humanitarian Archives - Humanosphere

humanitarian

A renewed push to ban spies from overeas health and aid work |

: Is it foreign aid or covert aid?; Flickr, johanoomen

Co-authored by Tom Murphy

The latest assassination of health workers vaccinating kids against polio in Pakistan may be the tipping point.

Or not.

It remains to be seen if a new surge of efforts — a letter of protest from leading public health experts, a petition — asking the Obama Administration to prohibit spies from pretending to be overseas aid and health workers will force a change in policy.

Such protests didn’t even garner an official response the last time.

When it was learned in mid-2011 that the CIA had conducted a fake vaccination scheme in Pakistan aimed at gathering evidence to locate the then still-alive-and-in-hiding Osama Bin Laden, many in the global health and humanitarian community (including Humanosphere) cried foul and predicted a lot of collateral damage.

The problem, said 200-plus aid groups in a letter of protest sent by Interaction, was not just that this would undermine international vaccination projects in Pakistan, which it arguably did in this nation with one of the world’s highest rates of polio and other infectious diseases.

Many experts said it would more broadly undermine trust and credibility for all humanitarian work – and likely endanger aid workers. Many of these tragic predictions have since come true, prompting many in the global health, aid and development community to push again for policy prohibitions against such schemes.

“Public health programs overseas offer a very special opportunity … as a bridge to creating peace and mutual understanding,” said Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and a signatory to the letter of protest sent by leading health academics to President Obama. Unlike many other kinds of aid and assistance programs with inherent political or economic complications, Frumkin said, health initiatives done correctly overseas can forge intimate bonds of trust and respect for life that transcend politics.

“This is why it’s so important not to subvert the credibility and integrity of these kind of health programs,” he said. “The recent killings in Pakistan only underline the importance of keeping our intelligence activities separate from our health aid and assistance work.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Brett Keller, Charles Kenny, CIA, foreign aid, Howard Frumkin, humanitarian, Obama Administration, Pakistan, public health, vaccination

January 20, 2012 | 10:08 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Is the crisis in Sudan evidence of aid community’s attention-deficit disorder? |

Flickr, Utenriksdept

Celebrating new nationhood in Juba, South Sudan

Not that long ago, the world was celebrating South Sudan as the world’s newest nation. Actor George Clooney set up satellites to try to monitor activities and encourage best behavior.

But things have gotten worse. As the Washington Post reports, more than 120,000 people are now in need of humanitarian assistance due to ethnic conflict. CNN quotes top officials warning of famine in Sudan as the violence makes aid and relief more difficult:

“There is a looming humanitarian disaster in Sudan,” said Princeton Lyman, United States envoy to Sudan. Lyman said a lack of leadership, history of ethnic violence and the indictment of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court are all factors that have complicated the crisis in that country.

Last week, I spoke to a Seattle man from South Sudan for his perspective on the internal conflict, and the reasons for the cycles of violence and instability. He had been accused by some of raising funds in support of tribal violence back home.

There are lots of theories, or episodes of finger-pointing, aimed at explaining why things are going sideways in Sudan.

But one reason may be the international community’s attention-deficit response to such crises.

The Guardian has an op-ed by the director of Refugees International, Michel Gabaudan, who argues that we don’t know how to shift from an emergency response sprint to a longer-term, deliberative development marathon run:

During Sudan’s long north-south civil war, international humanitarian agencies got used to providing vital basic services (such as healthcare) for the civilian population in the south. When the war finally ended, and South Sudan became independent last July, the needs of its population began to change. The aid community’s response should have changed as well.

It’s an interesting article that examines the international community’s tendency, however well-intentioned, to respond to immediate emergencies but then fail to support the changes — economic, social, political — needed to make for lasting positive change. Concludes Gabaudan:

As we have seen in South Sudan and elsewhere, this failure to bridge the gap from humanitarian to development assistance can prevent people from rebuilding their lives. The human toll of conflicts and disasters is too high as it is. What the world needs is an aid system that can respond quickly to those crises, and provide effective development assistance – and seamlessly bridge the two so that no more lives are threatened.

FILED UNDER: Basics, development, emergency, humanitarian, relief, South Sudan

December 23, 2011 | 11:27 AM | By Tom Paulson |

End of the year question for you, humanosphere |

Happy Holidays.

Humanosphere is taking the week off since so is much of the rest of the humanosphere. I feel compelled to close out 2011 with a reminder that humanosphere is, in fact, a real word — coined to describe that part of the planet ‘inhabited or influenced by people.’

Yeah, kinda vague.

That’s why I have a key question for you, you humanospherians. But first, the northern lights ….

Flickr, Beverly & Pack

The northern lights

End of year thought: This is a news blog, or an online news website if you don’t like the word ‘blog,’ aimed at covering what seems to me to be a critical moment for humanity. It’s hard to summarize, but I believe our amazing, wonderful, frighteningly innovative and sometimes highly destructive species is at an unprecedented crossroads.

There’s no question anymore that we have evolved the capability to seriously soil our own nest — what with our nuclear weaponry, our climate-altering industrial practices and a level of hubris that (as seen from outer space … yes, I know ET) threatens to be our undoing.

Planet Earth likely will muster on, as it always has. But the humanosphere may be at risk, of a seriously deteriorating quality of life if not worse.

As someone of Scandinavian extraction, I’m happy to accept such a gloomy prognosis — especially as it fits in with my Norwegian-Lutheran holiday traditions of guilt, anxiety and staring off into cold space.

