How to Fail at Human Rights: Australia Excuses itself from Refugee Law

A large portion of what I spend my time doing overseas is engaging with abuses of human rights and their practical implications- or working to ensure that peoples’ basic rights are met, either through direct action, or advocacy. Coming home to my family in Australia, I have the privilege of knowing they will never face the sorts of rights deprivations that many of the displaced people I habitually work with do.

With that in mind, it makes Australia’s decision yesterday to excise its mainland from the migration zone all the more shocking.

The migration zone, simply put, is the geographical boundary within which an incoming asylum-seeker can legally lodge an appeal for asylum. Under normal circumstances, an asylum-seeker can set foot anywhere on Australian sovereign territory and, from that point, appeal to the government to recognize his or her claim for refugee status under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

In 2001, following the Tampa affair in which a foreign vessel that had rescued would-be asylum-seekers from a sinking vessel subsequently lodged (against Australian wishes) on Christmas Island, the Howard government excised a number of offshore Australian territories from the migration zone. That meant that anybody arriving at those places would not have any legal recourse to claim asylum, giving the Australian government the right to move them offshore or process them in situ without recourse to legal appeal, representation, or the Australian court system.

Yesterday, the Gillard government took this to the extreme, and made the entirety of the Australian landmass, all 7,692,000 square kilometres of the place, legally fall outside the migration zone. Now, nobody arriving without a visa anywhere on the Australian mainland has any rights in regards to claiming asylum from the Australian government.

Australia has, in essence, ceased to legally exist from the perspective of a would-be asylum-seeker.

This move ensures that Australia now has full legal right to deport anybody found arriving in Australia without a visa to one of its offshore processing facilities on Christmas Island or Manus Island (the latter in Papua New Guinea). While in these processing facilities- which even the government labels ‘detention centres’- inmates are outside the Australian legal system. They cannot get representation from a lawyer. Do not have any right to appeal. The Australian government can manage them any way it sees fit.

As if this wasn’t a classy enough move, the Australian government has also rejected a proposal from the Greens that would have seen children banned from being detained in these facilities; and have upheld access restrictions for both media and, disturbingly, human rights observers.

And in an equally classy move, in this week’s 2013 Budget, the government has announced that it is upholding plans to divert $375 million from the overseas aid budget into paying for the costs of detaining asylum-seekers- which is a domestic policy initiative.

All up, I am completely sickened by the government’s actions, and disappointed that more international condemnation of their approach is not forthcoming.

Let’s backtrack a little to really grasp the implications of what’s happening here.

First off, refugees. The 1951 UN Convention (and subsequent 1967 Protocol- Australia is signatory to both) recognizes a refugee as the following:

A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN- 1948), Article 14, states:

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

A person who is an asylum-seeker, therefore, is one who has lodged an appeal with a sovereign nation to be recognized as a refugee, persuant to the definition above and, critically, the risk of real harm happening to them if they return to their country of origin. (Returning a refugee to their country of origin when it has been deemed they may face harm is known as ‘refoulement’ and is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law). It is then up to the sovereign host nation to which the asylum-seeker has applied to determine whether this person’s individual case meets the definition of refugee, and if it does, that nation has a responsibility under international agreement to grant that individual refugee status, and refuge in that country.

Asylum-seeking and refugee issues are strongly debated in Australia, both in politics and the public space. There is a perception among a particular (and vocal) segment of Australian society that asylum-seekers are a problem. This minority, unfortunately, seem to have disproportional ability to sway domestic policy.

At the crux of the debate are those asylum-seekers who arrive by boat. There are various perceptions that these people somehow pose a national security threat; that they are ‘jumping the queue’; or that they are engaged in criminal activity simply by dint of their arrival method.

