The global humanitarian system on the verge of collapse

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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the largest humanitarian relief agency in the world, has announced that it is cutting food rations to Syrian refugees living in Lebanon and Jordan. As a result, nearly 1.6 million Syrian refugees will be at greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. In Syria itself, about one-quarter of the country’s population, rely on the agency’s food assistance to survive.

The WFP and other humanitarian organizations can only respond if resources are available. Yet according to the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, less than 25 percent of global humanitarian needs have been funded in the first six months of 2015. That’s the lowest mid-year percentage in the U.N.’s history.

And it’s not just the WFP. UNICEF has also been forced to make cuts in Syria as a result of budget shortfalls.

It’s not just Syria either. In the past five years, at least 14 conflicts have erupted or reignited across the globe that have caused millions of families to flee their homes. In fact, in its latest Global Trends report, the UNHCR notes that the total number of refugees and internally displaced people worldwide stands at an all-time high.

Globally, one in every 122 people is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. From 2013 to 2014, the number of refugees grew by nearly 8 million — the biggest leap in a single year in UNHCR’s history. Right now, an estimated 78 million people across the globe are displaced through no fault of their own. If this figure were the population of a country, it would be the world’s 24th biggest.

Providing humanitarian assistance in Syria and elsewhere isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also the smart thing to do. History has proven that helping victims of war and persecution leads to greater stability, prosperity and goodwill for generations to come.

The U.S. government has consistently led the world in fighting hunger and addressing humanitarian needs. Once again, U.S. leadership is needed to mobilize the international community to address this “new normal.” While governments may disagree on the causes and possible solutions to the conflicts, all can agree that no child should suffer from hunger and malnutrition as a consequence of these conflicts. 

[By Rick Leach, the president and CEO of World Food Program USA, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that supports the mission of the U.N. World Food Programme] 

A new high-tech low-cost tent for refugees

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Issues as simple as housing have plagued refugee agencies like UNHCR for years. The tents used around the world in refugee camps are cramped, provide little protection from extreme temperatures and only last about six months.

Repeated attempts to reinvent refugee housing failed for one simple reason: cost. What tents lack in comfort they make up for with how easily they can be shipped. Any new housing solution would need to ship easily and cheaply.

The problem of cost plagued Johan Karlsson, a Swedish designer working on the problem. Then one day, while shopping at his local Ikea store, the solution came to him: if the units were flat packed, much like Ikea furniture is, transport costs would be significantly reduced.

After reaching out to the Ikea Foundation for help, Karlsson’s idea became reality. For the Ikea Foundation, which focuses mainly on improving the lives of children, improving refugee housing appeared to be a natural fit.

Now, after a two-year pilot project in Ethiopia and Iraq, UNHCR announced it will purchase 10,000 more “Better Shelter” units in 2015 for refugee camps in Iraq. The new housing units fit up to five people and come with solar panels, built-in lighting and USB ports to power electronics, marking a significant step up from the canvas tents of old.

[CBC]

Philippines: A tooth brush a day keeps tooth decay at bay

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Like many developing countries, tooth decay is the most common chronic childhood disease in the Philippines is  tooth decay, simply because awareness of dental hygiene is not taught to the nation’s children.

Amongst elementary school students participating in a Rise Above Foundation program in Cebu, the simple act of thoroughly brushing teeth once a day effectively improves tooth decay and deterioration by 50%. (If twice daily brushing could be instituted, statistics show that it would cut tooth decay significantly by a further 20%. The challenge here is the fact that the follow-up element, brushing after a second meal, would need to be conducted at the children’s homes.)

In this program, toothbrushes are kept at the school so that this practice of daily brushing can be overseen and monitored during recess. Whereas if the toothbrushes were to be returned home with the child, since the parents also have no dental hygiene background, the practice would soon be lost. The goal here is to eventually build a habit so that the kids at school learn to brush their teeth as they grow up.

As a result of this basic approach, children can focus on their schoolwork, instead of the pain caused by dental issues. Read more

Celebrity humanitarians

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Celebrity humanitarianism has been around for barely a generation. A celebrity playing a humanitarian role acts as a bridge between a (Western) audience and a faraway tragedy, a focus for empathy, an emotional interpreter. While some columnists who write about foreign atrocities freight every sentence with bombast and outrage, a talented actor tells the story with just sufficient cues for the audience to supply the sadness and anger. That’s a far more potent performance.

Celebrities such as Mia Farrow, George Clooney, and Don Cheadle (who played the lead in the movie Hotel Rwanda) converged on the Darfur issue.

In a promotional video for the (RED) campaign, which purports to battle HIV/AIDS through commerce, Bono and Oprah Winfrey stroll down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, inspecting (RED) products—sunglasses, iPods, cellphones—and eagerly buying them up. Gap T-shirts printed with words such as “INSPI(RED)” are prominent among them. A percentage of each purchase price goes to the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The message is not subtle—buy consumer brands and save Africans from dying of AIDS.

Launched in March 2006, a year later (RED) had generated just $18 million for the Global Fund. Subsequent (RED) fact sheets say that (RED) “partners and events” have generated more than $100 million. But the product line had expanded to just thirteen items and its “make history” timeline, as of August 2008, lists no events subsequent to January 2008.

(RED) has been on the receiving side of much criticism, some of it both witty and pointed. For example, the Web site www.buylesscrap.org has a banner: “Shopping is not a solution: Buy (Less). Give More.” It explains how to contribute directly to the Global Fund without buying a pair of sneakers and lists thirteen pages worth of charities, linking to Web sites where donations can be made directly. It displays a T-shirt with the words “Conscience clea(RED).”

