HAITI EX-DICTATOR DUVALIER LEAVES HOSPITAL
(Inquirer) - AFP
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was released from a private hospital where he was being treated for an undisclosed ailment, his longtime companion told AFP.
"He's going back home. He's doing much better," Duvalier's partner Veronique Roy told AFP.
Duvalier was admitted to the hospital last week shortly after receiving a court order limiting his mobility to the Haitian capital.
A close Duvalier associate told AFP however that the ailing former dictator was still not completely well.
"He is very sick," the friend said, asking not to be identified.
"He's going home because he can receive visits from his friends there," the associate said.
Duvalier's attorneys have said they would file an appeal challenging the restriction on his movements, which they decried as unfair and "arbitrary."
Duvalier made a surprise return to Haiti in January, prompting prosecutors to charge the 59-year-old with corruption, embezzlement of public funds and criminal association during his 15-year rule that ended in 1986.
Human rights activists and experts have accused Duvalier of returning to Haiti to prevent the confiscation of at least $5.7 million in frozen Swiss bank accounts.
The former dictator upon his return said he had come back to work for national unity.
He was preceded as Haiti's president by his father Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who also imposed authoritarian rule on the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
ARTICLE - INT'L HELP TO PROSECUTE BABY DOC
HAITI SEEKS INTERNATIONAL HELP TO PROSECUTE BABY DOC
(TimesLive) - By Sapa-dpa
Haiti's government says it would need help from international jurists to prosecute former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier for alleged human rights crimes committed during his reign more than 25 years ago.
Justice Minister Andre Antoine told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Monday that Haiti's judges and prosecutors lack the training and experience necessary to handle a case of crimes against humanity.
"The magistrates are players in this game, it is like a football match: if they don't have a good manager, it will be difficult to win," Antoine said.
"We recognise that our justice system is weak and needs to be reinforced."
Former justice minister Jean-Joseph Exume told the commission that 16 individual cases had been filed against Duvalier in the court system starting immediately after his January 16 return to the country from 25 years of exile.
Exume said "concrete measures" would be necessary to protect plaintiffs and witnesses.
Antoine also said prosecution of Duvalier for human rights violations was of international importance.
"It is not only a Haitian matter, because convicting Duvalier would send a psychological message to humanity, to all the dictators or to those who are tempted by power (that) the law will not pardon them, that punishments await them," he said.
Duvalier ruled Haiti from 1971 until his overthrow by a popular uprising in 1986. His father, Francois, ruled as "president for life" from 1957 until his death.
The family reign has long been accused of widespread human rights violations including murders, torture and disappearances.
(TimesLive) - By Sapa-dpa
Haiti's government says it would need help from international jurists to prosecute former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier for alleged human rights crimes committed during his reign more than 25 years ago.
Justice Minister Andre Antoine told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Monday that Haiti's judges and prosecutors lack the training and experience necessary to handle a case of crimes against humanity.
"The magistrates are players in this game, it is like a football match: if they don't have a good manager, it will be difficult to win," Antoine said.
"We recognise that our justice system is weak and needs to be reinforced."
Former justice minister Jean-Joseph Exume told the commission that 16 individual cases had been filed against Duvalier in the court system starting immediately after his January 16 return to the country from 25 years of exile.
Exume said "concrete measures" would be necessary to protect plaintiffs and witnesses.
Antoine also said prosecution of Duvalier for human rights violations was of international importance.
"It is not only a Haitian matter, because convicting Duvalier would send a psychological message to humanity, to all the dictators or to those who are tempted by power (that) the law will not pardon them, that punishments await them," he said.
Duvalier ruled Haiti from 1971 until his overthrow by a popular uprising in 1986. His father, Francois, ruled as "president for life" from 1957 until his death.
The family reign has long been accused of widespread human rights violations including murders, torture and disappearances.
Monday, March 28, 2011
ARTICLE - FEAR OF WEATHER DISASTERS
HAITI'S QUAKE SURVIVORS FEAR WEATHER DISASTERS
(Reuters AlertNet) - By Jean Daniel Delone
PORT-AU-PRINCE- Survivors of Haiti's January 2010 earthquake fear that their precarious living conditions are making them more vulnerable to extreme weather like storms, as well as longer-term climate change.