Now, the arrival of asylum-seekers by boat is a problem, specifically because they tend to arrive in dangerous, unseaworthy boats that cost many their lives (since the year 2000, 1,731 asylum-seekers destined for Australia have been lost at sea). In addition, they frequently use illegal people-smugglers to transport them, opening them up to abuse and manipulation at the hands of both smugglers and the countries from which they depart (frequently Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, all of which have questionable human rights policies when it relates to illegal migrants), and encouraging illegal activity.

It is not, however, a concern for Australia’s sovereignty.

Let’s see some figures.

First off, arriving in Australia (or any other country) without a visa for the purpose of claiming asylum is not illegal. It is a fundamental human right to which Australia and most other nations on earth have agreed and signed up to (see above). If these people arrive in Australia, try to avoid authorities, then simply melt into the community and hide away (more on this below), then they would be illegal. But this is not the case. This is even specifically recognized with respect to arrivals by boat in Australian law under the 1958 Migration Act.

Second, 94% of those who claim asylum from Australia are found to be legitimate refugees and subsequently granted refugee status and rights to live in Australia accordingly. 94%. Fearmongerers claim that these people are simply queue-jumpers with no real claims to back them up except a desire to enjoy Australia’s higher standard of living. But the government’s own statistics toss this out of the window. A mere 6% of those who arrive are being deported with non-legitimate claims.

Put in perspective, in February 2013, there were 5,750 people in immigration detention across Australia. 5,405 of these people will be recognized as legitimate refugees. Just 345 will eventually be rejected.

There’s not exactly a tidal-wave of people illegitimately seeking refugee status in Australia.

Let’s use this as a jumping-off point for an entertaining aside. On the other hand, there are around 60,000 illegal immigrants in Australia. Most of these are people who have arrived on a legal short-term or tourist visa and have come by plane, have let their visa lapse, and stayed on. Government figures say at least 50,000 people are illegally working in Australia- that is, earning money under the table but not paying tax (among other problems). This means roughly ten times more illegal immigrants than legal asylum-seekers in detention. Of these people, more than half have been in Australia illegally for more than five years, and 20,000 for more than ten. The figure of around 60,000 is up from around 50,000 in 2005, so the problem is increasing. In 2011, around 5,000 of these illegals were from the US, around 3,600 from the UK, 8,000 from China and 4,000 from Malaysia (see this link for full story). Needless to say, none of these countries has a significant refugee outflux problem.

Strangely, nobody makes much of a fuss about them.

By contrast, the debate around asylum-seekers arriving by boat has been raging for over a decade, and for most of that time, the arrival numbers have been tiny. Australia’s overall migration program looks to take in 190,000 people in 2012-13. This makes up roughly 0.8% of Australia’s overall population, and is slightly above the natural increase rate of around 0.6%. While there have been spikes in asylum-seekers arriving by boat, particularly in 1999-2002 and since 2009, when annual figures have been 4-5,000 people arriving, most of the rest of the years since the early 1980s have seen no more than a few dozen arrivals and less per year. Geopolitical factors (the Afghan & Sri Lankan wars specifically) have had an obvious impact on arrival spikes. The impact of domestic policy is less clear. The 2010-11 year saw higher figures, of around 8,000 asylum-seekers coming by boat, disagreeing with these figures that suggest 4,500 came in 2011 and 17,000 in 2012. The number of asylum-seekers in detention has been steadier, at between 4-8,000 people per year since 1999.

In the last 2 years, therefore, there’s clearly been an increase in asylum-seekers arriving by boat, problematic for the reasons listed above but not from the perspective of being a threat to Australia. The following infographic, using the slightly-outdated 2009 figures, still places it all very nicely in perspective. Even in 20,000 asylum-seekers arrive, they remain a) legal, b) far fewer in number than true illegal immigrants, and c) still a tiny proportion of Australia’s overall refugee program (70,000 annual intake), immigration program (190,000 annual intake),overall growth rate, and population (23 million).

This one also has a point:

And this one:

Oh, and this one too, showing how people without visas enter Australia:

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Why does this really matter? Well, simply put, the rights of these 5-10,000 asylum-seekers being placed in detention are being trampled upon.

