Putting Power into the Hands of People who Need it Most

I was lucky enough to be invited to TEDxGeneva to give a talk recently on the topic of using new technologies to better involve and engage people affected by disasters - a truly enjoyable experience for me - below is a sort of written summary of the main points of the presentation but if you prefer to see the presentation on YouTube and if you have 20mins to take a peep you can find it here. 

What's in a name? 
Head Down Eyes Open returns again to one of its favorite topics - or obsessions - the growing (and welcome) trend to harness the power of new technologies to improve the way we conduct humanitarian operations. And, the growing recognition that people affected by disasters and crises are not helpless victims but potential first line responders. They need to be treated not as objects of aid (mere beneficiaries benefiting from their benefactors) but as part of the team. They need to be what they are - the true owners of aid outcomes (more eloquently reasoned in a blog post from the wonderful Tales from the Hood).


One of the less welcome aspects of this development is the typically aid-wonk (of which I plead guilty) inclination to assign awkward nomenclature to perfectly straightforward activities. Thus, we have (the horrible) 'beneficiary communications' or (so long it's not even a descriptor anymore) 'communicating with disaster-affected populations' (or its cutesy acronym CDAC - that's see-dak folks). 


I'm increasingly leaning back towards my eighties education when we studied participatory video and dreamed about community outreach but also drawn to some terminology re-energized by social media such as engagement - which to me at least, is true to the essence of communication regardless of the technology. So, for the sake of simplicity let's call this wonderful new love affair between technology and aid - community engagement (this definition also allows for the continued and necessary inclusion of more traditional communication means such as radio, posters or even town hall meetings). Now I know there's nothing terribly original about this term and maybe that's why I like it. It has its roots in pure communication as well as in humanitarian (esp. public health) aims. And it stands a chance of being understood across a few generations. Sold?

Power (back) to the People
Anyway, community engagement, for me, is in essence about empowering people by strategically employing a range of readily accessible communication devices, technologies and channels to connect humanitarian programs with the people they are designed to support. It's another welcome symptom of the democratizing power of the social web. (Photo left from ifrc.org - he need's to be on the team!)


Community engagement must work right across the disaster environment from preparedness; early warning; disaster and post-disaster to monitoring, evaluation and so on. It has to also result in a greater quality and accountability of aid delivery and promote enhanced proximity, engagement and understanding between program managers and their clients (people in need).


Community engagement straddles the spectrum from (lo-tech) face-to-face communication to (hi-tech) SMS-based crowd sourcing. New innovations in social and mobile technologies are especially important factors that are driving the resurgence of interest in community engagement - why? Because they suddenly make it very cheap, easy, and possible - they even help us measure the value (donors are you listening?) They are taking away all previous 'excuses'. 


At its core, community engagement is a participatory approach that empowers communities by delivering potentially life-saving information into the hands of the people who need it most. Importantly, it is also about enabling disaster-affected populations to channel critical data about their situation and needs to aid agencies, thereby increasing the speed, relevance and effectiveness of aid. 


It's a truism that crucial information is often in the hands of aid agencies but remains unshared with those who need it most. Conversely, local populations often have critical knowledge at their finger tips but no way to share it for the greater good, or maybe even no clue about the value of the local knowledge that they possess. 


Community engagement therefore is about fostering and making systematic a genuine two-way communication flow and interaction that is as much about listening as disseminating. 


How might new technologies change disaster response?
The prevalence of new approaches that utilize, inter alia, SMS and Twitter; crisis mapping and crowd sourcing, raises a number of important questions for future disaster response and provides us with an important dilemma. 


In an evolving emergency (such as during the first days of Haiti) when data is scarce, but it is clear that the needs are both urgent and massive, how can aid agencies organize themselves to respond to individual requests for help? Indeed, is it efficient for aid agencies to organize themselves to respond to individual calls for help when maybe they would be more effective focusing on the urgent 'known knowns'? (photo Reuters / Eduardo Munoz)


Future Challenges and Opportunities


Here is a summarized version of what we can consider the main challenges/opportunities ahead if we are to truly be more effective at humanitarian aid by using available technologies to ensure people affected by disasters are more involved - that they become genuine partners in their own recovery. There are many more 'internal' institutional-type challenges which I won't go into here. If you feel some crucial points are omitted or contest those mentioned do join the discussion.


