Gypsy and Traveller evictions continue at Hovefields

This from the activist list in support of Dale Farm; sadly evidence of exactly the kinds of evictions which damage health and leave lasting scars.

Everybody is feeling very bruised after the Hovefields eviction and the two instant police evictions under s61 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 around Gardiners Lane, which were done in jackboot fashion without the least mercy.

No attempt was made by the Essex police officers, led by Sgt Gordan acting under orders from Chief Insp.Schofield, to ascertain the circumstances of those he intended to evict, first from a car-park and the second time from a derelict garden where a house is awaiting demolition.

Among those forced to move at short notice - thirty minutes at Gardiners Way - were a pregnant mother, a boy with learning difficulties and a number of small children who had already undergone the trauma of seeing their homes bulldozed at Hovefields.

Meanwhile, further 28-day Notices of eviction may be served at any time on the few people still remaining at Hovefields, and on the 80 families at Dale Farm.

A bitter lesson from Hovefields is that sheer lack of paperwork prevented solicitors intervening to stop the destruction.

Direct action: If you are in Southend this week, please rally outside the County Court on Thursday 16th, when cases to be heard will test whether Basildon has fulfilled its duty under the Housing Act by offering bad-condition flats to Traveller families who have made it clear they cannot tolerate house-dwelling and simply want a place to station the trailer caravans and mobile-homes they own.

In London, cases relating to the Hovefields clearances are coming up in the High Court on 22 and 24 September. Again we are calling upon supporters to demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand on these dates.

Letter to my MP - Gypsies and Travellers

This is not a good time to be a member of the UK's most disenfranchised and misunderstood ethnic minority. In a letter to the Guardian in June 2010, a long list of academics, broadcasters, and a planning official wrote:

Already the government has reversed progressive policies giving incentives for local authorities to develop Gypsy and Traveller sites, by cuts announced in the Housing and Communities Agency budget, cancelling all next year's bids for sites. The Conservatives announced plans to scrap planning and housing circulars which have started to give Gypsies and Travellers a "level playing field" in planning disputes with local authorities and planning inspectors. According to Eric Pickles, they want to revive the "Gypsy law" of criminal trespass. This discriminatory law was derided when Michael Howard campaigned on it in 2005.Detailed research has identified targets for sites for Gypsies and Travellers, and yards for showmen. Many have been agreed with local authorities and progress was starting to be made. After years of inaction on sites a cumulative need has built up. The situation now is worse than ever and will only get worse without new provision.

My MP, Conservative Mark Pawsey, has stepped up recently to offer his thoughts on this incredibly complex, entrenched and sensitive issue. Below is the text of the email I've just written to him. I've also put in an FOI request to Warwickshire County Council, asking for more information about site provision in Warwickshire - I'll report back, and may follow up with the same request to Rugby Borough Council - which, by the way, has a Conservative majority, and as I note below, has still expressed concern at the impact of the cuts.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Dear Mr Pawsey

I write following your recent comments in the Westminster Hall debate on Unauthorised Encampments of the 8^th September, 2010. Your statement displayed a failure to acknowledge, and perhaps a lack of understanding of, the challenges facing Gypsies and Travellers in the UK and the lives that have already been needlessly lost. It certainly appeared as if you were failing to represent those of your constituents who are themselves Gypsies and Travellers, or who support their right to pursue their legally recognised traditional way of life.

Due to government legislation, planning restrictions and sale of public land, the number of safe and legal stopping places for Gypsies and Travellers have been dramatically reduced. Gypsy families therefore often have to prioritise finding appropriate places to stop over attending preventative medical appointments such as smear tests and pre- and postnatal checks. A Department of Health study from 2004 found that coping with eviction, discrimination and poor living conditions is seen by Gypsies as being a primary cause of ill-health, particularly among women, facing the massive challenges of raising children ‘in situations where there may be no running water, shared toilets, leaking roofs and no washing machine’.

Due to widespread and persistent racism, particularly among support staff, and suspicion of conventional medicine, Gypsies and Travellers are more likely to see easy-access or peripatetic medical staff than to establish a relationship with 'the GP, practice nurse, a counsellor, chiropodist, dentist, optician, or alternative medical workers’. Thus they often do not understand or access their entitlements to preventative medicine such as childhood immunisations, antenatal checks and smear tests, and may put off seeking healthcare advice, or may under-use or discard prescriptions and medication.

As a result, medical conditions which can easily be controlled go unmonitored and unmedicated, or else medication is not reviewed and any side effects are not followed up. Gypsies are proven to suffer disproportionally from illness associated with poverty and poor living conditions, such as asthma, chest infections, heart disease, and disability, smoking and alcohol-related illnesses.

For Gypsy women these inequalities have severe consequences. The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in 2002 found that of the disproportionately high number of Gypsy mothers who died during the period of study, almost all died either directly due to substandard care or as a result of associated problems. Their children are also at risk. Although the Department of Health found similar levels of common problems such as morning sickness, pre-term birth, breech presentation, or post-natal depression, miscarriage and Caesarean delivery were more common among Gypsy women. Incredibly, 17.6% of Gypsy and Traveller women studied had experienced the death of a child, compared with 0.9% of the comparators. Gypsy infants were found to have ‘low birth weight, low immunisation uptake and high child accident rate’, and there was a markedly high incidence of stillbirths.

In the case of Gypsy and Traveller mothers and babies, it is clear that the 'cycle of enforced nomadism' and lack of government leadership has lead to unnecessary deaths – and this is just one small area of policy. In this context, it is irresponsible and short-sighted to support public authorities in a knee-jerk, populist approach to retrospective Gypsy and Traveller planning applications without taking account of, and engaging with the wider problem. Rugby Borough Council has itself expressed concern at the impacts of the cuts and scrapping of targets implemented by the Coalition Government.

I urge you to take the earliest opportunity to outline how you will support a balanced and responsible approach to this issue, in all its complexity. I particularly recommend reading the 2004 Department of Health Study by Van Cleemput and Parry. I would also be delighted to brief you personally, at your convenience, if this would be helpful.

Yours sincerely

Laura Hudson

Academic paywalls, and mobile technology in conflict-affected states - there's more than you think

I'm blogging from the World Bank's Innovation Fair: Moving Beyond Conflict in Cape Town, South Africa. In presenting a bit about FrontlineSMS and some thoughts on SMS in conflict, I referenced an article from Development In Practice, 'Challenging conventional views on mobile-telecommunications investment: evidence from conflict zones' (Agnieszka Konkel & Richard Heek Volume 19, Issue 3 May 2009, pages 414 - 420). Lots of thoughtful nods when I was talking, so I thought I'd put up a link and some of the findings.

