Protecting civilians from the worst effects of violence and abuse is, more than ever before, an active concern of aid actors. An unprecedented number of humanitarian organisations now undertake protection activities; the response to the Darfur crisis represented a watershed in this regard, with 41 agencies engaging in protection in 2006, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (Pantuliano and O’Callaghan, 2006). The scope of the protection agenda has also changed. No longer primarily related to refugees and civilians and ex-combatants in conflict, protection now includes people displaced as a consequence of all forms of disaster, as well as broader at-risk populations. The situations in which humanitarians undertake protection activities have also changed, to encompass organised armed conflict, ongoing generalised violence, natural disasters and post-conflict situations (Slim and Bonwick, 2005). Expertise and specialisation are increasing, with dedicated programming in areas such as child protection, sexual
and gender-based violence and access to justice.
This report forms part of a wider body of work by the Humanitarian Policy Group on the protection of civilians in conflict, and focuses on the role of non-specialist humanitarian agencies in protection. Despite the recent prominence of protection, many humanitarian agencies remain unclear as to their role. There is confusion around what humanitarian protection means, and how it can be translated into practice. Pressure to engage in protection has led many agencies to deploy protection officers to emergencies, but without clear institutional policies and guidance, and with little success. This report highlights the important contribution that all humanitarian actors can make in promoting the protection of civilians in crisis. Its overall recommendation is that every humanitarian agency should incorporate a minimum commitment to protection into their work. This would ensure greater clarity and predictability, and enhance complementarity across the humanitarian sector. The report proposes a framework with five main elements for establishing the content of such a core commitment, and discusses the organisational and programmatic implications of doing so.
The report is available for download from Reliefweb, and further information about HPG's programme of work on protection in practice is available from their website.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
John Holmes: 'Disasters: the New Normal'
highlighted by Moira Reddick
The 2007 global catalogue of calamities — hurricanes in the Caribbean, droughts in Africa, wildfires in the USA, massive flooding throughout Asia and Africa — reads like a Hollywood disaster script. But these catastrophes were very real for tens of millions of people whose lives were turned upside down.
As we enter a new year, it's tempting to think the worst could be over. But nothing is further from the truth, given the increasingly visible effects of global warming. Instead, 2007 represents the 'new normal' of extreme weather events that calls for a rapid transformation in how we prepare for and respond to nature's hazards.
Climate change is already transforming our planet. If the world's scientists are right, the onslaught of droughts, flooding, intensive storms and heat waves last year is but a curtain raiser on our future. Even if no single event can reliably be attributed to global warming, the trends as cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are clear — and clearly accelerating.
In just a generation, the number of disasters triggered by these natural hazards has increased threefold, while direct and indirect losses have multiplied fivefold. Rapid urbanization and rising population density in coastal mega-cities such as Dhaka, Lagos and Sao Paulo mean the threat of a mega-disaster is also rising rapidly.
Economic toll rising
In 2006, 426 disasters affected 143 million people and resulted in $35 billion in economic damage. The number of floods and related disasters was 43% greater than the 2000-2004 average. Last year, my office at the U.N. issued an unprecedented 15 funding appeals for sudden natural disasters, five more than the previous annual record.
All but one of these disasters resulted from extreme weather. Thankfully, 2007 did not spawn a catastrophe on the scale of the 2004 tsunami. But the magnitude of a disaster is not measured solely by the death toll. The ripple effect from lost livelihoods has a devastating effect on local prosperity and undermines development.
Hundreds of millions more people could require humanitarian assistance as climatic changes generate devastating consequences for global food and water supplies and adversely affect public health, migration flows and, not least, political stability, as battles for resources intensify. While all countries will suffer, not all will suffer equally. Those that are least responsible for causing global warming are likely to pay the first and heaviest price.
We need to adapt
Irrespective of whatever emission cuts may occur in a post-Kyoto Protocol future, it is impossible to rewind the clock on the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Their effects are irreversible, leaving us no choice but to adapt.
Adaptation means reducing our exposure to known risks and mitigating their possible effects. The key point is this: A natural disaster need not automatically result in human catastrophe.
Simple, cost-effective measures will strengthen our resilience, save lives, and prevent the pauperization of millions tomorrow. When Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November, some 40,000 volunteers with bullhorns and bicycles helped move more than three million people out of harm's way.