Some of these points are taken/inspired from a recent UN Dispatch blog post on a great new initiative that I'm sure will quickly become the basis for providing best practice, guidance and support for the aid community and communities affected by crises. Exciting times.


Relevance: is information being received directly from people – which includes third party curators – relevant information that is actionable? Can we do something with the information or is it just wasting valuable time?


Privacy: much of the personal information gathered by aid workers in the course of their duties is personal and confidential information. In some contexts, more than we might imagine, such information needs to be treated with utmost sensitivity and confidentiality. Protocols on the handling of personal data gathered and disseminated by SMS technologies (for instance but others too) should be developed much in the way confidentiality is practiced by the time-tested protocols of the ICRC's Tracing Agency.


Verification: is the information accurate? Is it true? Is it a ruse? Could it create a security problem?


Duplication: are we the only ones who received the info? Is someone else dealing with it? Do we need (yet again) new coordintion mechanisms?


Access: do the people who own the aid outcomes i.e. the most vulnerable people, do they have access to the information channels created by new technologies, better use of SMS portals etc?


Expectations: Are we creating excessively high expectations which we will not be able to manage? That is, by gathering so much date and info from people are we contributing to a misperception that all these needs will be addressed?


Proximity: Mobile technologies and satellite communications are bringing everyone—humanitarian organizations, international institutions, volunteer technical communities, and the affected populations—ever closer together. More often than not, victims of disasters and conflicts have cell phones and can communicate via SMS in real time. 


Speed: As a result, information flows are accelerating, raising expectations around increasing the tempo of information management and coordination in emergency operations.


Duality: At the same time, the methods for data and information exchange are moving from document-based systems to flows of structured data via web services. This movement from the narration of ongoing events in long stretches of unstructured prose to streams of data in short, semi-structured formats require humanitarian staff to perform double duty. They are simultaneously working within an existing system based on the exchange of situation reports while filtering and analyzing high volumes of short reports arriving via SMS and web services.


Thanks for reading this far. A last word - there is nothing really new here except the momentum driven by new opportunities. But it's not about technologies only. It's about how we use them to really put power into the hands of the people whose destinies we (as aid workers) directly influence. Would love to hear your comments. Power to the People! 


/PC

Sudan: looking to a new future

Southern Sudan is voting for its future and is widely expected to usher in full independence from Khartoum, splitting the largest country in Africa and the Arab world in two. The referendum that guides this process is the culmination of years of peace talks and treaties – especially the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005 brokered chiefly by the UN and IGAD – that sought to end decades of violent and divisive conflict.

Whatever the final outcome of the referendum, expected to be announced between the 07th and 14th of February, the fact that it has happened at all is already a triumph for the Sudanese people. Many observers - including Head Down Eyes Open - feared the worst but thankfully the dominant, dire predictions of a return to war and violence have been largely disproved.

The mostly trouble-free lead up to the referendum did bring with it some unforeseen developments however, including a larger-than-expected movement of Southern Sudanese people from the north to the south which presented a range of logistical, health and humanitarian challenges. Masses of people decided to return for the referendum and will now possibly choose to remain to build the world’s newest country.

Returnees are reported to be still journeying south in a jubilant mood, sensing the historic era of a newly independent state, but with little else to sustain them. The end of voting is of course only the beginning. It is going to be a massive challenge to provide people returning to the South with the health and social assistance that they need, not to mention assisting them to secure ways of earning a living. The existing vulnerabilities of the local population also need to be factored in so a balanced support is provided that avoids triggering tensions between returnee and resident populations.

Strong Civil Society 
Our partners working with the Sudanese Red Crescent (est. 1956) are quiet possibly the only civil society organization that has remained unified and operational throughout the entire territory of Sudan, including in the Red Sea State in the east and the troubled region of Darfur. Continued partnership and support to this national society will be a top priority now and, we would argue, should also be for the international community.

When, as expected, independence is chosen by the electorate, the process of transition will start – a period of some six months. Special attention will be given not only to the process of forming a new state but a brand new national society which is poised to become the latest member to the Red Cross and Red Crescent global network of 186 national societies.