The paper argues that the accepted pillars of a good 'investment climate' - 'security and stability, finance and infrastructure, workers and labour markets, and the regulatory framework and tax' - underpinned by 'good, stable governance' may not, in fact, be prerequisites for investment in mobile telephony. Afghanistan, DRC and Somalia, three countries with poor governance indicators, all show rapid mobile penetration growth rates between 2001 and 2006. Tentatively, they conclude that these figures are due to foreign investment, and possibly to individuals prioritising mobiles over other needs:

'...insecure countries are places of great uncertainty, and uncertainty pushes up the value of information. Thus citizens will be willing to invest a greater than average level of their income on information and communication technologies, particularly those – like mobile phones – which can help to provide just the kind of information (safe/unsafe locations, approaching dangers, places to find scarce commodities, etc.) that addresses their main uncertainties.'

Interesting implications for using mobiles and other information-sharing tools in conflict - and certainly fertile ground for future research. If you can get a copy of this short and useful article, it's well worth a read.

A Short Rant

A perennial complaint of mine is that so much excellent analysis and thinking - from conceptual thinking that could change our whole approach to aid and development, to deeply practical hazard prediction and mapping - is locked up in academic prose and, fatally, behind paywalls. David Steven on Global Dashboard wrote about this recently. Academic journals perform a vital function, but the ridiculous costs make the articles in them absolutely inaccessible to many in NGOs. The result: good work going to waste, and work on the ground and in offices in capitals all over the world not benefitting from the combined wisdom of the world's academics. Some examples of great free-to-air content:

• the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute
• the International Review of the Red Cross
• the Public Library of Science - PLoS.org (thanks to @EvieBrowne for the link).

Any more for any more?

SCHR: Updated position paper on civil-military relations

SCHR have revised and updated their position paper on Civil Military relations, first written in 2001 and updated in 2004, and have produced a very readable survey of the state of the debate. The paper:

'...looks primarily at how SCHR agencies consider relations with armed forces in situations of armed conflict, or natural disasters taking place in contested environments. This paper contributes to the current debate on humanitarian-military relations and fosters a better understanding of the respective roles and the necessity for humanitarian actors to commit to the positions elaborated herein. It is intended to inform and guide the internal policies and practical guidance of SCHR agencies.'

Read more on Reliefweb.

Getting into aid work: dos and don'ts for internships for organisations and hopeful entrants

I'm about to leave my first (or second, depending on how you count it) job at a large humanitarian aid organisation after three years. In that time I've had many conversations about the rights and wrongs of internships - whether or not they are useful, for the organisation and the individual; who benefits the most; whether they are ethical.

Then the other day, this article surfaced on my Twitter feed, arguing that making internship a critical element of getting into politics effectively restricts the field to the affluent. Hmm, I said. Same thing in aid work - you have to be young and unencumbered, or you can't do the internships and low-paid admin jobs that get you your first 'proper' job. Understandably, I got called on it - it is possible to get field-work positions which enable you to live a fairly nice lifestyle even at a low level. But when I'm talking about is pretty much the standard route recommended to many eager graduates from degree courses on aid and development in the UK, even by me. What follows is a personal take on this route, the pros and cons, and how to make it the best experience it can be for both aid agency and willing skivvy.

Why do an internship?

It's true, it's the best starting point I know of, barring outrageous luck or the money and chutzpah required to move out to Country X, and bang on doors until someone gives you a job because you're there and it's easy. The other alternative, by the way, is to get qualified as an accountant or a logistician or an engineer or a plumber and then work your way across laterally. But I'm assuming you're me, three years ago - newly graduated, with a theory-focussed degree under your belt and a headful of critical questions and fascinating debate, but no experience.

What an internship won't do: get you into the field. It's not magic. It will not of you an experienced aid worker make. It is the red pill that keeps you inside an aid agency office long enough to work out what happens there. Play your cards right and an internship, ladies and gentlemen, will get you your first admin job in an aid agency. This, by they way, is the way to get into aid work. It's unfair and a scandalous waste of your brilliance, but there it is.

Make the most of it:

• At interview, if the tasks aren't clear from the outset, clarify what you'll be doing. A good internship will mean you're treated like an employee - you should have a line manager and regular one-to-ones. Push to have specific projects, something you can stick your name on and put on your CV.
• Be realistic - organisations need extra pairs of hands for what can be totally naff jobs. Suck it up, Princess. You can learn from almost any working experience, be it organising lunch for a meeting or event (ask to sit in the corner! offer to write up the note!), going through boxes of old papers (pinch unwanted articles and books!), analysing data (a vital skill) and writing summaries of programmes.
• Many internship schemes offer proper training, including inductions on the organisation structure and ethos. Take advantage of this. Understanding the basics of the humanitarian aid system, such as the difference between international organisations, NGOs, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement makes you sound professional and knowledgeable and can make a real difference later. And first aid training is always handy. Grab it with both hands.
• Similarly, take advantage of any opportunity you have to learn. You can't fail to pick up terminology and an understanding of how things work on the ground (i.e. what you can't get from a degree) if you keep your ears and eyes open and read every document that passes through your inbox whether it's relevant to your duties or not. Focus on real narrative accounts of programmes: evaluations, trip reports, and the like, rather than strategy or policy documents - they might give a bigger picture but on their own they won't give you anything you can't get on the internet.
• That said, be informed. Find out which geographical and thematic areas are key for your adopted organisation and start following relevant news on IRIN and Reliefweb. A scan of the headlines and reading one or two articles in the morning will do wonders for your knowledgeable expression at team meetings. The more savvy you seem, the better the work you'll get.
• Apropos: lingo matters. Acronyms and buzzwords are the curse of every industry but they are crucial to your credibility. Understand the org chart and the shorthand people are using and it will gain you respect.
• Make contacts and use, but don't abuse them. It's great to have the organisation on your CV and someone with a proper job title to put down as a referee (don't forget to ask!). But don't abuse it - regular emails asking for work will put people off. You want them to remember you if you ever go back to them for a job, and not in the bad way.
• If you see an opportunity to apply for an admin role within the team or the wider organisation, do go for it. The path of least resistance is very attractive to agencies who are always under tremendous pressure, and someone with experience of the organisation who can start immediately will often trump someone who might beat you to the job on an equal footing. Make no mistake - the admin job is the first step towards something meatier.
• While you're at it, get some experience of travel in developing countries. It won't make you employable on its own, but it does show passion and interest and is the only argument I can think of for the sort of paid volunteering scheme Alanna Shaikh rightly despises. When the time comes for you to apply for support jobs where you'll be more involved with programmes, it'll show that you're competent and safe to travel in difficult places.

Agencies - don't be evil.

