Study confirms global humanitarian needs remain unmet

Global humanitarian assistance rose to record levels in 2014, reflecting the scale and scope of prolonged crises such as the conflicts in Iraq and Syria as well as increased contributions from Middle Eastern donors, according to a study by the non-profit organization Development Initiatives.

A report by the body’s Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) program showed that humanitarian assistance rose to $24.5bn last year, an increase of 19% on 2013.

Middle Eastern donors contributed nearly $1.7bn, a 120% increase on the previous year.

Needs continued to outstrip contributions, however.

In its coordinated appeals, the UN fell $7.5bn short of the record $19.5bn it requested to help 87.5 million people. This meant 38% of requirements were not met, even though the world’s leading donors all gave more.

[The Guardian]

Day in the life of a relief worker in East Africa

A day in the life of Save the Children Child Protection Advisor, Amy Richmond, in the refugee camps in Dollo Ado, Ethiopia:

I wake up every morning with the sun. We ration electricity, so we all make the most of daylight. Breakfast is usually a cup of instant black coffee and a granola bar. I won’t have anything else until I return from the camps. (We don’t eat in front of the children.)

The team huddles at 7:30 a.m. and we set priorities and tasks. One of my goals is to help kids who have been lost, abandoned or orphaned. First stop is reception where dozens, sometime hundreds, of children arrive each day. As soon as they’re registered, they’re rushed into a feeding center – many of them eating their first meal in days. I work with our partners to make sure vulnerable children get into a protective environment and to reunite lost children with their families.

Next, I monitor the camps – making sure kids are in our school, Child Friendly Space or early child development program. I’m also on the lookout for hazards and basically “kid proof” areas for children to play.

One day while surveying the camps, I met a girl named Alima. She lost both her parents to violent conflict in Mogadishu. She told me of her loss and her frightening journey to the refugee camp – 6 days and nights hitchhiking and walking through the desert. Despite her hardship, all Alima wanted to talk about was finishing high school. Her hopes were music to my ears. When children talk about their future, it’s a positive sign that – with the right support – they can overcome tragedy. I walked Alima to her host family, comforted to know they were caring friends of her parents.

Then I went to a teen mothers’ group where the girls get needed support and resources. We help them to start a business such as tailoring or dyeing fabrics. The girls are independent and want to avoid the traps of exploitive professions and relationships.

Around 4:00, we head back for debriefing at the Save the Children compound. It’s a cluster of tents, dorms, offices, garages and warehouses of food to distribute to families in need. It’s more like a shipping company with a few places to sleep. I have a 3” mattress, a blow-up camping pillow and a mosquito net. One good thing about it being so hot is that we actually get warm showers.

At night, we have a modest communal dinner – typically rice and lentils. Sometimes we have goat meat. Then it’s computer time. Writing emails, reports, tracking status, recommendations, proposals. It’s late at night when I miss my family and friends at home.

[From Save the Children site]

Australian charities forced to scale back international programs after funding cuts

Australia’s largest international charities are cancelling or scaling back critical programs in the world’s poorest countries ahead of next month’s budget.

“The whole of the aid sector is hanging on the edge, waiting nervously for the May budget when it will be revealed exactly which parts of the aid budget will be cut – a bit like a doomsday clock,” ActionAid Australia’s Holly Miller said. “It’s widely accepted that everything is on the table – nothing in the aid program is safe.”

ActionAid has slashed projects in Afghanistan, is likely to cut programs in Uganda and Kenya in the coming year, and will close entirely by 2016.

Care Australia says its very successful maternal and infant health project in Papua New Guinea, which reaches 22,000 people, is in the firing line. Other likely hits include programs in Cambodia and Malawi affecting more than 20,000 people. “We had long-term commitments from the Australian Government and we made commitments to communities in these poor countries,” Care Australia chief executive Dr Julia Newton-Howes said.

ChildFund Australia‘s Nigel Spence said it was hard to feel confident that there would not be further cuts given the broken promises that have already occurred. ChildFund scaled back 17 programs last year, predominantly in PNG and South-East Asia.

Oxfam Australia, which lost almost $1 million in government funding last year, was forced to cut back on projects in PNG and Indonesia.

[Australia Broadcasting Corporation]

Academy for humanitarian relief launched

The world’s first academy for humanitarian relief has been launched, aimed at training 100,000 aid workers from over 50 countries in organizing rapid responses to disasters and emergencies.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy, launched Monday, is a response to the growing number of humanitarian crises around the world, driven by climate change and conflict, combined with a severe and worsening shortage of people with the skills necessary to coordinate the large-scale response required in the critical first days to prevent mass casualties.

The HLA is being set up by a global consortium of aid organizations with initial £20m funding from the UK Department for International Development, out of a target of £50m. The Save the Children charity has paid the startup costing and is hosting the academy’s hub in London.

Further centers will open in Kenya and the Philippines later this year, and by 2020 the plan is to have ten training centers around the world, which would offer both classroom and virtual training for the surrounding regions, in mobilizing the rapid response in resources and manpower needed in the wake of a disaster.