Any future national Red Cross society in an independent Southern Sudan will need to be fully resourced and supported as they will play a grassroots role in building stability, supporting communities as well as being a key contributer to peace-building south and north of any future borders. There will be enormous legal, logistical, resourcing and political challenges but an ‘amicable divorce’ is certainly achievable.

Caution instead of Complacency
Although indications at this stage are that we will not be facing a large-scale humanitarian emergency triggered by the referendum’s result, the situation remains fragile and unpredictable. This is Sudan after all - big country, big problems. Numerous unresolved issues between Sudan’s north and south – from citizenship to oil exploration - may lead to escalated crises or localized conflict, and violent tensions between some fifty tribal communities within Southern Sudan itself can also be easily exacerbated.

The people of Sudan are pointing the way forward. They have taken an incredibly difficult road to get to this juncture. The vital political milestone of the referendum has passed and this needs to be celebrated as a victory for peaceful dialog - of which, importantly, a regional organization (IGAD) played a major role. But it is only the start. We would be wrong to deceive ourselves into thinking that the toughest test is over – any complacency now would be a mistake. Let's hope, after the Jubalation calms down, that the world resolves to stick with Sudan - north and south - for the long haul.


/PC

Stepping Up a Gear in Haiti

One long year after the earthquake that has crippled Haiti humanitarian needs are still urgent and the road to recovery is strewn with rubble. Even the most seasoned aid workers I know have never witnessed a disaster as daunting as the Haiti earthquake. 


The Red Cross boss on the ground, Marcel Fortier, said in an interview with the BBC that in more than thirty years working in disaster zones all over the world he had never witnessed anything of similar complexity or magnitude - and this from a man who played a key role during five years operation for Tsunami relief and recovery. 


The most immediate challenges start with the sheer scale of urgent needs where basically the entire country is in need of some form of assistance and the central authority has been seriously weakened. The earthquake brought the Haitian government to its knees in an instant, and it has understandably struggled after 20 per cent of its workforce was wiped out and almost all its buildings reduced to rubble.

Early on, we in the Red Cross Red Crescent identified sanitation as the number one threat to life in Haiti and set about tackling this as our overriding priority. In the absence of fully functioning national agencies, we continue to lead a metropolitan-wide response that is vast in magnitude and provides access to sanitation services and clean water to more than half a million people every single day.

And yet, the spectre of cholera still hangs over the people of Haiti. The outbreak was born largely as a result of the country’s almost entirely collapsed infrastructure. By all accounts, it is clear that our collective efforts are not enough - an opinion voiced forcefully by our colleagues from MSF. By the standards of other major disasters and crises, it is a flashing indicator about the limitations of the humanitarian system.

Not for the first time, we call attention to the fact that this is a situation which is neither acceptable nor sustainable. Aid agencies are stretched beyond capacity and are not designed to be a substitute for municipalities or national governments.

The Haitian authorities must receive the funding that has been pledged to them and all the support required to rebuild their capacity to provide, as a priority, the basic sanitation services that the Haitian population so desperately needs and deserves. 


As if predatory cholera was not enough, more than a million people in Haiti, especially the residents of Port-au-Prince, have had to endure an extremely difficult year living in makeshift shelters in dangerous camps. The challenges of finding real shelter solutions have been numerous and are mostly linked to the fact that shelter is not just about structures. Shelter encompasses important legal, economic and social aspects that must be fully taken into consideration in close collaboration with the local community.

The rather tricky and often grey area of land tenure has been particularly testing in Haiti where an informal system of property rights is mostly based on verbal contract. Even when tenure issues are resolved, the availability of adequate parcels of land is rare. Sourcing sites to rebuild that are acceptable to the community – especially finding sites with access to economic opportunities, schools and healthcare – is also a major challenge, which means many people opt to stay in or around the rubble-strewn streets of the capital city.

Rubble removal itself is a colossal and all-too-visible physical obstacle – one which humanitarians are ill-equipped to deal with effectively. Essentially, we’re trying to rebuild on a mess – to repair a tyre on a moving vehicle.

Everyone needs to step up a gear. The next Haitian government must appoint a single minister responsible for rehousing and designate a single agency to lead the process. It should decide what to do about the legal uncertainty over land tenure. And, if land is needed for temporary homes and available in or near neighbourhoods being reconstructed, it must be willing to step in and buy it at a fair market price, perhaps with assistance from donors. 