Interns are good cannon fodder, it's true - free and fifty of them queuing out the door for every job. But they are people too, so be nice:

• Do a proper advert and recruitment process. Good practice, good experience for them, and you will get the cream of the crop. On spec CVs and people's friends' children might be good, but opening it up to the field means you'll get someone great.
• Make it possible for people without a trust fund. Pay reasonable travel and lunch expenses, and don't require full-time hours and extended commitments. A three-day week for three months is absolutely do-able even for London - you can cover your three unpaid days with four days of bar work and still pay the rent for three months.
• Build a job description around general support and admin (and be clear about this at interview), but add one central project they can get their teeth into and include on their CV. As long as they knew what they were getting into, it's fine to give them administrative and repetitive work. The intern should be aiming for an admin job in the sector, so they will need to prove they can do this kind of work.
• Don't use them for the wrong jobs. If you have an endless procession of interns doing mapping and coordination work, say, others in your workplace will get frustrated that their are continually briefing beginners, and you'll be missing an opportunity to give something meaty to your admin staff, who (make no mistake) know the place backwards.
• Admit them to organisational induction programmes and normal training and learning events - inexpensive and a good perk for the intern.Make sure they know exactly who their line manager is, and make them approachable. Managing interns is a good fillip for first- and second-jobbers too, as it adds personnel management to their list of experiences. But do the odd review yourself so you know how the relationship is going.
• Finally, a pet hate. Some organisations have rolling internships for support jobs which other organisations would run as a permanent position. This isn't fair to the project or the people. If there are real responsibilities and long hours, and they'll be in trouble if they don't deliver, it's a salaried role.

So what did I miss? Any other tips and rants, leave them in the comments and we can all have a row about this.

Web101: RSS Feeds

I know you love this blog. Here you are, after all. You may picture me slaving over a hot laptop all night, scouring the internet for all this fun stuff... but no. In fact, the news is delivered to my laptop as it's published.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. (WhatisRSS)

There are two options for how to use them every day:

1. Bookmark a feed, either in your bookmarks toolbar or your normal bookmarks folder, so you can glance at the list every now and then, or
2. Use an RSS feed reader like Feeddemon (PC), NetNewsWire (Mac), Reeder (iPhone) orViigo (Blackberry). These options allow you to download your feeds ahead of time, browse articles wherever you are, and save any you want to go back to later.

Here's my magic bumper humanitarian policy fun feed to get you started. Enjoy!

WEF proposes 'new vulnerability and protection business model'

From the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Humanitarian Assistance:

The first requirement of this new business model is a comprehensive risk framework. We often find ourselves having to engage in an enterprise of risk management with incomplete information about how things will unfold. Such uncertainties are only being exacerbated by the impacts of climate change. We must plan to be ready for events for which we cannot plan.
The second requirement is to rework the balance between crisis response and the upstream and downstream issues of prevention and recovery. More resources are needed both to reduce risk in the first place, and reduce the risk of relapse after a crisis occurs.

The default mode of the current humanitarian model in general is external assistance; the default mode of a new vulnerability and protection model should be self-reliance. The third requirement of this new model is to enhance the capacities, readiness and resilience of exposed societies so they can better handle extreme events. Ensuring that civil society and local communities are involved will not only make response efforts faster, but more efficient as their involvement will make it possible to identify and meet the diverse needs of various groups in affected communities, groups differentiated, for example, by gender, age, and social class.

The fourth requirement is to engage the private sector more fully, not just as a source of donations but also as a source of key skills and technologies, during and after crises. We commend the World Economic Forum’s initiative on the private sector in humanitarian relief as well as other efforts to incentivise appropriate and beneficial private-sector investments in risky regions.

The fifth requirement of the business model is to link the humanitarian concern to broader development issues, strengthening social safety nets and supporting resilience. This requirement will necessitate unprecedented collaboration between humanitarian and development actors and interests.

Finally, as cross-border challenges will grow, regional organisations backed by the UN will need to be able to mediate and mitigate these problems as they arise.

Download the full report.

Global Humanitarian Assistance: Update February 2010

GHA have released an update on their GHA report. The series aims to

present simple and objective statistical information on humanitarian financing for people involved in humanitarian aid policy, programming and performance. The goal is a shared evidence base that people can use in their planning and policy work to ensure better outcomes for the women, men and children whose lives are affected by humanitarian crises.

UPDATED: Tufts/HFP: Humanitarian Horizons - a practitioners guide to the future

UPDATED 18.02.10: IRIN highlights guidance on responding to urban emergencies:
Other than urban earthquake preparedness, humanitarian agencies have not yet focused on emergency response in urban centres. The authors of the guide offer tips to humanitarian agencies in this new environment:

1) Programming has to shift from being rural-focused, so humanitarians will now have to reach out to urban planners for effective urban programming

2) Build a knowledge base identifying the differences between urban and rural programmes

3) Re-identify and reprioritize groups most at risk

4) Use of technologies such as cell phone banking and microcredit to deliver aid in an urban context

5) Ensure the creation of better linkages between city and town authorities, and strengthen delivery systems

The blurb:

The Guide "is an attempt to help humanitarian aid agencies look a generation into the future to begin making the necessary changes now to their thinking and organization, to ensure that they continue to deliver the right assistance and protection to the right people in the right ways.

The Humanitarian Horizons project is a futures capacity-building initiative intended to assist the humanitarian sector prepare for the complexities of the future by enabling organizations to enhance their anticipatory and adaptive capacities. Launched in October 2008, the project builds on HFP's analyses of changing dimensions of future crisis drivers, and makes more practical the exploratory futures research conducted under the Feinstein Center's 2004 Ambiguity and Change project.'

Read on! at the Tufts website.

CRED: Disaster data for 2009

In 2009, 328 natural disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database. They killed more than 10 thousand people, affected nearly 113 million others and caused almost 35 billion US$ of economic damages.

No mega-disasters occurred in 2009, the event ranking highest in death toll being the earthquake in Indonesia on September 30 which killed over 1,100 people, followed by a series of typhoons and floods that caused many deaths, making Asia once again the most affected continent. In fact, six of the top ten countries with the highest number of disaster-related deaths were in Asia. However, when looking at the top 10 countries in terms of number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, the Islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga topped the list.

Compared to previous years (2000-2008), there is a reduction in 2009 in disaster mortality with 10,443 killed, which is below the annual average of 85,541; as well as the number of affected, with 112.8 million compared to the annual average of 230.4 million. In terms of economic impacts, disasters costs were also below the 93.8 billion 2000-2008 annual average and were mainly attributed to winter storm Klaus which hit France and Spain in January (5.1 billion US$), the L’Aquila earthquake in Italy in April (2.5 billion US$) and a tornado in the United States in February (2.5 billion US$).

Read more on Reliefweb.

ALNAP: posted Guide to Real-time evaluations of humanitarian action

This pilot guide is intended to help both evaluation managers and team leaders in commissioning, overseeing and conducting real-time evaluations of humanitarian operational responses. Drawing on a synthesis of existing good practices, it is intended as a flexible resource that can be adapted to a variety of contexts.

