Logos on aid supplies: Helpful or demeaning?

When a humanitarian group hands out bags of food or sets up toilets for people who are poor or recovering from a crisis, the group puts its logo on the product. It’s a way of taking credit, which makes donors happy. It’s a way of letting the recipients know where to complain if there’s a problem. And if you’re sitting at home and catch the logo on a TV report, you might be inspired to contribute to that particular charity.

But now, some people are questioning the branding of aid goods. The first concern: How do the logos make aid recipients feel?

Ian Birrell, an international reporter and a contributing editor to Great Britain’s The Mail on Sunday, tweeted an image of a corrugated latrine door from a trip to the Bidi Bidi refugee camp in Uganda in May. Birrell wrote, “So demeaning for those who fled chaos and carnage to be endlessly reminded of their supplicant status.”

Sudhanshu S. Singh, CEO of an India-based emergency relief group called Humanitarian Aid International, agrees.Singh recalls a time when a major relief group provided plastic water buckets for aid recipients — with its logo emblazoned on each pail in huge letters. “I think it’s unfair as each time people take out the bucket to fetch water, others would immediately notice that it is part of the dole,” he says.

Many recipients don’t mind the logos. Cedric Habiyaremye, a Rwandan Ph.D. student at Washington State University, remembers when he was living in a refugee camp in Tanzania as an 8-year-old. Each day, he would see trucks labeled “WFP” — short for World Food Programme, the U.N. food agency — come into the camp.” We were full of joy, because we knew we were going to eat at that time,” he says. “It was a very reassuring time of day. … I feel that I am glad I got to know who served me at the refugee camp.”

Habiyaremye got a chance to visit World Food Programme in Washington, D.C., after he won a global agriculture award. He was so excited to meet some of the staff. “I’d been waiting for this moment for my entire life,” he says he told them. “I just wanted to tell them thank you.”

[NPR]                                                                                                        Read more

Logos on aid supplies: Helpful or dangerous?

Research has shown that there’s a relationship between the visability of a humanitarian aid brand — its public recognition — and donations, says Dmitry Chernobrov, a lecturer in journalism and politics at the University of Sheffield.

Such logos also help ensure that charities and donors get credit for their good deeds. According to USAID’s branding guide, their red, white and blue logo “was developed to ensure that the American people are visibly acknowledged for their contributions.”

Logos have become such a powerful tool that there have been incidents of ISIS stealing U.N. food aid, slapping their own logo on the boxes and redistributing it back to people.

Governments — especially those recovering from a humanitarian crisis — are anxious to get credit, too, says W. Gyude Moore, the former Liberian minister of public works. Except there’s one problem: They don’t often control the purse strings.

It’s the topic of a new paper he’s written for the think tank Center for Global Development, where he is now a visiting fellow. He argues that in fragile states, it’s in the best interests of aid groups and development agencies to let the home country get credit for big-ticket aid interventions and rebuilding efforts — even if their role was to negotiate the deal. After crises, governments and its citizens have a fractured relationship, says Moore. Citizens want to trust that their governments can handle a big shock. And governments want to ensure that they have the trust of the people.

“Public goods like roads, hospitals and schools are the most significant ways the state can make its benevolent presence felt,” he writes. Otherwise, it may lead to “nationwide consequences, ranging from protests to separatism.”

Meanwhile, concerns about safety have made some aid groups rethink the use of logos. In a conflict zone, when logos are emblazoned on products as well as T-shirts worn by staff, that could put staff at risk. Aid workers are increasingly under attack, especially in conflict zones like Syria and Yemen.

“[We used to think that] if we stick [a logo on], everyone will know we’re here to do good,” says Paul O’Brien, vice president of policy and advocacy at Oxfam America. “But there’s less and less of that notion that the branding will keep you safe. We need to get out of the branding game.”

 [NPR]

International Widows’ Day – Stigmatized, shunned and shamed

On its website dedicated to International Widow’s Day, the United Nations calls the abuse of widows and their children “one of the most serious violations of human rights and obstacles to development today.”

Across a wide range of countries, religions and ethnic groups, when a woman’s husband dies, she is left destitute – often illiterate or uneducated with no access to credit or other economic resources – rendering her unable to support herself or her family, according to the UN.

According to UN Women’s 2018 Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, nearly one-in-ten of the estimated 258 million widows globally live in extreme poverty – with little or no input to policies impacting their survival.

In 2010 the General Assembly set aside 23 June each year to pay tribute to the millions of living spouses who endure extreme poverty, ostracism, violence, homelessness and discrimination.

While violence against women is one of the most widespread violations of human rights, widows may be at particularly high risk. In many countries widows find themselves the victims of physical and mental violence – including sexual abuse – related to inheritance, land and property disputes.

Moreover, they often endure poor nutrition, inadequate shelter and vulnerability to violence – combined with a lack of access to health care. Although they are frequently rape victims and, through economic insecurity, sometimes driven to sex work, their gynecological needs often go unaddressed.

[UN]

Record number of people forcibly displaced in 2017

Every two seconds, someone in the world was forcibly displaced in 2017, according to a new report by the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Due to wars, violence and persecution, 68.5 million people were forced to flee their homes by the end of 2017 — a record high and a trend that has continued for five years.

More than half of those displaced, which included refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people, were children, many unaccompanied or separated from their parents, the UNHCR’s Global Trends report found.

The crisis in Democratic Republic of the Congo, war in South Sudan and the plight of 700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh, were big contributors.

UNHCR dispelled several incorrect “perceptions” of the global refugee crisis. “Among these is the notion that the world’s displaced are mainly in countries of the Global North. The data shows the opposite to be true — with fully 85 per cent of refugees in developing countries.”

In 2017, Turkey remained the largest host nation, with a population of 3.5 million refugees, while Lebanon had the greatest number in comparison to its population.

[TIME]