Wealthy landowners must play a more collaborative role to resolve the stalemate and not wait for windfalls as their compatriots suffer. 

The humanitarian community itself must do more to collectively influence the pace and effectiveness of the response. We have not done enough to tackle and resolve the most significant obstacles such as land and shelter.

Together, we must commit to ‘build back better’ and enforce standards in reconstruction.

Despite all the significant challenges, we cannot lose sight of the huge amount that has been achieved. The generous billions donated by ordinary people and communities the world over have been, and continue to be, critical in providing life-saving care and support, restoring livelihoods and delivering numerous other humanitarian services to the people of Haiti.

We understand only too well what needs to be done – the need to overcome seriously complicating factors such as political turmoil, cholera, floods and hurricanes. The recovery process will take years, perhaps even a generation, but it is our best chance to turn Haiti’s fortunes around.

One year on, we mourn in solidarity with the people of Haiti. It is only by working closely with the Haitian people and genuinely engaging them as real partners in their own recovery that we can be sure to pave the road to a better future.


/PC

Rebuilding Haiti - obstacles and options

As many as one million people are still without a proper roof over their heads almost one year after a deadly quake struck Haiti. Journalists and VIPs will be arriving en masse over the next weeks to make their assessments and publish their opinions. They will see hundreds of thousands still under tarpaulins and makeshift shelters and wonder why all the money that has been raised - literally billions - has not been able to achieve more. It is a valid question, easy to ask but complex to answer.


Challenges to finding real shelter solutions have been many and are mostly linked to:

• the fact that shelter is not just about structures, it encompasses important legal, economic and social aspects that must also be taken into consideration
• the urgent priority and demands to continue delivering life-sustaining emergency services, including shelter, before proper reconstruction can start
• land tenure and informal system of property rights (it is said that some 80% of Haiti's property is based on verbal contracts)
• even when tenure issues are resolved the availability of adequate parcels of land is rare
• sourcing sites to rebuild that are considered appropriate by the community especially in terms of access to local economy, schools and healthcare (the vast majority understandably do not want to move and prefer to stay in or around their destroyed homes - and forcible displacement to 'new' shelters is clearly not an option for humanitarian organizations)
• the metropolitan sized task of rapidly removing rubble created from the destruction of an estimated 200'000 homes and buildings has been simply beyond the means of national and international agencies
• the dilemma faced by aid agencies who despite being flexible are understandably reluctant to rebuild vulnerability i.e. returning people to known vulnerable areas (flood plains, seismic zones etc.) in structures that are are not resistant to hurricanes / earthquakes etc.

The video below, just released, attempts to provide some additional background to the shelter challenges and options.

Haiti, is yet another context which demonstrates, if need be, the limitations of aid. The generous billions donated by ordinary people and communities around the world have been, and will continue to be critical in providing life-saving care and support, restoring livelihoods and delivering numerous other humanitarian services to the people of Haiti. The shelter component however is a challenge of such enormous magnitude that it necessitates long-term and well-financed developmental solutions driven by serious political will, both nationally and internationally. 

The destruction wrought upon Haiti, and especially its capital Port-au-Prince, has left unprecedented challenges for the humanitarian, development and political communities. An entire capital city and all the basic services and infrastructure that its citizens expect and deserve, needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch - and to a standard that will resist future threats. This cannot happen overnight.

One year on, we cannot lose sight of the huge amount that has been achieved but we also know only too well all that remains to be done. In addition to the shelter challenges listed above, the seriously complicating factors of political turmoil, cholera outbreaks, floods and hurricanes have all conspired to stall Haiti's much-needed progress, but nevertheless progressed it has. The serious business of humanitarian aid will continue, and continue for the long haul. Patience and perseverance will be needed as ever. Indeed, the people of Haiti know this more than any of us - already from the first weeks the phrase I most recall was: C'est l'heure de la patience!

/PC

Do No Harm - why clean needles are magic bullets

December 1st is World Aids Day. If government policies fighting the spread of HIV are to succeed, they must treat people who inject drugs through healthcare and not through law enforcement.

Someone, somewhere, right now is in a basement room with a needle and a spoon, trying to take away the pain. In fact, if the 16 million people who are injecting drugs were gathered in one place it would be equivalent to the entire population of Shanghai.