First off, as we’ve already ascertained, around 94% of those making claims have legitimate claims. They’re fleeing for their own safety. Most are coming from conflict zones. Many will have already been through distressing, potentially traumatizing events. Many have also paid huge sums of money- possibly their life-savings- to smugglers and will have nothing left. They have mostly undertaken a very dangerous journey to get as far as Australia. In short, as well as being legitimate refugees, they’ve already been through very unpleasant circumstances.

And they get here and Australia puts them in prison.

Try and imagine the distress of being locked away unjustly. Not for doing something wrong. Just because you were perceived as an inconvenience to your government. Start easy. Imagine 3 months. 3 months, where you were restricted to a low-security prison. Surrounded by barbed wire, in a foreign country, not understanding why you were there, with no guarantees of what was going to happen to you, and limited or no contact with friends, families and loved ones. No rights. No lawyers. And a chance that you might be sent back after the journey you’ve just taken. All because you tried to exercise your right- your internationally-recognized right- to seek asylum in another country.

Detention times are a major cause of suffering to asylum-seekers. The government acknowledges there are no targets for releasing detainees, but 2008 figures show that just over a third of asylum seekers were in detention for less than 3 months, more than half were in detention for more than 6 months, almost a third for more than a year, and 13% for more than 2 years (stats here). During this time, asylum-seekers have no guarantees of successful application, no indication of how long they will be detained for, and their mental health rapidly deteriorates. After 6 months in detention, people (including children) begin exhibiting signs of poor mental health, and detainees who spend  15 to 18 months or more in detention exhibit psychiatric morbidity. The average stay in detention for an asylum-seeker is 224 days.

The mental health implications of this are becoming well-established. Suicide is attempted and achieved. Over 1,100 incidents of self-harm or threatened self-harm were reported among the 6,000 or so asylum-seekers in detention between mid-2010 and mid-11- up to 50 in one week. Five suicides occurred in detention during the same period, with one attempted hanging a night, on average, across the system. On Christmas Island, according to an ABC report, the problem is so widespread that staff are instructed to carry a knife on them at all times so they can cut down people attempting to hang themselves. The situation continues to this day.

The video embedded in this link tells a powerful story of the mental health situation in Australian detention centres and I highly recommend it if you can spare the time. The full episode is 45 minutes long, but it is powerful, comprehensive and makes a compelling case of just how badly detainees suffer in Australia’s asylum-seeker program.

This, people, is all wrong.

It’s also the subject of both Amnesty International and UNHCR condemnation.

It’s also expensive. Depending on the figures you read, Australia’s asylum-seeker program has cost around $1 billion for the 5 years from 2002 to 2007 and $1 billion per year over the last four years. The current budget is anticipating a spend in 2012-13 alone of around $2.2 billion. The bulk of this cost goes to running and maintaining detention facilities (the Christmas Island facility, for example, apparently cost $400 million for the 800-bed detention centre), and running aerial and maritime patrols (it costs $36,000 per day to run a maritime patrol-boat, up to $568,000 per day for a frigate- link).

If we use the figure of $2.2 billion for the management of the 5,700 asylum seekers currently in detention as of February 2013, this means we’re spending $380,000 per detainee to run this program each year.

Sorry what?

Even if we’re generous and spread this over an estimated 20,000 asylum-seekers arriving by boat this year, that still gives us $110,000 per asylum seeker per year.

Quite frankly I’d prefer we spent the money setting up a robust community-based support and monitoring system which let the state keep an eye on them if necessary for national security reasons (…) but let them live like human beings.

And think about these figures for a moment. In fact, let’s break it down. Let’s just look at the $375 million that Australia is diverting from its overseas aid budget to contribute to this massive bill.

First off, that makes Australia the third largest recipient of its own foreign aid budget, after Indonesia ($540m) and PNG ($493m)- and significantly ahead of its contribution to the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa ($319m)- but then what did they ever need aid money for? This is out of a total aid budget of $5.7bn- so roughly 6.6% of Australia’s foreign aid budget is going straight into managing the up-to 20,000 asylum-seekers arriving by boat.

