Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Bad Things in Forgotten Places
BY MICHAEL BEAR
Darfur is sexy. Or, at the least, rarely lacking for public attention. (As the title of Rob Crilly's upcoming book proclaims: Saving Darfur - Everyone's Favourite African War.) Even Congo - the uber forgotten conflict - has been getting a fair amount of attention of late.
Yet what if you're forced to flee your home and there's no media attention, much less public outcry? You're still screwed. On one hand, it certainly makes sense to think in terms of specific conflicts like Darfur, or Congo. Any specific conflict is, on some level, comprehensible. You can analyze a given situation, learn the history, the place-names and tribe-names. You can imagine concrete solutions.
On the other hand, conflict as a whole, as a topic or a category, is far more ephemeral. It's only comprehensible as metaphor - everyone's favorite apocalyptic horseman - or in ever-more generalized, theoretical terms.
Our outrage might be finite, yet at the end of the day a village burned in Darfur is a village burned in the Central African Republic. A woman raped in Congo is a woman raped in Mindanao.
As the man said: "Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel."
So, without further ado, bad things in semi-forgotten places - at least forgotten by those who don't have the misfortune of actually living there:
- Flooding worsens the plight of displaced civilians in Sri Lanka
- The Lord's Resistance Army - everyone's favorite Ugandan rebels - are wreaking havoc in South Sudan
- Fighting in the Central African Republic forces 125,000 to flee their homes. (And, map.)
- More than 250,000 people remain displaced in central Mindanao, in the Philippines
- Eastern Congo - not so good. An impressively long roster of combatants has succeeded inforcing around 2 million people to flee their homes.
- And, tho the Israeli-Palestinian is hardly forgotten, the humanitarian disaster caused by the Israeli blockade of Gaza gets surprisingly little attention
Aid Worker Fatalities in 2009
This is a regularly updated list of aid worker fatalities in 2009. So far this year, 81 aid workers have been killed:
- Seventeen aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan - fifteen as reported by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office report covering the period of July 16th - 30th, 2009, and then two UN staff killed on August 18th.
-Thirteen aid workers have been killed in Pakistan, including two in February, five in April, five in June and one in July.
- Ten aid workers (including UN contractors) have been killed in Gaza since December 27th, as have thirteen medical personnel. The aid worker fatalities include five UNRWA staff, three UNRWA contractors, one WFP contractor and one aid worker with CARE.
- Ten aid workers have been killed in Somalia, including two in January, two in April, one in July and five in August. (In addition, a former WFP contractor was also killed in March, and aformer CARE staff member was killed in April.)
- As many as nine aid workers (including family members) were killed in Yemen in June. (Still difficult to get accurate figures.)
- At least seven aid workers have been killed in Sri Lanka, including two in February, two in March, one in April and two in May. The actual number is probably higher.
- Four aid workers have been killed in Darfur - two in February, one in March, and one in May (as reported by an aid agency on the ground)
- Three aid workers have been killed in Mozambique
- Two aid workers have been killed in Chechnya
- One aid worker has been killed in Bangladesh
- One aid worker has been killed in Benin
- One aid worker has been killed in the Central African Republic
- One aid worker has been killed in Zanzibar
- One aid worker has been killed in DR Congo
- One aid worker has been killed in Mauritania
Updated as of August 19th, 2009. This is by no means a comprehensive list.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
A Terrible Dilemma
Written by: Antonio Guterres
A suicide attacker set off a truck bomb on August 19, 2003, outside a Baghdad, Iraq, hotel housing the U.N. headquarters. At least 20 U.N. workers and Iraqis were killed, including Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, the chief U.N. official in Iraq. REUTERS/Rob Gauthier/POOL
UNHCR is still in shock over the recent brutal killing of staff member Zill-e-Usman, who was shot by unidentified gunmen in the Katcha Gari camp on the border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Another staff member, Ishfaq Ahmad, was wounded in the July 16 incident. A guard working with the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees, a government-funded agency, was also killed. Four to five gunmen reportedly opened fire on Mr. Usman as he was walking back from the camp administrative office to his car during a routine visit to the site.
Mr. Usman was the third UN refugee agency staff member to be killed in Pakistan this year. On June 9, Aleksandar Vorkapic died in the bombing of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar; on February 2, Syed Hashim, UNHCR senior driver, was killed in the kidnapping of John Solecki, head of the Quetta office, who was later released. As I wrote to Mr. Usman's family, his murder is a cruel blow. There is no justification for attacks on humanitarian workers dedicated to the protection and care of the world's most vulnerable people. The killing of Mr. Usman was an outrage and a tragedy that affects us all.
This August 19, on the occasion of the first ever World Humanitarian Day, we will pause to remember Mr. Usman and hundreds of other UN and non-governmental organization workers who have lost their lives while carrying out their duties around the world. The date is important: it was on August 19, 2003, that a massive bomb blast in Baghdad took the lives of then UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.
The ongoing death toll of humanitarian workers raises fundamental questions about how we can ensure staff security in unstable environments. Globally, it reminds us of the major dilemma facing humanitarian agencies around the world - how do we meet the life-or-death needs of the world's most vulnerable people while making sure those who provide that help are kept safe? Our ability to assist those who need it most is being severely tested by the shrinkage of the so-called 'humanitarian space' in which we must work.
The nature of conflict is changing, with a multiplicity of armed groups -- some of whom view humanitarians as legitimate targets. Another example of this is the brutal murder last month of Ms. Natalia Estemirova, a staff member of UNHCR's partner, Memorial, in the Russian Federation. Ms. Estemirova was found dead in the North Caucasus region of Ingushetia following her abduction from her home in Chechnya. Since 2000, in addition to her work as a prominent human rights investigator, Ms. Estemirova had been a social worker with Memorial and its UNHCR-funded legal and social counselling project in Grozny. She worked on issues related to internally displaced people in Chechnya and their safe return to their homes.
Memorial has been an implementing partner of UNHCR in the North Caucasus since 2000 and received UNHCR's annual Nansen Refugee Award in 2004. Humanitarian personnel work in the most dangerous places in the world and risk their own lives in the effort to help vulnerable populations to preserve theirs. Ensuring staff safety must be a top priority of every humanitarian organization and the United Nations as a whole.
This is non-negotiable. And yet, with the evolving nature of armed conflict and the changing attitudes of some belligerents, the deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers has increased, establishing a tension -- and in some situations a contradiction -- between the imperatives of staff safety and humanitarian action. UNHCR has continuously struggled to determine the 'acceptable' level of security risk to which its staff members can be exposed.
As this month's commemoration demonstrates, it is a truly terrible dilemma.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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