This guide concentrates on RTEs undertaken in first phase of an emergency response – where the RTE fieldwork takes place within a few months of the start of the response. This is because such RTEs pose particular problems for both the evaluation manager and the evaluation team. RTEs that take place later on in the response are closer to ex-post humanitarian evaluations, but this guide also addresses how such RTEs can feed into ongoing operations.

The focus of this guide is therefore on what is distinctive about humanitarian RTEs. It does not offer advice on evaluation methodologies in general, but on specific aspects of methodology which make RTEs unique and different. Nevertheless some of the advice will apply to all evaluations and not just to RTEs. This is motivated partly by the authors’ observations of areas of weakness in existing evaluations.

Download the guide on the ALNAP website.

IRIN: Afghanistan: A tight squeeze on humanitarian space

“In the south, south-east and east, isolated reports were received regarding government officials being forced to bribe insurgent commanders in order to facilitate the continued operation of schools and allow for the implementation of certain development projects. This highlights the heightened ability of the insurgents to exert their authority and influence over the implementation of development activities,” the UN Secretary-General said in a report to the Security Council in December 2009.

Laurent Sailard, director of ACBAR, a consortium of over 100 Afghan and foreign NGOs, said aid workers must not make payments to insurgents for security, access or safe passage.

“Buying a passage for humanitarian convoys or access is a bad strategy with long-term negative impacts. Demands could increase, and if not satisfied could lead to increasing threats. It is a never-ending process that always leads to the worst,” he said, adding that aid workers had to ensure access and security through acceptance among local communities and impartial dialogue with belligerent parties."

Movement policy is not to use armed escorts but gain access by negotiating and being accepted by all parties to a conflict.

Read the rest of the article on the IRIN website and read more on the Movement's position here.

Tufts: Humanitarian Horizons: A Practitioners’ Guide to the Future

The Guide merges the projections of global change highlighted by four earlier research papers, with the futures perspectives of operational agencies. The result is an attempt to help humanitarian aid agencies look a generation into the future to begin making the necessary changes now to their thinking and organization, to ensure that they continue to deliver the right assistance and protection to the right people in the right ways.

Download the Guide from the Tufts website.

FT: Syrian economy risks wilting in severe drought

A drought in Syria has ‘drastically effected’ 1.3m people in the rural north and north-east of the country, according to a UN report. Despite government attempts to downplay the problem, 40,000-60,000 families have been forced to migrate.

Read more on the FT website.

UNHCR: Safeguarding humanitarian space

Nonetheless, not all humanitarian actors are in agreement that humanitarian space is in fact shrinking. During the Cold War many conflict-affected areas (such as parts of Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique) were off-limits to aid workers. The diversion and manipulation of aid has also been a perennial feature of the operating landscape. What has changed is the nature of the challenges to principled humanitarian action, underpinned by significant shifts in the global political and security context.

Read more on Reliefweb.

UPDATED for 2010: Humanitarian trends and futures

The Ministry of Defence's Global Strategic Trends Programme has published their biannual survey. It's pretty pessimistic stuff, but there's a good executive summary.

For completeness, here's last year's list of trend-scanning papers and places that caught our eye:

• The Sigma Scan - 'evidence of the future'
• Outsights on the 21 drivers for the 21st century
• US Global trends report
• Jeffrey Sachs in the Guardian on the water wars
• Humanitarian Futures Project Global Trends Workbook 2008
• Humanitarian trends and dilemmas: Tony Vaux' article in Development in Practice
  

Updated: ALNAP State of the System report is out

Bringing together much of the work done by ALNAP since the tsunami, this first pilot report provides a baseline and working methodology which will be built upon and improved in subsequent iterations.

Download the report from the ALNAP website. Although there is an excellent executive summary, a quick run-down of the key points follows in the full post.

Aims of the report: Provide a system-level mapping and assessment of international humanitarian assistance over the last two years according to key criteria. Includes new, previously unavailable descriptive statistics and highlights some new initiatives in policy and practice.

Areas of focus: Operational performance of the ‘formal international humanitarian system’, focussing on emergencies involving international agencies and an appeal for international assistance. Limitations: did not eventually cover national, local and community-based organisations and does not measure beneficiary-level impacts.
Key findings:

• the international system has grown in staff size by an average annual rate of 6% over the past decade, and has reached a population of roughly 211,000 humanitarian workers in the field.
• In 2008, some $6.6 billion was contributed by donors directly to international emergency response efforts, and the combined humanitarian expenditures of aid organisations on overseas programme activities totalled around $12.8 billion.
• In terms of performance, findings indicate an overall positive trend in areas having to do with the internal workings of the humanitarian system – such as coordination mechanisms, funding vehicles and needs assessment tools – while at the same time some fundamental issues, such as leadership and the system’s engagement with and accountability to beneficiaries, remained weak. The findings thus depict a system steadily and incrementally improving its own internal mechanics and technical performance, while remaining deficient in some big picture requirements for effectiveness.

Findings against the OECD DAC review assessment criteria:

Coverage/sufficiency: still insufficient as despite growing sector and rise in funding, needs have also gone up. Nonetheless coverage is improving over time - over 85% of total stated requirements met in 2007 and 2008, compared with 81% in 2006 and only 67% in 2005. Declining in some contexts due to insecurity or host government restrictions. In the most contested environments, insecurity for aid workers has increased markedly.

Relevance/appropriateness: Quality of needs assessments still seen as a weakness, but have improved with a majority of respondents reporting adequate inter-agency needs assessments in their contexts and wider breadth of types of programming improving flexibility. However evaluations and beneficiary consultations show common instances of multiple assessments without sufficient follow-up. Beneficiaries continue to be inadequately consulted and involved in assessments and subsequent programme design. Prioritisation is improved but may be proliferating with too many parallel processes appearing.

Effectiveness: Responses are more timely thanks to significant agency investment in standby capacity and new mechanisms (e.g CERF). Growing attempt to better link humanitarian and development actors with disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts and to increase investments in DRR. Overall, coordination seen to improve with introduction of Cluster Approach and positive views about the value of clusters outnumbered negative ones. But leadership was a noted weakness - the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) system needs strengthening. Other coordination trends highlighted included a growing role for regional bodies (e.g. ASEAN) and agency consortia. Monitoring identified as a continuing weakness. HR improvements (in capacity, quality, and professionalism) were encouraging but Many agencies made real efforts to increase investment in operational capacity and quality of human resources. Improvements in professionalism of humanitarian staff noted, but high staff turnover and a need to invest more in national staff development. There are also growing capacities on the part of national governments to meet the needs of their own citizens in times of disaster in many contexts, which requires greater consideration in advance of launching response efforts.