Experts are concerned that the quake-hit nation is in no position to tackle the growing threat from global warming, which could bring more intense hurricanes to the Caribbean region.
"I've noticed the climate changing in Haiti since 1986, and since then, there have been dangerous storms and hurricanes," says Yvelt Chery, an expert with the Centre National de Meteorologie (national meteorology centre).
"It's very clear...because it's supposed to be the dry season now, but it rains every night and this is causing lots of problems."
Increasingly heavy rains linked to climate change are a threat to food production, because they will wash away crops and prevent farmers planting on flooded land, Chery adds. Around two-thirds of Haitians scrape a meagre living from agriculture.
Absolu Lajoie, 27, a stone-breaker who lives in a makeshift shelter in the Cite Soleil slum area of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, says he has no choice but to grab his important papers and run whenever bad weather hits.
"The water always gets into my tent, and when it's windy, my tent flaps around," he says. "There are four of us in the tent and I'm really worried about the extreme weather.
"I've been here since the earthquake and this the worst time I've known in my life. If my country were able to take care of things, I would not be that frightened," Lajoie adds.
FEW FORESTS, LITTLE PLANNING
Each year, Haiti braces itself for the Atlantic hurricane season, which often wreaks havoc on people, livestock and farms. In August and September 2008, four large storms swept across the impoverished nation, killing hundreds of people and destroying half the crops under cultivation.
The country has become even more exposed to hazards, including heavy rains and earthquakes, because there are few regulations to stop people cutting down trees or building in risky areas.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), forest covers just two percent of Haiti’s land, leaving it exposed to soil erosion and flooding. And around 85 percent of watersheds - a crucial source of water for households and crops, and a buffer against flooding - have fallen into disrepair.
Meteorologist Chery warns that, in the wake of the huge 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, Haiti remains highly unprepared for additional disasters. The government should alert people to the dangers of living in places at risk of landslides and flooding, he adds.
Joelle Fontilus, director of the Port-au-Prince city hall, says planning controls in many parts of the island nation - including Saint-Marc, La Saline, Grande Saline, Artibonite and Port-au-Prince - should be tightened.
The threat has been exacerbated by rubble from the quake falling into drains, canals and the sea, raising water levels, explains Fontilus. "When it rains, many places are flooded, so if the situation gets worse the country will be completely devastated," she warns.
Given the lack of action by the government and international community, all the mayor's office can do is campaign to make people more aware of the risks they face, especially those living in the worst conditions in tents, she says.
LIMITED RESOURCES
Around 680,000 people are still sheltering in camps in quake-affected areas, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), down from nearly 1.54 million at the height of the crisis.
The IOM says it is doing what it can with limited resources to help Haitians reduce the risk of disasters such as flooding from storms.
IOM staff are providing information to people in the 800 to 900 camps it supports, and have distributed kits and medical supplies to help people deal with hazards, according to Bradley Mellicker, an emergency preparedness and response officer for the inter-governmental agency.
“We also have teams in different parts of the country giving people assistance so they can face major environmental problems,” he says.
For example, many parts of Port-au-Prince, such as Martissan and Cite Soleil, are full of garbage that has been washed down from denuded slopes by rainfall run-off.
“One important aim of our project is to plant trees and grass to keep water on the mountains and in higher places just to minimise the risks,” Mellicker explains.
Other measures planned by the IOM include cleaning out canals, erecting evacuation shelters to accommodate people when extreme weather hits, and removing rubble from the sea to lower the water level.
INCREASINGLY VULNERABLE
Yet for those families who have yet to move into adequate housing more than a year after the earthquake, it takes very little - just a bout of heavy rain or strong winds - to tip their lives back into crisis.
Student Mislene Valius, 22, lives 30 metres from a canal in Vallé de Bourdon in the Haitian capital. “When it rains, I have to go up on the roof or the hill to avoid being struck by disaster," she says. "My worries are growing more and more because my country can't take care of this situation."
Dorvil Sonson, a 47-year-old carpenter, says his family no longer gets visitors since the quake forced them to move to a tent city above a ravine in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince.
"I live in a tent with my wife and three children, and you know it's a risk living here, because if there's a landslide we'll be among the victims," he says.
"When I listen to the news, I hear that many countries are suffering from disaster. But my country can't take anymore after the...earthquake."
