What GAO Found
Humanitarian reassignments and safety transfers are exceptions to the standard relocation process. These transfers may be granted to service members who meet specific criteria. The Department of Defense (DOD) defines humanitarian reassignment as the relocation of a service member to another duty station based on humanitarian factors that include family emergency or other hardship. Safety transfers are relocations for service members or their dependents who are threatened with bodily harm or death, where authorities cannot ensure their safety at their current location. The military services have each developed and implemented their own processes for receiving and adjudicating requests, and each includes common steps.
Common Military Service Process for Humanitarian Reassignment
According to available military service data, over 15,000 service members requested humanitarian reassignment from fiscal year 2022 through 2025. The Army and the Marine Corps approved at least 95 percent of these requests in each year. Navy and Air Force approval rates ranged from 74 to 84 percent and 66 to 83 percent, respectively. According to available data, documentation, and military service officials, nearly 400 service members requested safety transfers over this period, and the military services approved 87 percent of those requests.
The military services track data on humanitarian reassignments to varying extents. The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force centrally track data on all humanitarian reassignment requests and outcomes. The Navy centrally tracks requests for enlisted personnel in a spreadsheet but does not do so for officers. Navy officials suggested that the number of officer requests is small but did not have documentation to this effect. Regarding safety transfers, the Army and the Navy centrally track these data, and the Air Force plans to do so by September 2026, according to Air Force officials. However, according to officials, the Marine Corps does not clearly define what constitutes a safety-related relocation or track these data. Marine Corps officials stated it would not be difficult to establish a process to more centrally track the data.
Without a process to centrally track such data, the Navy and Marine Corps have limited visibility over the total population of service members requesting humanitarian reassignments and safety transfers. Such processes could help improve the military services’ oversight of these requests and their outcomes by ensuring they have complete and current data. Centrally tracking data would also facilitate better monitoring, allowing the services to identify trends; assess the timeliness of processing requests; and address any identified program challenges.
Why GAO Did This Study
Approximately 260,000 to 280,000 service members, along with their families, relocate each year due to assignments at new duty stations. However, there are special circumstances, such as humanitarian or safety concerns, under which service members and their families may be relocated outside of the normal 2-to-4-year schedule.
Senate Report 119-39, which accompanies a bill for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, includes a provision for GAO to review military service policies for reassignment for compassionate, humanitarian, and safety-related reasons. This report assesses the extent to which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military services have developed and implemented policies and procedures for humanitarian reassignments and safety transfers, oversee such requests, and track data related to such requests and their outcomes.
GAO analyzed relevant military service policies and procedures and available data for fiscal year 2022 through 2025, and interviewed OSD and military service officials with related roles and responsibilities.
Source: GAO Reports & Testimonies · 2026-11-13