Connectedness: An unmitigated scarcity of investment in local and national capacities was a repeated theme, as were concerns with the top-down tendencies of the system and the risk of undermining local capacities. However, there are also signs of improvement in how international agencies work with local humanitarian actors, with the survey finding a majority of respondents felt efforts at capacity building had increased in the past two to three years. A clear momentum around need for greater downward accountability and participation, and a growing number of examples of investments in feedback and complaint mechanisms and greater transparency, which benefits programmes.

Efficiency: Efficiency issues, including the risks of corruption, continue to be relatively neglected in literature/evaluations of humanitarian action, although Transparency International is developing an anti-corruption toolkit. -Widespread concern about overhead and programme support costs, particularly in relation to new financial mechanisms. People also noted, however, that constant drive to minimise administrative costs was leading to chronic under-investment in key capacities that could serve to improve performance. Arguably too great a focus on driving down admin costs.

Coherence: focus on: i) whether core humanitarian principles, international humanitarian law (IHL) and refugee law were being respected in humanitarian programming - a real challenge with a noted lack of respect for IHL and the principles in many recent conflicts and integrated or 'whole of government' approaches threatening humanitarian space - both requiring renewed advocacy efforts and more principled action by agencies, and ii) consistency in objectives and actions for protection and for advancing the crosscutting issues of illness, age, gender and disability which are hard to keep sight of once 'mainstreamed'. Improved guidance and awareness but confusion about the concept of protection and who has responsibility. There has been criticism of the quality of protection work, including the deployment of inexperienced staff, breaches of confidentiality of affected populations and inconsistent knowledge and application of relevant laws.

If you read one thing this week: excellent summary of Dead Aid

If anyone, like me, has been curious about the kerfuffle raised by Dambisa Moyo's book on ODA, 'Dead Aid', but not sufficiently time-rich or interested to read the whole thing, then take two minutes to digest this very useful summary. Excellent for bumping up your conference small talk.

iRevolution: The Role of Live Skype Chats in the Disaster Response in Haiti

Fascinating post for the geekily inclined, or those interested in how we're using Skype in emergencies and general communication.

Ben Ramalingam's new blog: aid on the edge of chaos

Ben of ALNAP fame now writes a blog in a personal capacity which has grown out of his forthcoming book on complexity science and aid. He kindly flagged this article, which looks at the intersection between natural disasters, and socially constructed patterns of vulnerability. This work can be applied in examining colliding trends and patterns to try to better predict and prepare for disasters.

Enjoy!

Transparency International: Preventing Corruption in humanitarian operations

Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations: A Handbook of Good Practices offers a menu of best practice tools for preventing and detecting corruption in humanitarian operations that includes ways to track resources, confront extortion and detect aid diversion. The handbook, part of TI’s broader work to stop corruption in humanitarian assistance, covers policies and procedures for transparency, integrity and accountability, and specific corruption risks, such as supply chain management and accounting.

Download the handbook using the links above.

UPDATED 01.02.10 Afghanistan: The London Conference and Yemen meeting

This post will be updated as new news comes in.

• 01.02.10: Final bit of analysis from Daniel Gerstle at Change.org
• 01.02.10: Afghan women urge NATO to remain in Afghanistan long enough to ensure that the Karzai administration will not fall to the Taleban
  
• 01.02.10: Fuller statement from the UK Government now available on Reliefweb.
  
• 28.01.10: Analysis and predictions of a new settlement which will bring the Taleban into government in Afghanistan. Much disquiet from human rights groups and other commentators at the prospect of rehabilitating perpetrators of human rights abuses.
  
• 27.01.10: Reuters reports on the Yemen meeting today, apparently hastily called after a Yemen-based terrorist group claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas US plane bomb. Apparently:

Wednesday's meeting, which brings together the Group of Eight world powers, Yemen's neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, is designed to give a strong signal of support to Yemen, while pushing for economic development and reform. The European Union, United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) will also be represented.

Given the attendees and stated focus, this seems a very Washington Consensus approach - no sign that the plight of the displaced in Yemen will be discussed.


• 27.01.10: Seven NGOs reiterate the negative impact of the militarisation of aid in Afghanistan and urge the London Conference to rethink the increasing tendency of international foreign policy to link development and security activities
  
• 27.01.10: ICRC urges all parties to work to minimise the impact of conflict in Afghanistan on civilians
  
• 26.01.10: IRIN: Humanitarian aid is not something the military can do
  
• 26.01.10: ICRC describes Yemen as 'a serious humanitarian crisis in the making'
  
• 25.01.10: Don't forget Yemen - an additional meeting will be held on Wednesday. Alertnet looks at possible outcomes of both conferences.
  
• 25.01.10: Reuters reports on the draft communique on the future of Afghanistan which includes 'a "framework" for turning the country's security over to Afghan forces' beginning this year, commits Afghanistan to setting up 'an organization to "reach out to insurgents," and the international community to ...channeling more of their aid through the Afghan government and providing debt relief to Kabul.'

Douglas Alexander responds to Madeleine Bunting on the militarisation of aid

My department has every reason to work in countries affected by conflict – not because aid has been "subordinated to achieve military objectives", or even because "poverty causes conflict", but rather because conflict causes poverty. Half of all children out of school today live in countries affected by conflict, and half of all children who die before the age of five were born in fragile states.

Read more on the Guardian's website. Madeleine Bunting's op-ed is available here.

Resilient global institutions

A new report, 'Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalisation: Risk, Resilience and International Order', by Alex Evans and David Stevens of Global Dashboard for the Brookings Institute, has been highlighted by the Economist:

The 2010s, it is sometimes said, will be an age of scarcity. The warning signs of change are said to be the food-price spike of 2007-08, the bid by China and others to grab access to oil, iron ore and farmland and the global recession. The main problems of scarcity are water and food shortages, demographic change and state failure. How will that change politics?

...what is needed is not merely institutional tinkering but a different frame of mind. Governments, they say, should think more in terms of reducing risk and increasing resilience to shocks than about boosting sovereign power. This is because they think power may not be the best way for states to defend themselves against a new kind of threat: the sort that comes not from other states but networks of states and non-state actors, or from the unintended consequences of global flows of finance, technology and so on.

The report's conclusions are summarised in a blog post by Alex:

Creating new analytical mechanisms for creating shared awareness about shared risks. E.g. the IPCC provides crucial analysis of the problem of climate change – but there’s no equivalent on the solution.

Improving the ‘bandwidth’ of the G20. E.g. by strengthening Sherpa mechanisms, and building links between the G20 and formal institutions, thus improving the range of policy options going to heads.

Setting up a ‘red team’ in the international system that has the job of exploring risks and challenging policymakers on whether enough is being done to manage them – similar to the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency in the US, which has the job of “preventing surprise”.

Changing how governments organize and deliver foreign policy. We argue that all governments will need to spend more money on managing global risks, and do more to integrate the different elements of foreign policy (aid, diplomacy, military).

Read more on Global Dashboard.