In the shooting galleries of the world, from Mumbai to Managua, the frequent sharing of dirty syringes and needles is providing easy passage for the transfer of tainted blood from one body to another. It is simply the most effective way to spread the transmission of HIV and reverse years of hard-won progress.

There are many reasons why people choose to inject drugs rather than snort, smoke or swallow. Chief among these reasons is the fact that injectable drugs are cheaper, easier to find, quicker to take (handy if the police are about) and reputedly produces a faster and more intense high.

Taking drugs by needle injection has escalated in recent years and it is a trend that is observed on every continent. When injecting drugs is combined with selling sex to pay for drug habits, it creates a cocktail that massively increases the likelihood of spreading HIV to an unsuspecting public.

In Sichuan province in China, for instance, we know that almost 60 per cent of the women who sell sex are also injecting drugs with shared, contaminated needles. In parts of the UK it is as high as 78 per cent, and in Syria more than 50 per cent.

Why people choose to take drugs is a long discussion, but most often it is to escape the hardship of their daily lives, to create an artificial high where they may feel safe and elated. It is a flight from reality, that regrettably often leads to a crueler existence that brings even more suffering and stigma.

But many governments around the world – indeed more than 80 per cent of them – are also inclined to live with an artificial reality, blind to the evidence that criminalizing people who inject drugs is a failed policy that even contributes to the spread of HIV.

Public health officials are deliberately ignoring the fact that to be successful in containing HIV, health services must start to provide what are known as harm reduction programmes to support and care for people who inject drugs. These programmes typically offer heroin-replacement syrups, sterile needles and a safe environment for those who are among the most vulnerable in our society.

Instead, people who inject their drugs are constantly demonized and detained with little or no regard for their rights or the healthcare that they so desperately need. Often, the best you can hope for, if you are hooked to taking drugs through a needle, is to be driven underground to live with your addiction in the dark back streets and abandoned buildings of our towns and cities. You are shunted out of sight, rendered invisible to society, and left alone with your HIV death sentence.

Misguided government policies are without doubt contributing to the growing rate of HIV transmission that is on the rise among drug-injecting communities. We know that more than 10 per cent of new HIV infections result from sharing needles and syringes. If we are to take sub-Saharan Africa out of the equation – where sharing drug paraphernalia is less common but nevertheless firmly on the rise – the new rates of infection from unregulated syringe sharing rises to more than 30 per cent.

If we drill down to country level, in Russia for instance, HIV transmission amongst injecting drug users is a staggering 83 per cent. In Ukraine, it is 64 per cent. In Malaysia, 72 per cent. In Vietnam, 52 per cent – you get the picture. These levels of HIV-positive people who inject drugs is so high that some countries are edging dangerously close to a generalized epidemic. Yet laws and policies continue with failed enforcement tactics singling out users for blame, incarceration and exclusion.

Left unchecked and untreated, injecting drug use constitutes a serious public health hazard that can only be addressed through rational public health services that act according to medical science rather than misinformed morality. Harm reduction programmes that combine free exchange of sterile needles, drug replacement therapy, addiction counselling and other forms of health and social support, work in the prevention and containment of HIV. This is worth repeating. Harm reduction works.

Treating drug addicts as criminals, subjecting them to stigma, punishment and censure may play out well on the evening news for tough-talking politicians, but it is a recipe for failure. Worse still, it is destined to fuel the rise of HIV infection not only among those unfortunate enough to have a serious drug addiction, but also for children born into addiction and ordinary members of the public who are not normally exposed to HIV risks. Injecting drug use is a public health issue. It is an issue of human rights. It cannot be condoned – but neither should it be criminalized.

One more thing before we go - we would like to show you a trailer of a documentary called "People Like Us" that shows the importance of treating people who inject drugs with dignity, and allowing them access to health care (access to their rights if you like). If you would like to watch the full movie you can click through from Youtube. You can also find a report and many more communication products on the topic on the IFRC's special webpage.

/PC

Seeing into the future - Kathmandu's nightmare

Last week I had the opportunity and privilege to spend time in beautiful, crazy Kathmandu. We were there as part of a gathering of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from all over Asia Pacific. Colleagues from as far afield as North Korea, Mongolia, Maldives, Philippines, China, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Australia, Thailand and East Timor, to name a few, were working together to try and improve our emergency response and preparedness.