We can also build safer — and smarter. U.S. property owners who implemented all the recommended hurricane protection methods suffered only one-eighth as much damage from Hurricane Katrina as those who did not. In China, the World Bank estimates that a $5 million investment in non-structural flood prevention along the Yangtze River averted damages of $15 million during the 1996 floods, with millions more saved in subsequent years.
The 'new normal' requires massive improvement in how we prepare for and respond to these natural disasters. Prevention is always better than cure. Adaptation is an essential investment in our future. There is no time to lose, and much to gain by acting immediately, before the next disaster strikes.
John Holmes is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
The 2007 global catalogue of calamities — hurricanes in the Caribbean, droughts in Africa, wildfires in the USA, massive flooding throughout Asia and Africa — reads like a Hollywood disaster script. But these catastrophes were very real for tens of millions of people whose lives were turned upside down.
As we enter a new year, it's tempting to think the worst could be over. But nothing is further from the truth, given the increasingly visible effects of global warming. Instead, 2007 represents the 'new normal' of extreme weather events that calls for a rapid transformation in how we prepare for and respond to nature's hazards.
Climate change is already transforming our planet. If the world's scientists are right, the onslaught of droughts, flooding, intensive storms and heat waves last year is but a curtain raiser on our future. Even if no single event can reliably be attributed to global warming, the trends as cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are clear — and clearly accelerating.
In just a generation, the number of disasters triggered by these natural hazards has increased threefold, while direct and indirect losses have multiplied fivefold. Rapid urbanization and rising population density in coastal mega-cities such as Dhaka, Lagos and Sao Paulo mean the threat of a mega-disaster is also rising rapidly.
Economic toll rising
In 2006, 426 disasters affected 143 million people and resulted in $35 billion in economic damage. The number of floods and related disasters was 43% greater than the 2000-2004 average. Last year, my office at the U.N. issued an unprecedented 15 funding appeals for sudden natural disasters, five more than the previous annual record.
All but one of these disasters resulted from extreme weather. Thankfully, 2007 did not spawn a catastrophe on the scale of the 2004 tsunami. But the magnitude of a disaster is not measured solely by the death toll. The ripple effect from lost livelihoods has a devastating effect on local prosperity and undermines development.
Hundreds of millions more people could require humanitarian assistance as climatic changes generate devastating consequences for global food and water supplies and adversely affect public health, migration flows and, not least, political stability, as battles for resources intensify. While all countries will suffer, not all will suffer equally. Those that are least responsible for causing global warming are likely to pay the first and heaviest price.
We need to adapt
Irrespective of whatever emission cuts may occur in a post-Kyoto Protocol future, it is impossible to rewind the clock on the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Their effects are irreversible, leaving us no choice but to adapt.
Adaptation means reducing our exposure to known risks and mitigating their possible effects. The key point is this: A natural disaster need not automatically result in human catastrophe.
Simple, cost-effective measures will strengthen our resilience, save lives, and prevent the pauperization of millions tomorrow. When Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November, some 40,000 volunteers with bullhorns and bicycles helped move more than three million people out of harm's way.
We can also build safer — and smarter. U.S. property owners who implemented all the recommended hurricane protection methods suffered only one-eighth as much damage from Hurricane Katrina as those who did not. In China, the World Bank estimates that a $5 million investment in non-structural flood prevention along the Yangtze River averted damages of $15 million during the 1996 floods, with millions more saved in subsequent years.
The 'new normal' requires massive improvement in how we prepare for and respond to these natural disasters. Prevention is always better than cure. Adaptation is an essential investment in our future. There is no time to lose, and much to gain by acting immediately, before the next disaster strikes.
John Holmes is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
MSF issues 'Top Ten' most underreported humanitarian stories of 2007
People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The countries and contexts highlighted by MSF on this year's list accounted for just 18 minutes of coverage on the three major U.S. television networks' nightly newscasts from January through November 2007.
The 2007 list also highlights the plight of people living through other forgotten crises, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Chechnya, where the displacement by war of millions continues. It also focuses on the ongoing toll of medical catastrophes like tuberculosis (TB) and childhood malnutrition.