Yet there is just as much evidence to contradict this fatalistic view. A few observations:

In many ways, the world is actually a better place than it was even just 10 years ago with lower rates of extreme poverty, lower maternal and child mortality, more people on anti-HIV drugs and much less malaria in poor countries thanks to major initiatives funded by rich nations.
Most world leaders, even top military commanders, say that the best way to achieve global peace and stability is not through warfare but by reducing poverty, fighting inequity and promoting development. (I can’t say we are yet practicing what we preach, but recognizing you have a problem — whether it’s excessive drinking or killing people — is the first step.)
Something unusual is happening with young people. They are incredibly aware of global issues and they are leading the way on many fronts in the battle against poverty and injustice.
The business community has recognized it has a responsibility and a role to play in making the world a better place. Only the dinosaurs of business now say their only responsibility is to the bottom line. The idea of corporate social responsibility, however imperfectly practiced, no longer sounds so incongruous — or like dressing up a pig in a tuxedo.
Some of our past damage is fixable. A local creek I couldn’t have gone swimming in as a boy (unless I wanted to experiment with chemicals and genetic self-mutation) is now brimming with fish.

End of year question: So what do we call this trend, this new phase for humanity?

As a journalist attempting to cover this phenomenon, I often find myself at a loss for adequate words to describe what is happening and who is making it happen.

This isn’t really about charity, or just philanthropy. We seem to have entered a new phase of human development in which many, if not yet most, recognize global inequity and injustice threatens all of us. We have a much stronger sense of connection to each other today, I think.

But the language used to describe this new phase for humanity is horribly squishy and soft. Advocates often sound like one of those late-night TV pitches asking you to sponsor a starving child. And calling the people who work at making the world better ‘humanitarians‘ sounds a bit floofy. I don’t mind the simple clarity of ‘do-gooders,’ but many see that as slightly pejorative if not smart-ass.

So what do we call you people? What do we call this new phase in the evolution of the humanosphere?

I await your thoughts. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and here’s hoping for a Joyful New Year.

Tom

FILED UNDER: Basics, charity, corporate social responsibility, do-gooders, humanitarian, philanthropy

August 29, 2011 | 8:30 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Libya: Making the case for humanitarian warfare? |

Flickr, Runs with Scissors

Gandhi and Che, two kinds of freedom fighters

On CNN’s Global Public Square blog, Stewart Patrick writes that the U.S. military’s support of the popular revolution in Libya and its defeat of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi vindicates the Obama Administration’s decision to engage in warfare on humanitarian grounds.

Patrick, who is a senior fellow at Foreign Affairs and director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance for the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that this was the “first unambiguous military enforcement of the Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Writes Patrick:

The fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is a significant foreign policy triumph for U.S. President Barack Obama. By setting overall strategy while allowing others to shoulder the burden of implementing it, the Obama administration achieved its short-term objective of stopping Gadhafi’s atrocities and its long-term one of removing him from power. This was all done at a modest financial cost, with no U.S. troops on the ground, and zero U.S. casualties. Meanwhile, as the first unambiguous military enforcement of the Responsibility to Protect norm, Gadhafi’s utter defeat seemingly put new wind in the sails of humanitarian intervention.

I’ve raised this issue a few times on Humanosphere, including this post in mid-March immediately after the Obama Administration decided to intervene. I also noted an argument for intervention by Robert Pape in The Atlantic and later posted on the ongoing and, to me, somewhat confusing debate about what kind of humanitarian crisis justifies military intervention.

Patrick regards the decision to intervene in Libya as a justified but unique exercise of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine — aka, the humanitarian case for warfare. Many will disagree with both characterizations.

As Patrick notes, many will see Libya as a dangerous precedent encouraging “interventionism run amok.” Others, looking at the Syrian government’s ongoing killing of democracy protesters, will see any argument against intervening there as a dangerous ambivalence.

FILED UNDER: Politics, humanitarian, Libya, military, Obama, Obama Administration, Stewart Patrick

March 18, 2011 | 11:35 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Why you should donate, but maybe not to Japan |

Flickr, LiminalMike

People want to help.

Well, okay, not everyone wants to help. Some people are jerks.

Despite my skeptical (which some misinterpret as cynical) view of human nature acquired after working a quarter century as a journalist, I find that most people actually do want to assist when they see someone suffering.

Wanting to help is how many of us are reacting to the news out of Japan following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami — now made even more terrible by the possible (though often exaggerated) threat of a major nuclear accident.

Still, it’s important to recognize that wanting to help and actually helping are not the same thing. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, disaster, earthquake, humanitarian, Japan, Mercy Corps, World Vision

August 19, 2010 | 10:19 AM | By Tom Paulson |

It’s World Humanitarian Day! |

So be nice. Tomorrow you can go back to exploiting, abusing or just ignoring other people.

The point of World Humanitarian Day (I’m still waiting for World Humanosphere Day) is rather obvious.

But this surprisingly compelling video (surprising because it was made by the normally staid and excessively earnest UN with some funny out-takes at the end) does a nice job of stating the obvious — with no spoken words.

I tend to dislike these kind of official declarations. They often seem to have the opposite effect of what they intend by presenting the issue du jour as an isolated cause — rather than as a critical part of the whole.

But this is not about a single cause, and it is a new “Day” so maybe it could use a little extra boost.

World Humanitarian Day was created in 2008 by the UN General Assembly to honor humanitarian workers killed while trying to make the world a better place. It was specifically prompted by the 2003 deaths of Sérgio Vieira de Mello and 20 colleagues in Iraq but it honors those who continue to take life-and-death risks to try to help others.