Jan Egeland, a former UN head of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, will be the academy’s first chairman. He said the initiative “may revolutionize the entire humanitarian sector”.

Last year witnessed a record number of severe global humanitarian emergencies and the highest number of refugees the world has seen since the second world war. 50 million people were forced to flee their countries.

[Read full Guardian article]

Innovation in the humanitarian field

In the ’90s, an NGO called Potters for Peace started to work with local potters in Central America to develop ceramic water filters that are thought to remove 99.88% of water borne disease agents. They are now produced at over 50 independent factories in more than 30 countries.

A more high-tech solution for the same problem, is the LifeSaver Cube, a water filtration product born in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. It can carry up to 5L of water which is filtered and sterilized through the use of an inbuilt hand pump. LifeSaver Systems, based in the UK, is a private company; but the national Department for International Development and Oxfam were consulted during the development of the product, another example of how a for-profit organization can work together with the third sector to reach a common goal.

Other fascinating examples of collaboration between the private sector, the academia, governments and NGOs, have more to do with process innovation. The Cash Learning Partnership, for instance, formed by the British Red Cross, Save the Children, Oxfam GB and other partners, aims to promote appropriate, timely and quality cash and voucher programming in humanitarian response. Credit card company Visa is providing technical support.

Generally speaking, the inclusion of private organizations within the humanitarian system, could help foster a more entrepreneurial approach in a sector which has traditionally been risk averse. But, of course, it’s much easier to say this, than feed it into practice.

Oxford scholars Alexander Betts and Louise Bloom write, “innovation is already and irreversibly part of the humanitarian system.” The hope is that in the future, by creating shared definitions and principles, identifying good practices, and lifting barriers to ethical innovation, reseachers say, humanitarian actors will be more prepared to meet the challenges of our increasingly troubled world.

[Forbes]

Humanitarian aid workers in more danger and stretched more than ever before

Humanitarian aid work has become increasingly dangerous, with aid workers more stretched than ever. For the first time since World War II, more than 50 million people are displaced worldwide. Attacks on aid workers more than tripled in the last decade.

Of course, the traumas of aid workers pale in comparison to those they serve. But many do face near-death experiences — 45 percent of those surveyed in the 2013 report had believed their lives were in danger or that they would be seriously injured at least once during their careers. They hear firsthand accounts of rape and murder on a near daily basis. They are usually an ocean away from their families. All while they are expected to fulfill the impossible task of helping to feed, house and protect the world’s growing number of displaced in a world of shrinking humanitarian resources.

Experts in the humanitarian business think the aid world is failing its staff for two reasons: first, lack of funding. But many interventions — providing online support and identifying staff willing to speak frankly about their struggles, for example — cost little.

More fundamentally, the issue is old-school attitudes about mental health, as many humanitarian managers tend to equate psychological support with weakness. One UN employee who was violently assaulted a few years ago while working in a war zone and who continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress as a result, thinks it’s also because so few people know there’s a problem.

“The U.N. and other humanitarian organizations are the ones developing policies on gender sensitivity, human rights, labor law and so on,” she told me. “So people just assume that these organizations are applying the same standards to their staff. But it doesn’t work that way.”

Aid workers need to be tough, resilient folks with a high capacity for hardship. This must change, and not just for high-minded humanitarian reasons. Depressed and anxious aid workers perform poorly.

Aid organizations exist to alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity. They should do better at applying these principles to their own staff.

[Written by Rosalie Hughes, a freelance journalist who worked for the United Nations refugee agency and other relief organizations in Kenya, Rwanda and other African countries from 2009 to 2013.]

 

14 million suffering children due to war in Syria and Iraq

Around 14 million children are suffering hardship and trauma from the war in Syria and Iraq, the United Nations children’s agency said, highlighting the needs of children struggling to cope with severe violence, and the danger to the rest of the world of failing to help a generation preyed on by extremist groups.

Violence and suffering have not only scarred their past, they are shaping their futures,” said Anthony Lake UNICEF’s director. “As the crisis enters its fifth year, this generation of young people is still in danger of being lost to a cycle of violence—replicating in the next generation what they suffered in their own.”

Across Syria, an estimated 2.8 million children were still struggling to pursue some form of learning amid the rubble and destruction resulting from the conflict. In large sections of the country controlled by the Islamic State, young children are increasingly being pulled into active roles in the conflict and subjected to intense indoctrination and training in the use of weapons, said Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s representative in Syria.

Propaganda videos distributed by the Islamic State showing children being taught to throw bombs and to place them under vehicles. “It is scary, this buildup of the killing machine,” Ms. Singer said. “Children are being indoctrinated in a very systematic way.”

“This worst humanitarian crisis of our era should be galvanizing a global outcry of support, but instead, help is dwindling,” António Guterres, head of the United Nations refugee agency, said in a statement.

UNICEF had sought about $815 million for its operations in Syria and neighboring countries in 2015, but as of early March, it had received little more than one-tenth of that amount. “We can’t give up on the people of Syria,” Ms. Singer said.

[NY Times]