Updated 28.01.10: Ushahidi - social media and the Haiti response

Updated 28.01.2010: This New Scientist article praises the contribution made by crowdsourced data to search and rescue and needs mapping.

More on social media in humanitarian aid in another post, but wanted to put up a link to this initiative:

Ushahidi use information sourced from emails, texts and tweets to map events such as the recent tensions in Kampala, and the current needs in Haiti. People can text a number from Haiti, or internationally, or report events directly on the Ushahihi website, and volunteers code the responses onto a map. Some reports are verified and some not (the value of crowd-sourced information is a hot debate, as you can read here) but the result is compelling and to many on the ground, useful.



Read more about Ushahidi here, or look at the map as it currently stands here.

Haiti: agency instrospection

An incisive and thought-provoking post from Tales from the Hood, operational in Haiti:

In the first two weeks it was about visibility while the cameras were rolling. Getting your agency’s sign or T-shirted horde of volunteers in the background or foreground was the media game. But now it’s about reeling in big chunks of the real funding from the real donors. The real feeding frenzy has begun.

...Several NGOs will get their foothold in Haiti and possibly the world by playing their cards right in this emergency response. Many will remember this earthquake response as a time of winning grants and thinking through Civ/Mil issues and handling large quantities of stuff.

Read more on the Tales from the Hood blog.

Updated: Yemen meeting in London, 27.01.10

Update: Guardian article expresses approval that the meeting 'didn't get too preoccupied with al-Qaida and recognised that the country faces "many urgent problems" (to put it mildly) which are inter-related and need to be tackled across a broad front.'

The Yemen meeting, held on the eve of a major conference on Afghanistan with many foreign policy heavyweights present, deserves its own post.

Before the meeting, the Foreign Secretary and Development Secretary set out their aims in a piece for the al-Hayat website - the focus is clearly on long-term stability, seeking to build the

'Government’s capacity, help it to take forward political and economic reform, and deliver services and jobs to its citizens. In our view, this is the best way to help the people of Yemen get the basic opportunities they deserve, which will, in turn, help address the drivers of instability and conflict.'

A statement by the Foreign Secretary on the outcomes of the meeting broadly confirmed this focus, and announced the beginning of a Friends of Yemen process.

These statements do not mention the humanitarian impacts of the current unrest, or point to any increased efforts to address them, as Care International called for on Tuesday.

BAAG conference on Afghanistan

Ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan on the 28th January, the British Agencies in Afghanistan Group held a one-day conference at Canada House on the 26th January to contribute an Afghan perspective. Invited speakers included Afghan NGO staff, MPs, and activists, as well as UK-based experts and NGO speakers. Discussions broadly focussed on security and government, although several speakers raised the rights and voices of Afghan women, strikingly absent from the London Conference photo-call. Video from the conference is still to come. Daniel Gerstle of Change.org reflected on a day that had seen nothing very new announced or debated, and asked fellow attendees for concrete recommendations.

Sierra Leone supplies security contractors to Iraq

A report that a British PSC is employing ex-combatants from Sierra Leone in Iraq on a salary of $250 a month plus free training, room and board - just under ten times what they would earn at home but a fraction of the salary a Western security worker can command in Iraq, which can be in the region of $100k.

Haiti round up for Wednesday 27.01.10

• Barbara Stocking of OXFAM has an article in the Times urging the private sector to abide by three principles if they become involved in reconstruction in Haiti; using local human and building resources; integrating infrastructure and services with government services to avoid setting up parallel systems; and consulting effectively with central and local officials, and the population, to avoid worsening political uncertainty.
  
• OXFAM releases a policy paper on reconstruction in Haiti, as Duncan Green posts more mainstream reflections on Reuters
  
• FEWSNet releases a note on the impact of the earthquake on food security in Haiti
• The US and UN have released 'principles of coordination' pledging to coordinate their activities 'in support of the government of Haiti'.
• The Communicating with Disaster-Affected Communities (CDAC) initiative is operational in Haiti and coordinated by MINUSTAH - they have released up-to-date information on mechanisms and an ops update.
• The Guardian offers a gorgeous and fascinating visualisation of aid pledged for Haiti compared with other disasters, courtesy of InformationisBeautiful.net

UPDATED: Shrinking costs of war?

UPDATE 26.01.10: Change.org's Daniel Gerstle looks at the sampling methods behind the statistics.

Quite a lot of discussion of the new Human Security Report [links to pdf], which revises down some of the estimated numbers killed in conflicts such as the civil war in the Congo and argues that actually, conflict is less deadly than it used to be. The International Rescue Committee disagrees, and Bill Schabas thinks it's all very interesting. Reuters explains why the numbers matter.

Meanwhile, Reuters also reports on a Lancet article (no, not that one) suggesting that 80% of the 300,000 conflict-related deaths in Darfur since 2003 were caused by disease.

Haiti analysis round-up for Monday 25th January

There is such a lot now coming out of blogs and commentators that I thought rounding them up would be more useful.

• One piece of news: a useful summary of today's meeting in Montreal of governments involved in the response.

Below are more technical pieces from the humanitarian blogosphere (and yes I did just use that phrase). Enjoy:

• Quite a bit of comment on the Lancet article condemning the aid effort as self-serving and uncoordinated. Michael Keizer agrees that some points have a grain of truth, albeit unsupported by evidence, (the comments repay the reading on this one); Alanna Shaikh (humanitarian uber-blogger with a big following) weighs in; Brendan Gormley is covered in a Guardian profile following the very strong DEC response to the article; and a frazzled response straight from Haiti here.
  
• Dan Smith of International Alert looks at what's next for Haiti, recovery and the humanitarian caseload and the IntLawGrrls look at future administration possibilities
  
• Paul Currion argues that reinventing Haiti really means reinventing the systems in which the country exists, as well as internal infrastructure
  
• Peter Daou asks why we can't mobilise the same outpouring of aid and compassion for comparable numbers of people affected by sexual violence in the Congo
• Newsweek gives a view on the historical background to the earthquake in Haiti
  
• An old hand expresses disappointment with the media coverage of the response
  
• And an absolutely fascinating bit of advice for the military supporting the operation from a retired Marine Corps officer - sample quote:
  

'Your job is to try to get Haiti back to something approaching the way it was seconds before the quake struck. If the President wants you to do nation-building, he’ll let you know.'

Gapminder.org

Huge thanks to the incomparable Chloe Day for pointing out this website. Go and have a play immediately.

International search and rescue teams: DP in action?

An interesting post from A Humourless Lot discussing the costs in time and resources of flying in search and rescue teams from all over the world, versus ploughing that money and precious runway time into increased aid to those not trapped:

....why do we actually send out these SAR teams?

Part of it can be found in an intriguing comment in response to my blog post on the logistics of emergency response: commenter rob_s suggests to send local people involved in emergency preparedness in developing countries to disasters like Haiti earthquake, so they can learn from and experience firsthand the lessons learned.

