Alertnet: Obama's First 100 Days: A Humanitarian Perspective

Update: Astrid Zweynert, Alertnet's Deputy Editor, adds her views (again, not necessarily ours) on the first 100 days for aid. More a round-up of events than anything else.

Joel R. Charny, vice president for policy with Refugees International, weighs in, and while we don't endorse or share his views, we think it's interesting, so we're sharing it for information's sake!

The President has changed the tenor of the U.S. approach to the world, and this has humanitarian ramifications. Obama, joined by Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates, has been stressing in multiple public settings the importance of development assistance, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy, in addition to military action, as tools for U.S. engagement and problem solving....

The change in message and tone, however, amounts to meaningless rhetoric without the resources to back it up.

Read more on the Alertnet website.

Pandemic: Health impacts on logistics

Let’s just assume for the moment that swine flu will go pandemic. What effects will this have on our supply chains?

The most obvious one is that it will put severe demands on it. We will need to have massive amounts of medical goods at the right spot, at the right moment. How to deal with this issue merits a separate post, which will follow later today.

Perhaps more insidious is the fact that every supply line depends on people – and in case of a flu pandemic, many of those people will be incapacitated (by illness or death), or be subject to isolation or quarantine. This will mean a severe blow for many of our supply chains: without truck drivers, store managers, clerks, and purchasers, our supply lines will soon break down.

Furthermore, quarantine measures might also mean that transport will be infinitely more difficult: if we can’t have trucks or planes come into the country where we work, goods will not come in either.

Read more on 'A humourless lot' - a blog about logistics, health and aid.

Federation: New Principles and Values newsletter

The fifth e-Newsletter from the Federation's Principles & Values department is now available for download from Fednet.

Resources on humanitarian responses to the Global Economic Crisis

A good page of links from American University on the economic crisis and its impacts on the developing world and humanitarian assistance - reports as well as links to news articles.

See the website of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute.

Tufts: Darfur: Livelihoods, Migration and Conflict

This briefing paper discusses findings from a study conducted in Darfur from 2006-8 that explored the changing role of migration and remittances in the livelihoods of conflict-affected people. The paper highlights the livelihood changes and adaptations internally displaced people (IDPs) and their hosts have made in response to the conflict in 2003 and consequent displacement.

We think it unlikely that IDPs will return to their rural home areas and previous livelihoods, and more likely that IDPs will continue to foster their increasingly urbanized 'multi-nodal' and transnational livelihoods. This has implications for the policy environment. We argue that innovative approaches to support livelihoods are badly needed, but it is important to monitor and evaluate their impact on different groups, the local economy and environment. In particular the implications of harmful livelihood adaptations need to be recognized and addressed - 'mal-adaptive' livelihood strategies might provide food and income in the short-term, but they often incur longer-term costs for the household, and can increase societal inequities and marginalization as well as over-exploiting limited natural resources.

The report, case studies and other materials are available from the Tufts website.

Mobiles in Africa

The impact of mobile technology in Africa deserves its own post, but suffice to say it is incredible. Where Africa got left behind in physical infrastructure, it is compensating with mobile systems. The only land lines in Kawambwa are at NGO and UN offices, but literally everybody has a cell phone. There is a single bank that always has lines out the door and a broken ATM, but all bank customers can access their accounts and transfer money through their phones. Mail takes months to arrive in Kawambwa -if it arrives at all- but because of text messages and mobile internet, it is hardly even necessary. We don't get any newspapers, but regularly get texts from Congo with political updates.

From Kala

This is the tip of the iceberg - lots being written at the moment about the impact of mobile technology on Africa, development, and entrepreneurship - and also on humanitarian relief efforts. For a good resource on this see the excellent humanitarian.info.

ODI: The role of the affected state in humanitarian action: A case study on India

This case study is part of the ODI HPG research programme on the role of the affected state in humanitarian action. It aims to describe the essential elements of India’s approach to disaster management as seen in its response to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The study also analyses policy trends in India’s disaster response, focussing on the 2005 Disaster Management Act.

Read more on the HPG website.

Public health experts can save us from invasion of killer undead

If you’ve ever seen a zombie movie, you’ve seen an introductory guide to public health. The flesh-eating undead are an epidemiologist’s worst nightmare, but they can teach us a lot about public health crises and begin a philosophical discourse on the trade-offs between individual liberties and public safety.

Read more on the Yale Daily news website.

HPG: Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: 2009 Update - Trends in Violence Against Aid Workers and the Operational Response

This HPG Policy Brief updates the findings from the 2006 report Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: Trends in Policy and Operations. Its analysis follows on from that report, providing the global incident data for the last three years. It identifies new trends and highlights issues in the three most violent contexts for aid workers at present: Sudan (Darfur), Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Download the Brief from Reliefweb.

Alertnet: New HIV/TB research centre at KZN University

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa will host a new research centre dedicated to exploring ways of controlling the HIV/tuberculosis co-epidemic.

Read more on Alertnet.

IASC Annual Report 2008

The first IASC report produced for the wider humanitarian sector, and includes items on:

• 'Humanitarian reform - no longer a trend, but the way we work'
• 'Discussions on humanitarian space with DPKO'
• the Early Recovery cluster

Download the report from Reliefweb.

Disasters virtual edition: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

This virtual issue brings together articles on the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, preparedness for it and efforts of the affected people, civil society, governments and international agencies to provide immediate relief and gradually rebuild.

Articles include:

• Measuring revealed and emergent vulnerabilities of coastal communities to tsunami in Sri Lanka - Jorn Birkmann, Nishara Fernando
• Effects of the tsunami on fisheries and coastal livelihood: a case study of tsunami-ravaged southern Sri Lanka -D.A.M. De Silva, Masahiro Yamao
• Ethnicity, politics and inequality: post-tsunami humanitarian aid delivery in Ampara District, Sri Lanka -M.W. Amarasiri de Silva
• Tsunami mortality and displacement in Aceh province, Indonesia -Abdur Rofi, Shannon Doocy, Courtland Robinson
• The international humanitarian system and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis -John Telford, John Cosgrave
• Implementing cash for work programmes in post-tsunami Aceh: experiences and lessons learned - Shannon Doocy, Michael Gabriel, Sean Collins, Courtland Robinson, Peter Steve

Read the edition online.

ICRC: Water and War

This publication looks at certain key issues associated with water and sanitation in countries that are afflicted by armed conflict and where the ICRC is at work. The challenges are analysed from the point of view of the operational practice that has developed and become more professional as the years have gone by. The global changes referred to above will determine new avenues and solutions to be pursued to ensure that the ICRC’s response is still appropriate to the needs of the people affected by future conflicts.

The key issues include health, displacement, detention, urbanization and natural disasters.

The report is available for download from Reliefweb.