Monthly Archives: March 2019

Women worldwide spearhead humanitarian aid but not its decision-making

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Women have always been on the front lines of humanitarian action. Women such as Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton not only faced the most brutal conflicts and epidemics of their day, they helped lay the foundation for modern humanitarianism.

Today, more than half of Red Cross or Red Crescent volunteers around the world are female, and women are among the first to respond in disaster, epidemics and conflict, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Philippines and Syria.

They are also just as likely as their male counterparts to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their compassion and courage. Just last year, 25-year-old Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa and 24-year-old Hauwa Mohammed Liman were providing post-natal care at an ICRC-supported health center in Rann, Nigeria, when they were kidnapped, and later killed, by an armed group.

Despite this legacy, women are still not equally represented in top decision-making roles in the humanitarian sector — a profession based on basic principles of impartiality and humanity and on the belief that all people have inherent dignity. “If you had a visual representation, the [humanitarian sector] would be a pyramid with women forming the base,” says Margareta Wahlström, president of the Swedish Red Cross and former official at both the IFRC and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “As the pyramid gets narrower at the top, there are fewer and fewer women. Women are the base, as the workers, and the men tend to take positions of higher responsibility.”

In the United Nations system, the report noted, there is a similar pyramid. “Women comprise 42.8 per cent of all employees, but with a much greater concentration of women at the entry-level.” As of February 2019, ten of the UN’s 27 humanitarian coordinators are women.

In the Red Cross Red Crescent network, women make up only 31 per cent of the governing boards that oversee Red Cross or Red Crescent National Societies. At the global level, women make up 17 per cent (5 of 30) of elected members on the IFRC governing board.

[Red Cross and Red Crescent]

Flash flooding damage in Afghanistan

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In Kandahar province, some 21,200 people have been assessed requiring humanitarian assistance as a result of recent floods. 25 people are known to have died and 40 people have been injured. According to joint assessments conducted by the government and humanitarian partners in Kandahar and seven flood-affected districts, 1,340 houses have been damaged and a further 1,276 have been destroyed.

In Hilmand province, almost 6,000 people have been affected by the floods and require humanitarian assistance, including 5,400 people who have been displaced from their homes. According to partners on the ground, more than 770 houses in the province have been destroyed.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) has also managed to reach 644 affected households in Khoshkaba and Nahr-e-Saraj which are in hard to access areas. Further assessments are ongoing, including in contested areas, and the numbers of affected people will likely continue to rise.

Assessment teams have noted the most affected households gave access to boreholes for drinking water, and that no damage has been reported to schools or health facilities with people able to access necessary health services. However, communities in Khoshkaba and Nahr-e-Saraj are reportedly drinking unsafe water, raising concerns over outbreaks of diarrhoea and waterborne diseases.

In Farah province, ANDMA has reported that 9,250 households in Farah city have been assessed as flood-affected, including 3,600 families whose houses have been completely destroyed and more than 5,600 whose homes have been damaged.

In Hirat province, 254 households in Shindand district have been identified as affected by the floods. Assessments are ongoing in three other districts, Zawol, Pusht Koh and Zir Koh.

[UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs]

Investigation finds FEMA aid favors the rich and white

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Who gets public money after natural disasters — and who doesn’t?

A new NPR investigation and analysis of previously unreleased Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) data shows that, regardless of need, post-disaster government funds tend to favor the privileged over the poor.

The story opens with the tale of two Houston families, both of which lost their homes due to storm-related flooding in 2017: a newly married, financially comfortable home-owning couple who received $30,000 in FEMA funds and more than $100,000 in tax refunds, and a family of renters consisting of a single mom and three kids, who were only given $2,500 in federal aid for a rental deposit.

The disparities in the two families’ financial situations only snowballed after the flood. While the wealthier couple was able to qualify for a low-interest loan to rebuild, the single mom landed in hot water with FEMA for choosing to use her funds on a vehicle for her family members to commute to work and school, and was not able to qualify for other sources of federal aid due to her low credit score.