If the Haitian government and international aid agencies fail to step up efforts to protect vulnerable people like these, they will continue to lurch from one disaster to the next, leaving them ever more exposed to the future impacts of climate change.
Jean Daniel Delone is a Haitian freelance journalist based in Port-au-Prince.
(Reuters AlertNet) - By Jean Daniel Delone
PORT-AU-PRINCE- Survivors of Haiti's January 2010 earthquake fear that their precarious living conditions are making them more vulnerable to extreme weather like storms, as well as longer-term climate change.
Experts are concerned that the quake-hit nation is in no position to tackle the growing threat from global warming, which could bring more intense hurricanes to the Caribbean region.
"I've noticed the climate changing in Haiti since 1986, and since then, there have been dangerous storms and hurricanes," says Yvelt Chery, an expert with the Centre National de Meteorologie (national meteorology centre).
"It's very clear...because it's supposed to be the dry season now, but it rains every night and this is causing lots of problems."
Increasingly heavy rains linked to climate change are a threat to food production, because they will wash away crops and prevent farmers planting on flooded land, Chery adds. Around two-thirds of Haitians scrape a meagre living from agriculture.
Absolu Lajoie, 27, a stone-breaker who lives in a makeshift shelter in the Cite Soleil slum area of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, says he has no choice but to grab his important papers and run whenever bad weather hits.
"The water always gets into my tent, and when it's windy, my tent flaps around," he says. "There are four of us in the tent and I'm really worried about the extreme weather.
"I've been here since the earthquake and this the worst time I've known in my life. If my country were able to take care of things, I would not be that frightened," Lajoie adds.
FEW FORESTS, LITTLE PLANNING
Each year, Haiti braces itself for the Atlantic hurricane season, which often wreaks havoc on people, livestock and farms. In August and September 2008, four large storms swept across the impoverished nation, killing hundreds of people and destroying half the crops under cultivation.
The country has become even more exposed to hazards, including heavy rains and earthquakes, because there are few regulations to stop people cutting down trees or building in risky areas.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), forest covers just two percent of Haiti’s land, leaving it exposed to soil erosion and flooding. And around 85 percent of watersheds - a crucial source of water for households and crops, and a buffer against flooding - have fallen into disrepair.
Meteorologist Chery warns that, in the wake of the huge 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, Haiti remains highly unprepared for additional disasters. The government should alert people to the dangers of living in places at risk of landslides and flooding, he adds.
Joelle Fontilus, director of the Port-au-Prince city hall, says planning controls in many parts of the island nation - including Saint-Marc, La Saline, Grande Saline, Artibonite and Port-au-Prince - should be tightened.
The threat has been exacerbated by rubble from the quake falling into drains, canals and the sea, raising water levels, explains Fontilus. "When it rains, many places are flooded, so if the situation gets worse the country will be completely devastated," she warns.
Given the lack of action by the government and international community, all the mayor's office can do is campaign to make people more aware of the risks they face, especially those living in the worst conditions in tents, she says.
LIMITED RESOURCES
Around 680,000 people are still sheltering in camps in quake-affected areas, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), down from nearly 1.54 million at the height of the crisis.
The IOM says it is doing what it can with limited resources to help Haitians reduce the risk of disasters such as flooding from storms.
IOM staff are providing information to people in the 800 to 900 camps it supports, and have distributed kits and medical supplies to help people deal with hazards, according to Bradley Mellicker, an emergency preparedness and response officer for the inter-governmental agency.
“We also have teams in different parts of the country giving people assistance so they can face major environmental problems,” he says.
For example, many parts of Port-au-Prince, such as Martissan and Cite Soleil, are full of garbage that has been washed down from denuded slopes by rainfall run-off.
“One important aim of our project is to plant trees and grass to keep water on the mountains and in higher places just to minimise the risks,” Mellicker explains.
Other measures planned by the IOM include cleaning out canals, erecting evacuation shelters to accommodate people when extreme weather hits, and removing rubble from the sea to lower the water level.
INCREASINGLY VULNERABLE
Yet for those families who have yet to move into adequate housing more than a year after the earthquake, it takes very little - just a bout of heavy rain or strong winds - to tip their lives back into crisis.