Fail to prepare - prepare to fail, is what Roy Keane used to mantra all the time. And of course he's right. But in Kathmandu's case the future will inform us on the usefulness of foresight. We know for instance that Kathmandu tops the list of the world's most at risk cities in danger of being stricken by an earthquake.

Seismologists are certain. Indeed they agree that it is overdue and that the longer time passes without it happening the worse it is going to be. Right now there is general agreement that the would-be quake will register 8 or more on the Richter scale i.e. about ten times harder than Haiti's horrible quake. And this will happen in a city of 2.5 million people living in cramped, poorly constructed homes, with little or no awareness of the imminent dangers.

Aid agencies believe that the one-strip runway will be destroyed and rendered useless, possibly for weeks. Even if it isn't its capacity to cope with the aid that will be required is worse than Haiti's (which could take four planes an hour - and only if it had the resources at hand to unload the cargo fast enough - you may remember that particular controversy) - but Haiti had ports and Kathmandu is landlocked, mountainous, inhospitable terrain - especially for a massively urgent aid operation. Logistics experts who know the region say Kathmandu could be cut-off for more than one month.

Casualties in Kathmandu are expected to be huge, some say that they will 'incapacitate' 70% of potential workforce (working to rescue, evacuate, support the injured etc.). There are plans to evacuate survivors to flat areas which are safer from aftershocks and more accessible for air-drops and so forth. The only problem here of course is that most of these areas are high in the mountains far from any services such as water and sanitation.

These are the type of reality-based conundrums that local government, civil society organizations and other actors such as ourselves are trying to get our heads around in Kathmandu (and in Delhi, Istanbul, Tehran, Ecuador, Manila and other hot spots). Preparing now to mitigate loss of life and injury is important but massively complex. Preparing for the response likewise. It doesn't bear thinking about but think about it we must.

/PC

No Doubting Thomas - Hurricane Preparedness at full speed in Haiti

HDEO gives an update on preparation efforts in Haiti ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Thomas and the damage it is expected to wreak. The next 48hrs will be all about trying to save lives before disaster strikes.

Investing in preparedness against natural disasters and severe weather events is a hallmark of the Red Cross community-level approach which stresses prevention and preparation over the knee-jerk, parachute response. This investment before disaster strikes is about to be tested to the core as Hurricane Tomas threatens Haiti. Authorities are predicting that the storm will make landfall on Haiti’s south-west on Friday, and may come close to making a direct hit on Port-au-Prince and other earthquake affected areas on Saturday.

The country is on high alert. The government is already advising people to seek
shelter with families and friends over the weekend, or to take whatever steps they
can to protect their families and their assets.

Even if there is not a direct hit, the storm is big enough and strong enough to see heavy rains and strong winds affect communities across the whole of the country, particularly the South. We know from experiences in 2004 and 2008 that even tropical storms or heavy rain can be catastrophic for the country.

How is the Red Cross preparing

We have been preparing for this kind of event since the first weeks of the earthquake response. Historically we know that Haiti is disproportionately vulnerable to hurricanes, and that even tropical storms or just heavy rain can trigger serious disasters.

We have reached tens of thousands of people through disaster preparedness activities in dozens of camps. We have worked with communities to help them dig drainage ditches, sandbag hillsides and create evacuation routes. In addition, Red Cross volunteers have provided emergency first aid training, and handed out waterproof bags that contain safety messages and can be used to store and protect important documents.

We have sent 1.5 million of SMS to communities since Monday right across the country, providing people with simple and accessible information on the steps they can take to minimize hurricane danger. These important messages have also been relayed through our weekly, national radio programme (Radio Croix Rouge Haitienne), through messages carried through camps on ‘sound’ trucks, and through dialogue between communities and trained Red Cross volunteers.

What’s in stock…

We have enough emergency stocks in country for 17,000 families. These include emergency shelter kits (tarpaulins, rope, nails and tools), jerrycans, hygiene kits, and kitchen sets (for example).

Additional supplies for 8,000 families are coming this week from the Red Cross’ regional hub in Panama. Supplies for 500 families have been sent from Port-au-Prince to Les Cayes to bolster readiness there. Supplies for a further 500 families also sent tomorrow to Jeremie.