You can read the list and MSF's press release on their website.World Bank: HIV/AIDS, Nutrition, and Food Security: What We Can Do, a synthesis of international guidance
This 2007 report from the World Bank is a synthesis of existing technical guidance on HIV and AIDS, nutrition, and food security at global and regional levels. The synthesis aims to provide decision makers and service providers, especially those who design and manage programs, with guidance on how nutrition may be integrated into HIV prevention and AIDS treatment. Guidance is particularly aimed at national AIDS programs in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The synthesis draws on available international guidelines and related documents from AED/FANTA, FAO, IFPRI, PATH, UNAIDS, UNHCR, UNICEF, USAID, WFP and WHO.
The document is divided into 5 main sections:
1) Improving HIV and AIDS outcomes through nutrition support
2) Treatment, care and support
3) Food assistance as HIV and AIDS treatment support
4) Food, food security, HIV and AIDS
5) HIV, AIDS, Nutirition and food in an emergency context
The report is available to download from the World Bank website.
The synthesis draws on available international guidelines and related documents from AED/FANTA, FAO, IFPRI, PATH, UNAIDS, UNHCR, UNICEF, USAID, WFP and WHO.
The document is divided into 5 main sections:
1) Improving HIV and AIDS outcomes through nutrition support
2) Treatment, care and support
3) Food assistance as HIV and AIDS treatment support
4) Food, food security, HIV and AIDS
5) HIV, AIDS, Nutirition and food in an emergency context
The report is available to download from the World Bank website.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Blog post from Nick Young in Indonesia
13 December
Flying into Calang in the south west of Indonesia's Aceh province, it was easy at last to see the full impact of 3 years of building work. As our 6 seater plane flew low over the area of Teunom, where British Red Cross has been working, we could see clearly the red roofs of the 1930 houses that we have built.
This was one of the areas worst hit by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, destroying many of the houses. The land here is a completely flat plain, and the sea simply rolled in unobstructed, leaving many with no hope of escape.
Today, there are new houses everywhere, many of them built by our own team, and to a standard which no other agency has matched. They do indeed stand out for their pastel colours, sturdy design and professional appearance.
With our cameraman, who was here to record the ceremony of handing over the final house to the final beneficiary, we visited first a small estate of about 200 houses which we have built for those who owned no land, or whose land was and remains inundated, or whose parents both died - the most vulnerable, in other words. It looks just lovely, the soft green houses with their red roofs set off beautifully by the flowers already planted outside by their new owners.
We talked to Idris, who lost his wife and two children. He had just moved in, the two bedroom home that he shares with his remaining son completely bare of furniture. He lost his fishing boat too, but doesn't want to go back to sea so he is farming a little piece of land to make ends meet.
We met another man whose previous job was climbing trees to collect coconuts: he was up a tree when the tsunami struck, and clung on until the water started to subside. With his wife, he now sells cigarettes from a tray because he simply can't bring himself to climb another tree.
And then young Nazir, who tomorrow will receive the keys to the 100,000th house built in Aceh province - one of ours. Aged 15, he lost both his parents and his brother and sister, and now lives with his remaining sister.
Our next stop was a small riverside community hidden in the forest. Most of our houses are in these difficult-to-access areas. Before the tsunami, the land was 2 metres above the level of the water; now it is just a foot or two, and the area floods regularly. Here, we have built houses on solid reinforced concrete pillars well above river level.
We laughed and joked with the local people who flocked to meet us, and visited with a mother and her daughter who who each lost a husband and have just moved into two adjoining British Red Cross houses. On the way back to camp, our driver Amir told us how his parents both died in that very spot, and of his 2 week walk through the devastation of the tsunami to reach them from the college where he had been studying.
14 December
After a night of torrential monsoon rain, we returned to our "housing estate" for the ceremonial handover of keys to the 100,000th by the Head of the Indonesian Government's Aceh Reconstruction Agency (BRR), Pak Kuntoro.
In a moving ceremony, he paid the warmest possible tribute to the British Red Cross team, and praised the high quality of the houses, which he said were the best he had seen. He has been under huge pressure to get houses built, and the local Bupati (mayor) had some harsh words to say to him on that score! There is still much to do, and we have done well to complete our work so quickly.
Next stop was our own project completion party, and a chance for me to say thank you in public to our building team leader Gabriel Constantine (to whom I presented a Badge of Honour, richly deserved), the local contractors Wika and the consulting engineers and supervisors Kogas. They have all worked wonderfully well together, in a true Red Cross spirit.
It was also nice to be able to thank our fundraising director Mark Astarita who was with me on the trip, as well as our livelihoods team who have worked so hard helping local people to get back on their feet financially.