Student Mislene Valius, 22, lives 30 metres from a canal in Vallé de Bourdon in the Haitian capital. “When it rains, I have to go up on the roof or the hill to avoid being struck by disaster," she says. "My worries are growing more and more because my country can't take care of this situation."
Dorvil Sonson, a 47-year-old carpenter, says his family no longer gets visitors since the quake forced them to move to a tent city above a ravine in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince.
"I live in a tent with my wife and three children, and you know it's a risk living here, because if there's a landslide we'll be among the victims," he says.
"When I listen to the news, I hear that many countries are suffering from disaster. But my country can't take anymore after the...earthquake."
If the Haitian government and international aid agencies fail to step up efforts to protect vulnerable people like these, they will continue to lurch from one disaster to the next, leaving them ever more exposed to the future impacts of climate change.
Jean Daniel Delone is a Haitian freelance journalist based in Port-au-Prince.
ARTICLE - BRITAIN - MORE FREQUENT DISASTERS
BRITAIN WARNS THAT GOVERNMENTS MUST PREPARE FOR MORE FREQUENT MEGA-DISASTERS LIKE QUAKES
(CP) - AP
LONDON — A British government report says major disasters like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami or Pakistan's floods are likely to become more frequent and global governments must prepare for an uncertain future.
The author Paddy Ashdown, a House of Lords member and ex-United Nations high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said rich nations must help poorer countries to build up their defences against disasters. The report was issued Monday by the international development ministry.
Ashdown said a lack of prior support for Haiti and Pakistan had worsened the impact of recent events there.
He said scientists believe that recent natural disasters were not an aberration, but "the beginnings of a new kind of future in which mega-disasters are going to be more frequent."
(CP) - AP
LONDON — A British government report says major disasters like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami or Pakistan's floods are likely to become more frequent and global governments must prepare for an uncertain future.
The author Paddy Ashdown, a House of Lords member and ex-United Nations high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said rich nations must help poorer countries to build up their defences against disasters. The report was issued Monday by the international development ministry.
Ashdown said a lack of prior support for Haiti and Pakistan had worsened the impact of recent events there.
He said scientists believe that recent natural disasters were not an aberration, but "the beginnings of a new kind of future in which mega-disasters are going to be more frequent."
ARTICLE - UN LAUNCHES HAITI REPORT
UN official launches Haiti report
(Khaleej Times) - By Lily B. Libo-on
DUBAI — Valerie Amos, the United Nations’ Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, launched the “Disaster Relief 2.0: The future of information sharing and humanitarian emergencies” here on Monday.
The report was launched during the opening ceremony of the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development (DIHAD) Conference and Exhibition at World Trade Center.
Amos said the global launch marked the collaboration between the volunteer technical community and the humanitarian system, which analysed how the humanitarian community and the emerging volunteer and technical communities worked together in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and recommended the ways to improve coordination between these communities in future emergencies.
She said four things were learned from the Haiti earthquake, it being a huge disaster.
“Generally, main lesson out of our evaluation is the importance of working with the national government and its different departments so that UN agencies, our international partners are really working with local capacity.
Second this is the importance of listening to local communities about what is it that they want when you go in to help.
Third is access to information and making sure that the information available is sufficient to enable us to make decisions on what we have to do.
“The fourth is the importance of making sure that we work with local government and communities to help them prepare for future emergencies so that they will be able to respond properly in the future,” she said.
“We may again look at the lesson learnt in Haiti and apply it elsewhere but we have to be aware that every country is different to have it in the same or different context. The most important is the recognition that any country can benefit from it.
It’s not how prepared are you. But, it is always good to review what you have done and what mechanisms are in place.”
(Khaleej Times) - By Lily B. Libo-on
DUBAI — Valerie Amos, the United Nations’ Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, launched the “Disaster Relief 2.0: The future of information sharing and humanitarian emergencies” here on Monday.
The report was launched during the opening ceremony of the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development (DIHAD) Conference and Exhibition at World Trade Center.
Amos said the global launch marked the collaboration between the volunteer technical community and the humanitarian system, which analysed how the humanitarian community and the emerging volunteer and technical communities worked together in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and recommended the ways to improve coordination between these communities in future emergencies.
She said four things were learned from the Haiti earthquake, it being a huge disaster.