Red Cross volunteers will continue to visit camps across the earthquake affected area, working to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of the storm and have information on what they can do to protect themselves.

Eight emergency response teams (ERTs) are on standby in Jacmel, Leogane and Port-au-Prince. These multi-disciplinary teams, comprising representatives from all Red Cross societies in Haiti can quickly respond to the disaster, providing us with rapid assessments and guiding the crucial initial delivery of assistance.

We also have the capacity to quickly bring in additional resources from the region or globally. A team of highly-skilled disaster assessment experts (known as a Field Assessment Coordination Team – FACT) has been placed on standby.

As Thomas approaches, direct hit or not, we will be relying on the fact that intense preparedness for inevitable storms and hurricanes will pay off.

/PC

Note to Journalists - Broadcast quality b-roll, showing the disaster preparedness efforts of the Red Cross in Haiti can be accessed at www.ifrc.org/newsroom.

Is Urban the new Rural?

Recently, I returned from Nairobi where we launched this year's edition of the World Disasters Report. The report focuses on Urban Risk not least because for the first time in the history of mankind, more people live in an urban environment than a rural one and in just 20 years, over 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities and towns.

A fortunate minority will live in places like Turin, Tokyo or Toronto, where if your home catches fire or floods, you can call for emergency help and expect to collect on the insurance. Everyone in the house or apartment probably has their own space and clean water is on tap. You are connected to the sewage system and your garbage is collected.

A slum household is one where all of these things are absent. There is neither water nor sanitation. The living space is cramped and comprises poor quality building materials. And the inhabitants have no security of tenure.

In a slum, your house will burn down in front of you because the municipal government does not provide emergency services to ‘illegal’ settlements. And even if they did, there would probably be no access road. Your children are more likely to pick up a disease because there is no drainage system for the floodwater and nobody will have cleared the streets of garbage.

The childhood experiences of the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, as quoted in this year’s World Disasters Report, are pretty typical for the 1 billion people who live in urban slums today:

“When our house flooded, I sometimes woke up at midnight to find my feet in water, cockroaches and rats fighting over space, and various objects floating around the living room … Every time it rained, we used to nail another piece of wood across the doorframe and dump another truckload of earth to reinforce the barricade. But the water level rose further. And the authorities never did anything.”

The real crisis in disaster risk reduction revolves around the so-called ‘vulnerability gap’ in urban communities where the authorities often lack the finance, the knowledge and the will to ensure a well-functioning urban environment and the communities have few resources and lack political influence.

Many of the 50,000 people who can die in an unexceptional year from earthquakes, or the majority of the 100 million people who might annually expect to have their lives turned upside down by floods, live in squalor on dangerous sites with no hazard-reducing infrastructure and no services.

Given the already large deficit in infrastructure and services that exists in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the urban risk divide is only set to grow wider as climate change brings on ever more severe disaster impacts in some of the world’s most vulnerable locations. Millions of people will be regularly marooned on rooftops in cities such as Dhaka competing for space with snakes. In Alexandria, Egypt, a 50 cm rise in sea levels will make 2 million people homeless.

Most population growth in the next decades will be in towns and cities of low- and middle-income countries. This urban expansion is conducive to more disasters because of the failure of governments, and many large international agencies and NGOs to adapt to the reality of urbanization.



The truth is that too many aid agencies lack urban policies and are slow to make the necessary shift from rural development, which is still very essential, to finding ways to better support vulnerable urban communities.

One of the great challenges of the 21st century for the humanitarian aid community is to learn how to work with the untitled, the undocumented, the unlisted and the unregistered that live on the edges of our cities in the flood plains and seismic zones of cities like Managua and Istanbul.

Forcible eviction is a constant threat to the urban poor who live from generation to generation without security of tenure. When disaster strikes and they lose everything, they are all too often at the back of the queue.

Fortunately, there are some examples of how good urban governance can support communities in slum upgrading projects which lead to disaster risk reduction. In Thailand, for instance, the Community Organizations Development Institute has channelled government funds for upgrading slums to over 2 million households over the last 18 years, an impressive achievement by any standards.