This is exactly how many of the developed countries who have sent SAR teams think. It is not only altruism, or even a PR exercise, but also a valuable opportunity for these teams to train and learn, so they are better able to respond when something similar happens in their own countries.

Read more on A Humourless Lot: Logistics for Global Health and Aid.

Haiti: Civil-military round-up

An awful lot coming out of news and policy analysis about the extent of military involvement in the relief effort in Haiti. Watch this space for more, but in the meantime here is a round up of some good links:

• The MoD deploys a Navy Royal Fleet Auxiliary supply ship loaded with aid
• USAID stopped US soldiers from handing out food directly to people in Haiti, I'm sure with the best of intentions including sticking to the Oslo Guidelines, but it didn't come off well here
• Reflections on Sri Lanka's global role in peacekeeping and relief from Change.org
• An excellent and very useful list of news on military engagement in relief in Haiti which I hope will continue to be updated: Chris Albon's website

Updated: Haiti: Africa and the Gulf States send aid

Updated: 22.01.10 Roundups on more African aid to Haiti here and here.

IRIN has covered aid sent from the Gulf States and Africa - how long before this is no longer newsworthy I wonder?

Psychological first aid following disasters

I've read a lot about this in various places in recent years, not that I can find it right now... but this blog post pointing out the advice of the US 'National Center for PTSD' (post-traumatic stress disorder) is useful and interesting:

There has been a lot of talk among mental health professionals about the psychological consequences of the devastating earthquake that struck Port Au Prince, Haiti, two weeks ago, and just what should be done right now. The answer, it turns out, is not what you might expect.

Check out the National Center for PTSD’s “psychological first aid” suggestions. Their list is comprised of primarily educational measures. Notably, nowhere on the list of things to do in the first weeks following a disaster is psychotherapy as we traditionally think of it. Indeed, nowhere on the list is anything that needs to be done by mental health professionals. The suggestions are pretty much good common sense: seek emotional support from friends, family, religious and other community groups; maintain as predictable a routine as possible for your kids; and although you should stay informed, stay away from sensationalized media coverage. If people are acting anxious, that’s because they are distressed — and that’s normal following a disaster. For most people this distress will decrease when basic needs are satisfied and some measure of stability is reestablished.

Read more on Andrew Rasmussen's blog.

Alertnet: Kenyans insured for herd losses in drought via satellite images

Pastoralists would get automatic payments for losses if satellite images of the region show vegetation fades from green -- shades of brown will gauge the severity of drought.

The use of satellites bypasses the traditional, more costly system under which insurers check reported livestock deaths before making payouts. That is almost impossible to judge in herds that wander over huge areas.

Still, risks include that some herders suffer bigger than predicted losses during droughts. In other cases, some herders might get payments when their animals have all survived.

Read more on Alertnet.

UPDATED: Web 101 series: Twitter and humanitarian responders

UPDATED 22.01.10: CNET writes about Twitter, all growed up, as a communications and information-sharing tool following the Haiti earthquake, and a great piece from the NYT illuminates why even sane people might like to give the thing a try.

This is the first in a series aiming to demystify some of the tools available to humanitarians on the web.

You're telling me I should think about joining Twitter? Really?

I'm afraid so, yes. A lot has been written about Twitter. You might have been wondering whether to dip a toe into the murky water of microblogging and been put off by all the hype and silliness - so here's a quick post on how to make the most of it and a few good links.

It's worth saying there has rarely been a better time to demonstrate the excellent use people are making of Twitter to discuss, promote, and further humanitarian work - the emergency in Haiti has been one of the most popular topics on Twitter all week, and not just for laypeople commenting on the news - humanitarians have been using it to help the response.

So why bother? Twitter isn't just about self-aggrandisement and navel-gazing, although there's a bit of that, of course. I use it mainly for the links people share, and increasingly for the information in their tweets. Fairly often, I hear of something on Twitter before it's on the more formal news channels. Also, you can talk to people, from the Today Programme to Amanda Palmer, directly - there's a personal quality to Twitter that you don't get anywhere else. It's nice to hear what people are doing working on the Haiti response in Geneva, London or Santo Domingo - but it's even better if you can write back and send a word of encouragement.



It's easy enough to sign up, at Twitter.com, so I'll leave that to you - although a word of warning - unless you're happy to post only work-relevant, party line stuff, don't name your organisation in your username or your bio! And if you decide to represent your organisation in that way, be prepared to get your output signed off by your Comms department.

Ok fine I'm sold. How do I do this? I've created a list of Twittering humanitarians which will give you a good starting point (you can also just use this as a webpage). Follow the people who seem interesting, then follow people they 'retweet', and you're off.

You can manage online, but there are also lots of applications which you can download for free to help you follow your Twitterstream and post, if you want to, although plenty of people just lurk. A good program is Seesmic, which allows you to follow your Facebook feed at the same time! Double trouble.

It's nice to give back - so if you see an article you like, post a link to it - don't forget to shorten the link using TinyUrl or through your Twitter application.

Let me know how this goes - I'll be interested to hear if people find this useful.

DEC and ODI: Lessons for Haiti

In case any of you missed it - ALNAP and ODI have rolled out their lessons learned papers on urbanisation and earthquakes, linked to from this op-ed from Ben Ramalingam. Meanwhile, a thoughtful look from CNN at the recent DEC report on lessons learned from the Tsunami response in Aceh through the lens of the Haiti operation.

Wall St Journal: on the ICRC negotiating UN access to children in Afghanistan

International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international organization that maintains regular communications with the Taliban command, acts as an intermediary every time a new letter of support is issued. That happened 10 times in 2009, each time a new vaccination campaign was launched.

Dr. Mir of the WHO says he decided to ask the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, for assistance after watching how that organization facilitated talks between the South Korean government and the Taliban that led to the freeing of 23 Korean hostages kidnapped by the insurgents in July 2007.

...Afghan insurgents generally respect the ICRC's neutrality, unlike their counterparts in Iraq, who blew up the organization's Baghdad headquarters in October 2003. The ICRC maintains first-aid posts in some Taliban-held parts of the country and runs special taxi-ambulance services that evacuate wounded Taliban fighters from the battlefield as well as Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire.

Read more on the WSJ website.

Meanwhile, a new intelligence report proposes that analysts should focus on deep analysis of local social and political structures in Afghanistan:

He also calls for a complete culture change in the intelligence community which will see them forgoing their much loved Power Point slides for "meaty, comprehensive descriptions of pivotal districts throughout the country" produced on word processors.

"Analysts must absorb information with the thoroughness of historians, organise it with the skill of librarians, and disseminate it with the zeal of journalists," the report says.

Read more on the Guardian website.