“Generally, main lesson out of our evaluation is the importance of working with the national government and its different departments so that UN agencies, our international partners are really working with local capacity.
Second this is the importance of listening to local communities about what is it that they want when you go in to help.
Third is access to information and making sure that the information available is sufficient to enable us to make decisions on what we have to do.
“The fourth is the importance of making sure that we work with local government and communities to help them prepare for future emergencies so that they will be able to respond properly in the future,” she said.
“We may again look at the lesson learnt in Haiti and apply it elsewhere but we have to be aware that every country is different to have it in the same or different context. The most important is the recognition that any country can benefit from it.
It’s not how prepared are you. But, it is always good to review what you have done and what mechanisms are in place.”
ARTICLE - UN REPORT - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OPENS NEW ROUTES FOR EMERGENCY DISASTER RELIEF - UN REPORT (UN) - http://www.un.org/ ; OCHA - www.unocha.org
The vital role of new information technology in responding rapidly to sudden onset emergencies is highlighted in a new United Nations study released today, identifying best practice and lessons learned from last year’s devastating Haitian earthquake.
“The challenge is to improve coordination between the structured humanitarian system and the relatively loosely organized volunteer and technical communities,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said at the report’s launch in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“This report illustrates a potential way forward. Without direct collaboration with humanitarian organizations, volunteer and technical communities run the risk of mapping needs without being able to make sure that these needs can be met.”
The study, Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies, launched at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference 2011, analyzes how the humanitarian and emerging volunteer and technical communities collaborated in the aftermath of the Haitian quake that killed more than 200,000 people and made 1.3 million more homeless, and recommends ways to improve coordination in future emergencies.
Commissioned by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, it was written by researchers led by John Crowley at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, based on interviews with some 40 technology and humanitarian experts, many of whom responded to the Haitian quake.
UN Foundation Chairman Ted Turner noted that the quake showed that interconnected people were increasingly central to emergency response and recovery. “Haitians trapped under rubble used text messaging to send peas for help,” he wrote in a foreword. “Concerned citizens worldwide engaged in a variety of ways, from sending in donations via SMS to using shared networks to translate and map requests for assistance.
“Powered by cloud-, crowd-, and SMS-based technologies, individuals can now engage in disaster responses at an unprecedented level.”
The report spells out how hundreds of geo-spatial information systems experts used fresh satellite imagery to rebuild missing maps of Haiti and plot a picture of the changed reality on the ground, an essential elements that provided much of the street-level mapping data used for logistics and camp management.
“Humanitarian crises from Libya to Japan remind us that fast and accurate information is imperative in effective emergency response efforts,” UN Foundation chief executive officer Kathy Calvin said. “Today’s increased access to collaborative technologies and networks presents an important innovation milestone and an opportunity to rethink how data about urgent humanitarian needs are gathered, processed and shared.”
Ms. Amos underscored the role of technology in her opening address to the Dubai conference. “In a world awash with information, one of the biggest challenges is to pinpoint the right information to enable us to make good decisions,” she said. “More than ever, our collective energy, resources and efforts are needed to strengthen our humanitarian response capacity. The emphasis this conference is placing on new technologies is very appropriate.”
Ms. Amos also met with Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, wife of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to thank her for her strong support and deep engagement in humanitarian affairs.
The vital role of new information technology in responding rapidly to sudden onset emergencies is highlighted in a new United Nations study released today, identifying best practice and lessons learned from last year’s devastating Haitian earthquake.
“The challenge is to improve coordination between the structured humanitarian system and the relatively loosely organized volunteer and technical communities,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said at the report’s launch in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“This report illustrates a potential way forward. Without direct collaboration with humanitarian organizations, volunteer and technical communities run the risk of mapping needs without being able to make sure that these needs can be met.”
The study, Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies, launched at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference 2011, analyzes how the humanitarian and emerging volunteer and technical communities collaborated in the aftermath of the Haitian quake that killed more than 200,000 people and made 1.3 million more homeless, and recommends ways to improve coordination in future emergencies.
Commissioned by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, it was written by researchers led by John Crowley at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, based on interviews with some 40 technology and humanitarian experts, many of whom responded to the Haitian quake.
