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.