Beautiful panoramic pictures of homes in megacity slums

Some amazing images, linked from this post on the excellent Blood and Milk blog:


See more on the Foreign Policy website. IRIN recently reported powerfully on the problems facing urban slum dwellers in a globalised world; read that article here.

VOICE Out Loud newsletter: DRR and climate change adaptation

From the devastation caused by violent cyclones to displacement as a drought survival mechanism, climate change together with vulnerability severely impacts on people’s survival. Humanitarian actors are the first responders to the growing needs created by natural disasters. These new challenges might bring about a need to change the way they work, engaging more in prevention to mitigate the need for response. From different angles, DRR and CCA both aim at reducing people’s vulnerability to hazards. However, there remains a linkage and coordination gap between the two approaches, including at the European Union level. Humanitarian experience, lessons learnt and best practices in DRR offer a professional perspective on how to bridge that gap. One thing is clear: the people at risk of hazards need to be at the heart of policy and programming decision making processes. We therefore complete our NGO overview of DRR and CCA issues by a unique perspective on DRR at community level in the South by the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Read more on Reliefweb.

ICG: Why the media prefer natural disasters

The British Red Cross supports its partners within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to respond to humanitarian emergencies around the world. These range from giving money, people and materials to respond to natural disasters, to supporting large scale humanitarian operations in conflict zones. Since 2006 the British Red Cross has had a dedicated team working to support the Movement in assisting people suffering from the effects of armed conflict. As an impartial and neutral organisation, the Red Cross seeks to help those who are in crisis, whoever and wherever they are.

Unfortunately, public appeals launched by British Red Cross for emergencies in conflict zones routinely raise far less funds than those appeals which are launched for natural "quick-onset" disasters. A recent example of this is the ongoing crisis in northern Pakistan, where it has been estimated that the millions who had to flee their homes due to fighting in 2008/09 has been the largest displacement of people since Partition. The needs were huge and British Red Cross launched an emergency appeal in 2009 to raise funds for the displaced. This appeal raised only £60,000 and, despite the efforts of our communications team, very little of our material regarding the humanitarian crisis was picked up by the news agencies.

In the following article, Andrew Stroehlein, Communications Director for the International Crisis Group examines why the media chooses to focus more on victims of natural disasters rather than on those caught up in armed conflict.

"If only Sri Lanka last year could have got a tenth of the media attention Haiti's now getting", lamented my friend who was working in Colombo at the time, "the public pressure might have saved so many lives." While no one would ever argue with the amount of press Haiti is deservedly receiving right now, it's easy to see his point. The international media respond very differently to the victims of natural disasters and the victims of wars.

Last year's brutal end to the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka produced tens of thousands of innocent dead and injured in its final few months, as government forces shelled areas with trapped civilians, and Tamil Tiger rebels prevented them from fleeing. Hundreds of thousands of survivors were then put into appalling government-run internment camps, from which they were not allowed to leave. This all garnered significant media attention at the very end of the fighting, but it never at any point had anything near the scale of media interest Haiti's earthquake is getting today.

Read more on Alertnet.

ODI: Haiti: Lessons learned from previous operations

International aid is not about making miracles happen. It is about the attempted delivery of life-saving and livelihood-restoring assistance to people in dire conditions, in ways that are equitable, impartial and according to needs....But it is also relatively under-resourced. According to the highest available estimates, a total of $18 billion was spent on disaster assistance in 2008, in over 50 natural disasters and conflicts around the world. To give some perspective (and at the risk of a cheap shot), this global annual expenditure is some $2 billion less than the anticipated amount that will be paid out in annual bonuses and compensation to the executives at a single top-tier investment bank.

These resource issues do not seem to prevent high expectations of humanitarian assistance. People, organisations and governments are moved by images of suffering, and are compelled to react by providing assistance. Expectations are that such assistance will fully address the suffering – that a kind of ‘humanitarian perfection' will be achieved.

...A few days into any emergency, operational responses hit a turning point, when aid starts to flow and be scaled up. Decisions made at this stage can influence the course of the aid response for months, possibly even years to come. At this critical stage of the proceedings in Haiti, the key is not to point suspicious fingers at the agencies whose staff are struggling around the clock to get aid channels up and running. Rather, the focus should be on bringing lessons from previous emergencies to the table, and testing their relevance and applicability in the unique Haitian context.

Read more on the ODI website.

More on logistics in Haiti: Roxanna Samii

What is even more important to appreciate is that the success of any disaster response effort does not fall squarely on the shoulders of humanitarian organizations. This is because humanitarian organizations do not operate in a vacuum but depend on a number of stakeholders to stage their disaster response....
...These are the media, donors, relief item suppliers, recipient country, neighboring countries, military forces, and implementing partners. The media through coverage of a disaster often activates an emergency supply chain and is a source of information on its development. Donors provide funds, goods, services and people. Donors together with private sector suppliers provide relief items. Donors, recipient country, neighboring countries and military forces provide logistics assets. Implementing partners, that is the local and foreign NGO community, typically acts as distributors.

Read more on Roxanna's blog.

ODI: Alison Evans on long-term recovery in Haiti

As our colleagues at ALNAP have stressed in their report on lessons learned in earthquakes, it is never too soon to think about recovery. This should be part of the game plan from day one. Guided by the Haitians themselves, we now need a combined vision of what genuine recovery would look like. In addition to the obvious need for reconstruction of homes and businesses, a key priority is the rebuilding of Haitian state institutions and governance.

Read more on the ODI blog.

Logistics questions around the Haiti Earthquake

A great post from an interesting blog:

A painful truth that you will not hear spelled out very often: emergency aid in these circumstances is totally dependent on local preparation, and any aid that that will come from outside the area will be largely ineffective until the logistics has been cleared up – which is usually only after several days in the most favourable circumstances. This is why disaster preparedness is so important, and it is also a main reason why countries like Haiti, which don’t have much capacity for disaster preparedness in the first place, are always so badly hit when the (inevitable) disaster strikes.

Read more on A Humourless Lot, or follow Michael on Twitter.

ALNAP resources: urban responses and earthquakes

ALNAP has posted reminders of two of their papers which might be relevant to the response to yesterday's earthquake in Haiti:

For organisations and their staff working in Haiti or preparing to deploy there, the ALNAP Lessons Paper 'Responding to earthquakes 2008: Learning from earthquake relief and recovery operations' may prove of use. This paper aims to provide a distillation of the learning from 29 different earthquake responses taking place over thirty years of humanitarian responses. The main intended audiences are operational decision-makers and relief programme managers working in the response to such sudden-onset natural disasters. Download the paper here

As the worst affected area of Haiti appears to be the heavily populated capital city, Port-au-Prince, the ALNAP Lessons Paper'Responding to urban disasters: Learning from previous relief and recovery operations' may also be of use. Download the paper here.

Follow the thread for further resources contributed by members on the ALNAP website.