My last words were for the brave survivors of the tsunami. "We can't fill the gap in your lives left by the death of your loved ones," I said, "but we will always carry in our hearts the memory of the people of Teunom, and we hope you will hold us in your hearts too, and the friendships we have made with the houses we have built."
And then it was time to go home - "jakwoe" as it said in Acenese on our T-shirts. That night, as the rain tipped down again, everyone gathered together to dance and sing along to the local folk superstar Rafli, who had risen from his hospital bed (dengue fever) to sing at this special concert. For a while, the worries of the last 3 years, and the sadness, slipped away with the music.
Flying into Calang in the south west of Indonesia's Aceh province, it was easy at last to see the full impact of 3 years of building work. As our 6 seater plane flew low over the area of Teunom, where British Red Cross has been working, we could see clearly the red roofs of the 1930 houses that we have built.
This was one of the areas worst hit by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, destroying many of the houses. The land here is a completely flat plain, and the sea simply rolled in unobstructed, leaving many with no hope of escape.
Today, there are new houses everywhere, many of them built by our own team, and to a standard which no other agency has matched. They do indeed stand out for their pastel colours, sturdy design and professional appearance.
With our cameraman, who was here to record the ceremony of handing over the final house to the final beneficiary, we visited first a small estate of about 200 houses which we have built for those who owned no land, or whose land was and remains inundated, or whose parents both died - the most vulnerable, in other words. It looks just lovely, the soft green houses with their red roofs set off beautifully by the flowers already planted outside by their new owners.
We talked to Idris, who lost his wife and two children. He had just moved in, the two bedroom home that he shares with his remaining son completely bare of furniture. He lost his fishing boat too, but doesn't want to go back to sea so he is farming a little piece of land to make ends meet.
We met another man whose previous job was climbing trees to collect coconuts: he was up a tree when the tsunami struck, and clung on until the water started to subside. With his wife, he now sells cigarettes from a tray because he simply can't bring himself to climb another tree.
And then young Nazir, who tomorrow will receive the keys to the 100,000th house built in Aceh province - one of ours. Aged 15, he lost both his parents and his brother and sister, and now lives with his remaining sister.
Our next stop was a small riverside community hidden in the forest. Most of our houses are in these difficult-to-access areas. Before the tsunami, the land was 2 metres above the level of the water; now it is just a foot or two, and the area floods regularly. Here, we have built houses on solid reinforced concrete pillars well above river level.
We laughed and joked with the local people who flocked to meet us, and visited with a mother and her daughter who who each lost a husband and have just moved into two adjoining British Red Cross houses. On the way back to camp, our driver Amir told us how his parents both died in that very spot, and of his 2 week walk through the devastation of the tsunami to reach them from the college where he had been studying.
14 December
After a night of torrential monsoon rain, we returned to our "housing estate" for the ceremonial handover of keys to the 100,000th by the Head of the Indonesian Government's Aceh Reconstruction Agency (BRR), Pak Kuntoro.
In a moving ceremony, he paid the warmest possible tribute to the British Red Cross team, and praised the high quality of the houses, which he said were the best he had seen. He has been under huge pressure to get houses built, and the local Bupati (mayor) had some harsh words to say to him on that score! There is still much to do, and we have done well to complete our work so quickly.
Next stop was our own project completion party, and a chance for me to say thank you in public to our building team leader Gabriel Constantine (to whom I presented a Badge of Honour, richly deserved), the local contractors Wika and the consulting engineers and supervisors Kogas. They have all worked wonderfully well together, in a true Red Cross spirit.
It was also nice to be able to thank our fundraising director Mark Astarita who was with me on the trip, as well as our livelihoods team who have worked so hard helping local people to get back on their feet financially.
My last words were for the brave survivors of the tsunami. "We can't fill the gap in your lives left by the death of your loved ones," I said, "but we will always carry in our hearts the memory of the people of Teunom, and we hope you will hold us in your hearts too, and the friendships we have made with the houses we have built."
And then it was time to go home - "jakwoe" as it said in Acenese on our T-shirts. That night, as the rain tipped down again, everyone gathered together to dance and sing along to the local folk superstar Rafli, who had risen from his hospital bed (dengue fever) to sing at this special concert. For a while, the worries of the last 3 years, and the sadness, slipped away with the music.
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