[World Affairs] 

UNICEF describes grim trend of the world’s poorest children

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UNICEF warned of what it described as grim trend lines for the world’s poorest children over the next 15 years, saying in a new report that many millions face preventable deaths, diseases, stunted growth and illiteracy. The forecasts in the report suggested that despite reductions of poverty and other deprivations in underdeveloped countries since 2000, what’s obscured is a worsening trend among the poorest segments of their populations.

The report was described by UNICEF officials as its “final report card” on whether children had been helped by the so-called Millennium Development Goals, a group of benchmarks established by the United Nations in 2000 for measuring progress in reducing poverty, hunger, child mortality, gender inequality, illiteracy and environmental degradation by the end of 2015.

While the Millennium Development Goals contributed to “tremendous progress for children,” the report said, “In the rush to make that progress, many focused on the easiest-to-reach children and communities, not those in greatest need.” Anthony Lake, the UNICEF executive director, added, “In doing so, national progress may actually have been slowed.”

The report showed, for example, that accounting for population growth, 68 million children under the age of 5 will die of mostly preventable causes by 2030 if current trends in child mortality continue, and 119 million children under 5 will suffer stunted development. It further showed that under current trends, a half billion people–more than the population of the United States–will be practicing open defecation in 2030, posing serious health risks.

[New York Times]

Training socially-and-economically-disadvantaged women to start their own businesses

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Isolde and Carla are two women who met at FEDES Vocational Training School outside Santiago. After they graduated, they started a successful business creating service clothing and school uniforms.

Giving women the ability of supporting themselves and their families is the reason FEDES exists. The FEDES tailoring and sewing courses are geared to train socially-and-economically-disadvantaged women, allowing them to learn a trade. Basic business concepts are also taught, aiding the women in creating a business plan to start their own micro-enterprise.

Since the women are from extremely poor social strata, they also receive subsidies for transport, and seed capital at the end of the course to help them buy a sewing machine and get their businesses started.

Read more about FEDES in Chile 

The derailing of the U.S. Agency for International Development

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USAID’s capacity is on the cusp of crisis: Its staff is divided between veterans who are aging out and greenhorns, with too few in the middle. From the standpoint of national capacity, America has a development donut. And it’s a problem that so far has gone all but unnoticed by policymakers or the public.

Since 2009, USAID has witnessed about a 16 percent real drop in funding while its partner across the Potomac, the Pentagon, fought a successful campaign to limit decreases.

Over the last two decades, about one-third of USAID’s professional staff, according to the U.S Global Leadership Coalition, has gone away, leaving it more or less a contracting office for NGOs, who are fortunately doing much better aid work than before. But there’s only so much even they can do, given their likewise limited economies of scale — which is one reason a leading global power has an international development ministry to begin with.

At a briefing delivered at the National Defense University in April, USAID’s human capital and talent management staff reported that its agency has about 10,000 personnel total worldwide. Just fewer than 4,000 of these, however, are Foreign Service officers or civil servants — the professional core of the agency. The remainder consists of non-American subject matter experts making up approximately 80 percent of overseas staffing, in addition to contractors.

What really limits America’s capacity, however, to foster its long-term international standing and national security is a cavity of human capacity right in the middle of the organization. Over 50 percent of the agency’s professional workforce — its institutional memory — is now past retirement age. Over 70 percent of the remainder has less than five years of experience. That means a serious shortage of seasoned staff in a middle management mode — and a dearth of future, seasoned senior leaders.

USAID has made significant strides in effectiveness, and doing a better job of demonstrating return on investment, as its annual performance reports have shown since 2007. There are still improvements to be made, but despite those made so far, Uncle Sam’s development arm is still atrophying. Not that anyone seems to care.

[Excerpts of Foreign Policy article]

UN: North Korean famine a “looming humanitarian disaster”

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North Koreans are facing a “looming humanitarian disaster” according to the United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who told CNN, “We call for the international community to support the DPRK and help the DPRK in a respect of what is going to be a very difficult famine. … You may well see starvation on a massive scale unless there’s a massive relief effort in the weeks and months to come.”

The Asia deputy regional director for the U.N. World Food Programme, John Aylieff says. “It doesn’t take long for malnutrition to spike … So a short and fairly serious shock to the food system of the country can create quite serious implications for the population.”

State media, which usually paint only a rosy picture of life for North Korea’s citizens, have been publishing reports about what they call the worst drought in 100 years.

“Their decision to officially report the drought in their internal media is remarkable,” says Andrei Lankov, a professor at South Korea’s Kookmin University. “It’s a signal to both domestic and foreign audience that probably something will go bad later this year. So they will probably apply for foreign aid.”

[CNN]

Espoir Congo = Hope in the Congo!

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A few years ago, Bernadette lost her husband, leaving her alone to care for her 5 children. The two youngest, Sincere and Fumusantu, were able to be enrolled in the Espoir Congo school, free of charge, including their uniforms and school supplies.

Additionally, Bernadette received weekly food packages as well as ongoing assistance from the directors of the school.

Needless to say, she was very thankful for the generosity and care her family received and for the opportunity for her children to study. She explains in this video that if it weren’t for Espoir Congo, her children would have nowhere to go, meaning would most likely end up begging on the street like so many others.

And to top things off, her daughter Sincere, a bright girl, ended up as the school laureate!

Click here for more on Espoir Congo