Here are some of the investigation’s main takeaways:

  • FEMA funds are calculated based on risk reduction — which means people with more money are more likely to get help. Federal disaster aid is allocated based on a cost-benefit calculation meant to minimize taxpayer risk. Thus, money is not necessarily given out to those who need it most; it’s doled out to those whose property is worth more, which means the system tends to favor those who live in whiter and higher-income neighborhoods.
  • FEMA funding favors homeowners over renters. Due to FEMA’s cost-benefit calculation, poorer people, people of color, and people who are more likely to rent are less likely to get the much-needed cash after a major disaster. “Put another way, after a disaster, rich people get richer and poor people get poorer,” the investigation states. “And federal disaster spending appears to exacerbate that wealth inequality.”
  • FEMA’s flood program has the biggest racial gap. NPR examined one particular federal program that buys out homes that have been flooded or otherwise impacted by natural disasters. Their investigation found that of more than 40,000 records in the FEMA database, most buyouts went to whiter communities (more than 85 percent white and non-Hispanic), even though natural disasters.
  • Experts predict climate-driven disasters will become more frequent and severe. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, released last year, detailed the impending impacts of climate change across the country. Already, nearly 50 percent of U.S. counties experience a natural disaster each year, compared to fewer than 20 percent in the early to mid-20th century. “Hardworking Americans who are working class are going to find their communities stressed even more than they are now,” Andrew Light, an editor of the federal climate report told NPR. “If you’re already a community at risk, you’re going to be at more risk.”

[Grist]

Tornadoes in the United States

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A pair of tornadoes killed at least 23 people on Sunday in Alabama, causing infrastructure damage with at least 150 miles per hour (241 kph) winds in the deadliest twister to hit the United States in almost six years. More than 100 rescuers are digging through rubble in search of victims of the half-mile-wide tornado.

The following is a list of some of the deadliest single tornadoes and tornado outbreaks in the United States over the last quarter century:

* A so-called Super Outbreak of 362 tornadoes hit the southeastern United States over three days in April 2011, killing an estimated 321 people, and causing about $11 billion in damages across 12 states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Three of the tornadoes were rated EF-5, the top of the five-step Enhanced Fujita scale that meteorologists use to measure tornado strength.

* The deadliest tornado to hit the United States in the last several decades struck Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011 and killed at least 158 people, NOAA said. Damage from the storm exceeded $3 billion, the most of any single tornado in U.S. history.

* The so-called Super Tuesday Outbreak of 87 tornadoes in the southeastern United States on Feb. 5, 2008, killed 57 people, according to NOAA. It had the longest footprint of any tornado in U.S. history, according to private forecaster Accuweather, touching down continuously for 122 miles (196 km) through Arkansas.

* A tornado outbreak in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, metropolitan area on May 3, 1999, spawned 61 tornadoes and killed 55 people, with one single tornado responsible for 36 deaths, according to the Weather Channel.

* An outbreak of seven tornadoes in central Florida in February 1998 killed 42 people and injured 260 others in the state’s deadliest tornado outbreak since 1962, the National Weather Service reported.

* In April 2014, an outbreak of dozens of tornadoes stirred up by a powerful storm system hit the Southeast and Midwest over a three-day period and killed 32 people in Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, according to NOAA.

* A tornado killed 24 people on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. The tornado had winds over 200 miles per hour (322 kph), giving it the most severe rating of EF-5. It lasted about 40 minutes, and caused billions of dollars worth of damage, according to NOAA.

[Reuters]

What’s next for Venezuela? Anti-Maduro allies regroup after the fight for humanitarian aid

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Venezuela’s opposition has formally urged the international community to keep all options on the table, after deadly clashes broke out in border towns over the weekend.

On Saturday, at least three people were killed and hundreds more were left injured, Reuters reported, as opposition activists tried to defy a government ban to bring food supplies, hygiene kits and nutritional supplements into the country.

It comes at a time when the South American nation is in the midst of the Western Hemisphere’s worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.

President Donald Trump has consistently refused to rule out the prospect of military intervention in Venezuela and the country’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido, has called on the international community to “keep all options open.”

Pressure is building on Maduro to step down. The socialist leader has overseen a long economic meltdown, marked by hyperinflation, mounting U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil production. As a result, some three million Venezuelans have fled abroad over the past five years to escape worsening living conditions.

More than 50 countries, including the U.S. and most Latin American and European countries, have now recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. It has thrust the oil-rich, but cash-poor, country into uncharted territory — whereby it now has an internationally-recognized government, with no control over state functions, running parallel to Maduro’s regime.

[CNBC]