Gazans freezing amid rubble

Many thousands of Gazans face a freezing winter living in tents pitched amid the rubble of their ruined homes.

More than four months after the 50-day summer war with Israel, 17,000 Gazans still remain displaced, having to live in temporary shelters. A total of 120,000 homes are estimated to have been destroyed in the Israeli air strikes that claimed 2,000 Palestinian lives.

“The whole area is in ruins and it’s practically impossible to live here,” Gazan resident Mahmud Hammash tells RT. “Even the undamaged houses are not fit for living. And the freezing cold has only made matters worse. A week ago the situation for all of us was unbearable.”

Hammash refers to last week’s winter storm, which killed three infants who froze to death. Gale force winds then brought with them freezing temperatures and torrential rains which led to large areas being flooded.

The situation is catastrophic, according to Amjad Al Shawa, a human rights activist and head of the Palestinian NGOs network in the Gaza Strip. He says shortly after the war the international community vowed to help Gaza. It’s still only a promise, though.

“Last October, we had the donors’ conference for Gaza construction, which was held in Cairo,” Al Shawa told RT. “There was about $2.7 billion that the international community was ready to pay… Only 2 percent of that money arrived.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it has only received $135 million from the international community, and was facing “a funding gap of $585 million for shelter assistance.” UNRWA says it will run out of money for the Gazans in February.

The money it has so far received was distributed among 40,000 families who desperately need to repair their homes.

Among major factors hampering the reconstruction effort is Israel’s blockade of the territory.

[Read full RT article]

Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?

Project H is a hot non-profit in U.S. and Europe, almost as sizzling as IDEO, the Acumen Fund, and One Laptop Per Child.

One of Project H’s initiatives was to redesign the Hippo Roller, a water transportation device. (See accompanying photo)

I heard Emily Pilloton of Project H speak in Singapore at the ICSID World Design Congress where she was receiving a roaring applause from the European and American designers. I loved that speech because it linked the power of design to the obligation to do good. In a world awash in consumption, with many designers complicit in designing that consumption, Emily’s message was right on.

Nevertheless, there is also a lot of loud grumbling along the lines of “What makes [these non-profits] think [they] can just come in and solve our problems?”

Then, some months later, a similar thing happened. At the end of a great presentation, a 20-something woman from the Acumen Fund rushed to the front and said in the proudest, most optimistic, breathless way that Acumen was teaming up with IDEO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to design better ways of delivering safe drinking water to Indian villagers. She directed this to the Indian businessman Kishoreji Biyani, who is the key investor in IDIOM, and to my stunned surprise—and hers—he groused that there was a better, Indian way of solving the problem. He like many in the Asian audience took offense at Western design intervention in his country.

So what’s going on? Did what I see in these two occasions represent something wider and deeper? Is the new humanitarian design coming out of the U.S. and Europe being perceived through post-colonial eyes as colonialism?

As I pondered this, I remembered the contretemps over One Laptop Per Child, an incredibly ambitious project sponsored by the MIT Media Lab, Pentagram, Continuum, and fuseproject. The laptop itself is wonderful, with a beautiful shape and unique interface.

Yet, OLPC failed in its initial plan to drop millions of inexpensive computers into villages, to hook kids directly to the Web and, in effect, get them to educate themselves. The Indian establishment locked OLPC out precisely because it perceived the effort as inappropriate technological colonialism that cut out those responsible for education in the country—policymakers, teachers, curriculum builders, parents. OLPC never got into China either. Or most of the large nations it had originally targeted.

So where are we with humanitarian design? I know almost all of my Gen Y students want to do it because their value system is into doing good globally. Young designers in consultancies and corporations want to do humanitarian design for the same reason.

But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in. Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers?

[Excerpts by Bruce Nussbaum, writing at fastcodesign]

Australia cuts its foreign aid to lowest in its history

Australia’s foreign aid spending is set to become the least generous of any time in its history, with new budget cuts of almost $4 billion during four years that aid organizations have slammed as “lazy” and “incompetent”.

Under the cuts, Australia will drop from being the 13th most generous nation to the 20th, out of 28 of the world’s wealthiest countries.

Treasurer Joe Hockey acknowledged aid was the hardest hit in the mid-year fiscal budget, which was being used to “offset” defense and national security commitments of $1.3 billion.

Aid agencies said the budget cuts had made Australia one of the world’s stingiest aid donors.

World Vision chief executive Tim Costello  said it was the worst cut he had seen. “I’m devastated,” he said. “Aid spending is the most moral spending that the government can do, so to cut this is morally wrong. …This is just cruel and harsh.” Mr Costello said a raft of lifesaving programs, including efforts to combat human trafficking, will probably be affected by the budget cuts.

Unicef said the latest reductions meant Australia had become “among the world’s most tight-fisted donors” despite being the fourth-wealthiest member of the OECD with the sixth-lowest debt.

Save the Children chief executive Paul Ronalds said children in poor communities were the innocent victims of Mr Hockey’s inability to get his budget savings measures through the Senate. “Joe Hockey is effectively Robin Hood in reverse, robbing aid that has been committed to the poorest people in the world and using it to try and get his budget balanced,” Mr Ronalds said. “Together with the aid slashed from the May budget, this brings Australian aid down to the lowest it’s ever been comparatively. It’s simply un-Australian.”

Australian Council for International Development executive director Mark Purcell said the cuts will hurt “millions” of vulnerable people throughout the world. “We see it as wrecking ball by the government.”

Under the cuts, for every $100 Australia will give 21¢ to aid projects by 2017-18. It is currently 32¢ in every $100.

[The Age]

UN says humanitarian system must engage earlier and more systematically

With needs rising faster than the world’s capacity to meet them, humanitarian actors must grapple with the challenge of working in partnership to ensure people’s needs are met as quickly and efficiently as possible, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said, opening the Third Annual Global Humanitarian Policy Forum in Geneva.

“We can no longer afford to operate separately or in parallel with one another in silos, we have to work horizontally,” he told the Forum.

Mr. Eliasson pointed to the current year as “a loud warning signal” the international community ought to heed, with humanitarian crises, protracted conflicts and natural disasters “seriously testing the limits and response capacities of individuals, organizations, governments and the United Nations”, and three times as many people now in need of humanitarian assistance compared to 10 years ago.

“We are at a crossroads. The trajectory is unsustainable,” he stated. “We must change the way we work and chart the road ahead.”

[UN News Centre]

Humanitarian news service IRIN

The humanitarian news service IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), after nearly 20 years as part of the United Nations, announced that it will spin off to become an independent, non-profit media venture, with the support of a major private donor.

“IRIN is an important resource for humanitarian workers around the world,” said Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, adding that “this is the right time for the service to branch out.

She welcomed the generous commitment from Hong Kong-based Jynwel Charitable Foundation “which has helped to secure its future as an independent news service.”

The new headquarters will be based in Switzerland, with support from the UK-based Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) Humanitarian Policy Group.

“IRIN’s transition presents a great opportunity for growth and revitalization,” said Jho Low, Director of Jynwel Charitable Foundation, adding that “IRIN has done fantastic work for nearly 20 years. It’s time to give it the place on the world stage that it deserves. I believe in the vision and am excited by the potential.”

IRIN covers parts of the world often under-reported, misunderstood or ignored. It started distributing humanitarian news about Central Africa by fax from a small office in Nairobi in 1995. Its readership includes UN decision-makers, donor governments, academics, media and aid workers in the field. Its work is syndicated, republished and cited by news outlets and journals from around the world.

[UN News Centre]