Much of the future direction of aid in urban settings could depend on the success or failure of the enormous humanitarian and political commitment to Haiti in the wake of last January’s catastrophic quake. A new universal way of working with the urban poor must emerge from the rubble of Port-au-Prince, which will ensure that building back better in the wake of disaster means treating owners, tenants and informal dwellers equally by emphasizing security of tenure.

If widely adopted, such an approach would be a huge contribution to risk management and a good first step towards motivating communities on the frontlines of disaster zones around the world to concentrate their energies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

And, back to our launch in Nairobi. One of the most important parts of the event was a community video produced entirely by young people of Kibera which is reputed to be one of the world's largest slums - this video presents life in a slum by those who know best, the residents. The urban poor are the real experts and need to be put firmly at the center of all efforts aimed at improving life in informal settlements and reducing the vulnerability of the population. This, we hope, is at least a good start.

/PC

Pakistan: When floods recede, toughest challenges begin

The Pakistan 'superflood' has continued to be the primary focus of our combined aid efforts over the last weeks. Haiti has for now taken a back seat and other massive 'disasters' such as Niger - where famine looms and more than seven million are 'food insecure' - struggle to get the needed attention and funds.

The devastation in Pakistan has been one of the worst natural disasters witnessed in recent times in terms of the numbers of people affected and the massive swathes of territory that are completely destroyed and cut-off. But that is not nearly the whole story.

The impact has not only been about loss of life and entire communities being uprooted. Arguably more significant, livelihoods, properties, income sources, assets, animals, machinery and food stocks of millions of people (many of whom were already living hand-to-mouth) has been washed away and swallowed by the mountains of mud.

Throw into the mix the volatile political situation in-country and on Pakistan's borders and we have a cocktail for potential civil unrest and destabilization. Security concerns for the population and aid workers are growing and, in terms of media interest, these aspects of the disaster are now receiving more attention it seems than the actual human suffering - 'not getting aid through' is a much better story after all than 'getting aid through'.

I embed here for you a photo slide show we but together with our friends at Reuters in an effort to raise awareness (and funds - more than 50'000 hits so far). We will need to produce more of this type of product in order to dispell any misperceptions out there that when the floods recede the disaster is over - the opposite of course is the truth, the real problems are only starting.



A final word of recognition for the Pakistan Red Crescent - they are doing an incredible job and are leading the international effort of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement on the ground (for our latest update, if interested, check this). Years of dealing with large scale disasters and conflict-related population displacements has provided them with great experience and capacities. They will continue to receive our international solidarity, support and reinforcements as they strive to cope with the consequences in the years ahead.

/PC

A day to commemorate (and celebrate) aid workers

Today. August 19th, is the second year of what is being called World Humanitarian Day. Who needs another international day you may well ask - there are so many at this stage that we can barely fit them into a full calendar year.

Like others, I was probably a bit cynical, or at least non-committal when WHD was introduced last year (you know it's got legs in the humanitarian world when we give it its very own acronym!). However, this year I have literally bought the tee-shirt and will probably take part in a quiet procession later on this evening in Geneva to remember colleagues who are no longer with us. Why the change of heart - maybe a gradual realization that we have more than enough cynicism in our 'business' and a to set aside one dignified day a year to remember slain colleagues is pretty decent actually when it boils down to it.



For me, unfortunately, this list of murdered colleagues, and colleagues who have died in the line of duty (to borrow a military metaphor) is too long. So today I will be especially thinking of Rita and the Jacaranda that grows in her honor in the DRC. I will be thinking back to my first mission with the ICRC when six colleagues were slain as they slept in Chechnya on 17th December 1996. And, some dear former colleagues will spring to mind from the long list of aid workers whose lives have been cut short as they tried to effect positive change in their homelands in places such as Iraq, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and too many other locations. And, most recently, in Afghanistan, when ten aid workers were mercilessly executed - our Wayfarer-in-Chief, Bob McKerrow, has written a moving and personal account of this recent tragedy in his blog.

As long as WHD remembers those of all nationalities, expatriate or not, it will be worth commemorating. I posted the video here which has been put together for the day. It is especially gratifying to see a video that doesn't glorify 'disaster porn', that doesn't bastardize 'branding porn' and that focuses firmly on the principle of principles that binds us all together - Humanity.

/PC