Every week, IRIN's team of editors curates a selection of humanitarian reports and opinion you may have missed, from in-depth analyses and features to academic studies and podcasts:
“A famine likely happened on our watch”
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made a powerful call this week to the Security Council for urgent action to respond to the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin region, triggered by Boko Haram. She said a catastrophe is unfolding in northeastern Nigeria, where 800,000 people, cut off from aid, are “at acute risk – as we sit here – of literally starving to death”.
She called for far more funding to address the emergency; criticised elements within the Nigerian government for playing down the crisis (which has included President Muhammadu Buhari); condemned the logistical bottlenecks stalling aid; and urged the Nigerian government to work with the UN and regional governments to develop options for delivering aid to areas “even near the frontlines”.
Turkey role in Syria’s war is out in the open like never before, with the country brokering peace talks alongside Russia and reportedly receiving boosted American support for its assault on so-called Islamic State in the northwest. But IS is not the only group the country is fighting – it is also taking on Kurdish groups it considers terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and the PKK on its home turf. That’s why PAX’s exhaustive report on arms transfers to Turkey and the country’s own growing arms industry is so important. When you consider that the Turkish government has used US-made F-4s and F-16s to bomb the largely Kurdish southeast, the nitty gritty on who has sold what, and when, matters. It’s likely no coincidence that Turkey was the word’s leading arms importer from 1991-2000, when its fight with the PKK was at its height and so were civilian casualties and displacement. With peace talks broken down and a region in turmoil, Turkey is arming up again and civilians in the southeast (and outside the country's borders) are suffering. These statistics give important insight into who is fuelling the fight.
Losing hearts and minds in Thailand
The 13-year insurgency in southern Thailand is one of the least understood conflicts in the world. Attempts at peace talks have collapsed into a jumble of contradictory policies by the ruling junta, and confusion about who represents the other side. In this in-depth piece for the World Policy Journal, sometime IRIN contributor Abby Seiff shows how the military’s brutal tactics are losing the fight among the civilian population and undermining future peace efforts. She speaks to a 25-year-old who was randomly detained and tortured for 10 days. There was no evidence he was involved in attacks and he was freed with no charges, but merely being an ethnic Malay Muslim was enough to garner suspicion from security forces. In fact, the entire community, which is the majority in the south but comprises a small minority in predominantly-Buddhist Thailand, lives under near-constant surveillance – a state that is driving civilians away from trust in the authorities. Theories abound about why the Thai military continues with its losing strategy, but part of the equation may simply be money. “This year, the government allocated more than $863 million to their security forces in the south, a $125 million increase from 2015,” Seiff points out.
For more on the conflict, see IRIN’s special report.
We’ve all heard it said that “a picture is worth 1,000 words”, but this article, which appears in the latest issue of US science journal PNAS, suggests that when it comes to humanitarian crises, an iconic photograph can trump even the most shocking statistics and spur action in a way that the well-meaning sharing of mounting death tolls and displacement rarely does. The picture of young Syrian boy Alan Kurdi lying face-down on a Turkish beach appeared on 2 September 2015 at a moment in Europe’s so-called “refugee crisis” when public empathy with the refugees arriving in Greece was sorely lacking. It was viewed by more than 20 million people on social media and had a crucial, if short-lived, impact on the level of support for refugees in Europe and elsewhere. The authors of the PNAS study found that donations of aid for Syrian refugees to the Swedish Red Cross increased 100-fold in the week after the publication of the photo but subsided to previous levels within six weeks. The findings back up psychological research showing that a single individual in distress, with a name and a face, often evokes a stronger emotional response than multiple people. When confronted with numbers in the hundreds of thousands, as in the case of Syria and its refugee crisis, we tend to experience “psychic numbing” and “compassion fade”. Exposure to thousands of photos of human misery can leave us similarly numb, which may explain the waning public interest in refugees following 2015's wall-to-wall coverage. If empathy is short-lived, argue the authors, it needs to be channelled into policies and humanitarian actions that have lasting impacts.
Last May, governments, UN agencies, NGOs and others made 3,686 pledges at the historic World Humanitarian Summit – yes, 3,686 (they're gathered on this platform). Aimed at improving the world’s response to communities in crisis, the process – the subject of much scepticism to begin with – was followed by a politicised tug-of-war. Some advocated for a formal monitoring framework, particularly with regards to the much-heralded “Grand Bargain”. Others preferred a “light, yet robust” approach to what was always a non-binding process. You can guess who won: an independent annual report on progress was among the few concrete follow-up steps Grand Bargain signatories could agree to; and WHS participants are now “invited” to use this newly-launched self-reporting tool. In this timely blog, Alice Obrecht, a research fellow at the ALNAP network on humanitarian effectiveness, urges organisations to be clear and transparent about the indicators and methodologies they use to self-report; to learn lessons from inter-governmental processes like Sendai and the Sustainable Development Goals; to set up and draw on a technical advisory group; and to allocate the necessary resources for performance measurement. “All the words and money in the world will simply go to waste if we don’t know what progress looks like or how to tell if we are getting there,” Obrecht argues.
One from IRIN:
IRIN shortlisted to #innovateAFRICA
Cutting-edge technology is often used to showcase other sectors of news, from Olympic celebrities to conservation efforts, but it’s noticeably absent from the most important beat of our time: life and death. Don’t Africa’s pressing humanitarian crises demand the best journalism on the most engaging interfaces? If you agree with us, please support our bid to build a new unit that will match IRIN’s world-class reporting about crises in Africa with interactive, multimedia, multi-platform storytelling. We’re talking immersive drone, 360 video, and longform multimedia output that will boost audience reach and engagement. Our project is one of 70 under consideration for #innovateAFRICA grants. Help us make it a reality by sending comments and suggestions on social media. Like, tweet, or share the article above using the hashtag #innovateAFRICA.
Coming up:
Health workers in major emergencies
Wednesday 18th January @ CERAH, Geneva
The Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (CERAH) is hosting a research presentation next week focusing on the willingness of healthcare and public health workers to handle response and recovery in the wake of major emergencies, ranging from pandemics, to natural disasters, to extremist acts. Professor Daniel Barnett will present new data and suggest interventions to address the willingness gap, as well as the broader policy implications. For more, see the events page on CERAH’s website.
(TOP PHOTO: Nomadic boys in northern Nigeria, an area now facing a sustained humanitarian crisis, driven by the Boko Haram conflict. CREDIT: Rosie Collyer/IRIN)
ks-oa-jf-as-ha/ag
