countries. Furthermore, aid organizations also finance their activities from private funds that reveal other organizational interests in the domain of risk management.