UN Foundation Chairman Ted Turner noted that the quake showed that interconnected people were increasingly central to emergency response and recovery. “Haitians trapped under rubble used text messaging to send peas for help,” he wrote in a foreword. “Concerned citizens worldwide engaged in a variety of ways, from sending in donations via SMS to using shared networks to translate and map requests for assistance.
“Powered by cloud-, crowd-, and SMS-based technologies, individuals can now engage in disaster responses at an unprecedented level.”
The report spells out how hundreds of geo-spatial information systems experts used fresh satellite imagery to rebuild missing maps of Haiti and plot a picture of the changed reality on the ground, an essential elements that provided much of the street-level mapping data used for logistics and camp management.
“Humanitarian crises from Libya to Japan remind us that fast and accurate information is imperative in effective emergency response efforts,” UN Foundation chief executive officer Kathy Calvin said. “Today’s increased access to collaborative technologies and networks presents an important innovation milestone and an opportunity to rethink how data about urgent humanitarian needs are gathered, processed and shared.”
Ms. Amos underscored the role of technology in her opening address to the Dubai conference. “In a world awash with information, one of the biggest challenges is to pinpoint the right information to enable us to make good decisions,” she said. “More than ever, our collective energy, resources and efforts are needed to strengthen our humanitarian response capacity. The emphasis this conference is placing on new technologies is very appropriate.”
Ms. Amos also met with Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, wife of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to thank her for her strong support and deep engagement in humanitarian affairs.
ARTICLE - NEO-HUMANITARISM AND TECHNOLOGY
Neo-Humanitarians: Technology and the Future of Humanitarian Aid
(Huffington Post) - By John Crowley
The quiet heroes of humanitarian operations rarely make the news. While reports from Japan and Libya flow across the headlines, field staff in South Sudan is now helping survivors of renewed village burnings. Logisticians in Liberia are planning for a major influx of refugees from Cote d'Ivoire. And NGOs and UN agencies in Haiti continue to aid one of the poorest countries on earth.
Their work is more complex than most know. Good intentions are no guarantee of good outcomes. The complicated interactions of politics, environment, and international aid often create unexpected results. Seasoned professionals therefore rely on wisdom amassed from decades of field operations. But new communication technologies just made that equation more complicated.
While reports from Twitter and SMS make sexy headlines, verifying reports of violence and needs is difficult. One must work across language as well as the intentions of the tweeter and re-tweeters. Because most humanitarians already work 20-hour days, they lack time to analyze thousands of messages or to map them, which is why a new form of humanitarian is becoming so important: the volunteer humanitarian technologist.
From Cairo to Benghazi and Sendai, volunteer humanitarian technologists are connecting the informal realm of social media with the formal systems by which UN agencies and NGOs deliver aid. Some are working from their homes and offices; some are traveling into the field. Almost all are volunteers who operate without official support or funding.
These individuals -- perhaps numbering 5,000 -- are members of communities that are bringing the principles from open-source software and open data to humanitarian operations. Composed of experts that specialize in imagery, mapping, crowd-sourcing, they have demonstrated a power to bring change to the humanitarian space.
Connected by a growing global network of cell phones and Internet devices, these neo-humanitarians coordinate through loose hierarchies and rough consensus. Like ants, they swarm around challenges, building on the notion that a collective intelligence can emerge from collective action -- that given any problem and a sufficiently large pool of minds, the solution will be obvious to someone. As a result, they have come to be seen as problem solvers who can work at tempi that bureaucracies cannot muster.
During the past year, they mapped the country of Haiti in 2.5 weeks -- a task that many cartographers think might have taken a more traditional organization more than a year to do. They worked with the Haitian diaspora to translate tens of thousands of pleas for help from Creole to English in near real time, and geo-located these translated messages on maps that search-and-rescue teams could use to plan their operations.
For all the power that these new humanitarian communities bring to crisis response, they are still outside the formal system by which the United Nations coordinates emergency operations. Most volunteer organizations lack resources to do more than provide a surge capacity of two weeks (after that time, volunteers generally must return to spouses, children, and employers.) Many are still building the processes by which they verify reports that arrive from the affected population. And all lack the protections afforded to organizations that work under the official humanitarian system, including the shield of neutrality enshrined in the laws of armed conflict.
The United Nations just took a step to tackle these issues. Working with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs commissioned the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to reflect on the operations of 2010 and devise a framework by which stakeholders could approach their differences as a design challenge. The report proposes an initial interface between the formal humanitarian system and these new volunteer communities.
It suggests creating a neutral space where the neo-humanitarians might align their efforts with existing international protocols governing humanitarian operations. And it creates frameworks to push venerable response systems to make needed adaptations. The report will be released by Baroness Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator on 28 March.
For humanitarians, it is a time of great hope and great challenge. If this new interface succeeds, a new generation will work within a more open system where it is normal for affected populations to communicate with donors, NGOs, and the United Nations through Facebook, OpenStreetMap, YouTube, Ushahidi, Twitter, and their successors. Humanitarians will still be quiet heroes, but they will be giving voice to the vulnerable in more effective ways.
(Huffington Post) - By John Crowley
The quiet heroes of humanitarian operations rarely make the news. While reports from Japan and Libya flow across the headlines, field staff in South Sudan is now helping survivors of renewed village burnings. Logisticians in Liberia are planning for a major influx of refugees from Cote d'Ivoire. And NGOs and UN agencies in Haiti continue to aid one of the poorest countries on earth.
Their work is more complex than most know. Good intentions are no guarantee of good outcomes. The complicated interactions of politics, environment, and international aid often create unexpected results. Seasoned professionals therefore rely on wisdom amassed from decades of field operations. But new communication technologies just made that equation more complicated.
While reports from Twitter and SMS make sexy headlines, verifying reports of violence and needs is difficult. One must work across language as well as the intentions of the tweeter and re-tweeters. Because most humanitarians already work 20-hour days, they lack time to analyze thousands of messages or to map them, which is why a new form of humanitarian is becoming so important: the volunteer humanitarian technologist.
From Cairo to Benghazi and Sendai, volunteer humanitarian technologists are connecting the informal realm of social media with the formal systems by which UN agencies and NGOs deliver aid. Some are working from their homes and offices; some are traveling into the field. Almost all are volunteers who operate without official support or funding.
These individuals -- perhaps numbering 5,000 -- are members of communities that are bringing the principles from open-source software and open data to humanitarian operations. Composed of experts that specialize in imagery, mapping, crowd-sourcing, they have demonstrated a power to bring change to the humanitarian space.
Connected by a growing global network of cell phones and Internet devices, these neo-humanitarians coordinate through loose hierarchies and rough consensus. Like ants, they swarm around challenges, building on the notion that a collective intelligence can emerge from collective action -- that given any problem and a sufficiently large pool of minds, the solution will be obvious to someone. As a result, they have come to be seen as problem solvers who can work at tempi that bureaucracies cannot muster.
During the past year, they mapped the country of Haiti in 2.5 weeks -- a task that many cartographers think might have taken a more traditional organization more than a year to do. They worked with the Haitian diaspora to translate tens of thousands of pleas for help from Creole to English in near real time, and geo-located these translated messages on maps that search-and-rescue teams could use to plan their operations.
For all the power that these new humanitarian communities bring to crisis response, they are still outside the formal system by which the United Nations coordinates emergency operations. Most volunteer organizations lack resources to do more than provide a surge capacity of two weeks (after that time, volunteers generally must return to spouses, children, and employers.) Many are still building the processes by which they verify reports that arrive from the affected population. And all lack the protections afforded to organizations that work under the official humanitarian system, including the shield of neutrality enshrined in the laws of armed conflict.
The United Nations just took a step to tackle these issues. Working with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs commissioned the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to reflect on the operations of 2010 and devise a framework by which stakeholders could approach their differences as a design challenge. The report proposes an initial interface between the formal humanitarian system and these new volunteer communities.
It suggests creating a neutral space where the neo-humanitarians might align their efforts with existing international protocols governing humanitarian operations. And it creates frameworks to push venerable response systems to make needed adaptations. The report will be released by Baroness Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator on 28 March.
For humanitarians, it is a time of great hope and great challenge. If this new interface succeeds, a new generation will work within a more open system where it is normal for affected populations to communicate with donors, NGOs, and the United Nations through Facebook, OpenStreetMap, YouTube, Ushahidi, Twitter, and their successors. Humanitarians will still be quiet heroes, but they will be giving voice to the vulnerable in more effective ways.
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