As this infographic neatly points out, this $375 million could prevent the deaths of 185,000 people, or education 750,000. It is the largest diversion of foreign aid in Australia’s history, and also more than double the average for developed nations- even though Australia’s refugee burden, estimated at 0.06% asylum seekers per population, is lower than the developed nation average of 0.1%.

I don’t really want to go much more into this, as I think you get the big picture (and quite a lot of the details, too). The decision by the Australian government to excise mainland Australia from the migration zone essentially reinforces a horrible, horrible policy of enforced detention for legal (I stress, again and again and again, people, LEGAL, good grief do I need to paint it neon and string it with lights?) asylum-seekers. A policy that stomps over international law and human rights, which has terrible mental-health and freedom implications for the individuals involved, which panders to a vocal, ignorant and ill-informed minority, and which costs both the Australian taxpayer and the potential recipients of aid a very significant amount of money.

We are paying vast sums to make people suffer against the collective conscience of the global community.

Perhaps the saddest irony of all is that Australia is itself an immigrant nation. The government’s own immigration website points out that a quarter of Australian nationals today were born outside of the country and that each decade for the last 6 decades has seen around a million migrants. Since the Second World War, seven and a half million migrants have come to Australia. Yet we kick up a fuss because of a measly 17,000 (last year- far fewer in previous years), we talk about queue-jumpers and place ignorant expectations on them and lock them up and deny them their rights.

It points to the underlying racism in Australian society- something not unique to Australia, but certainly prevelant. From the days of a ‘White Australia’ until now, there is a quiet discomfort with notions of the foreign ‘other’- whether the Greek and Italian migrants of the first half of the 20^th Century, or the Vietnamese who arrived in the 1960s and 70s, or the Sudanese, Somalis and Afghans arriving today. This is a diverse- a mind-bogglingly, ignorance-blowingly diverse- nation. And yet I still see utes driving around with the bumper sticker “Fuck off, we’re full.” As if white European-Australians have some right to claim ownership of this place anyway.

What arrogance.

What absolute tragedy.

What a complete, utter disgrace.

Shame on you, Government of Australia and all who support this immigration policy.

Troubleshooting

I walk back to my office after a meeting.

“Tibeb has been trying to call you,” Teme tells me. She’s one of my Monitoring and Evaluation officers and is running a mission about two days south of the capital, checking on an emergency food program. “She is wanting to stay in the field to complete her work until the 31^st. But the driver has only been authorized to be out until the 29^th.”

Teme explains that when the request was put to fleet management, a mistake was made on the driver request form and the earlier date entered. So I guess there’s some issue with fleet management wanting the vehicle and driver back. It wouldn’t be the first time that there are hiccups between what my field staff want, and getting the resources from the shared services guys.

I go down the two flights of stairs to have a chat to Girma, the fleet manager. I’ve never seen anyone so consistently smiley as Girma, and he greets me warmly. Although we’ve had issues in mobilizing vehicles at times, I know he’s dedicated to finding fixes and he has always been reasonable when I’ve discussed with him.

“The problem,” he tells me, “Is that on the form, she only asked for the driver until the 29^th. So now she wants the driver until the 31^st. But the driver only took out per diem until the 29^th, not the 31^st, so he won’t stay longer.”

I frown. “So have him stay out, and he can be reimbursed for the two extra days.”

The per diem rate clocks in at a little under ten bucks a day for that location. I’m confident that between them, the team are going to ensure that the driver doesn’t starve.

“I know. I said that to finance. But they say it’s against policy. It creates all kinds of problems. They say if he comes back and tries to claim per diem after the fact that he can’t be reimbursed.”

I raise an eyebrow. Creates all kinds of problems? We’re an organization that measures its in-country budget in multiples of ten million dollars annually. I don’t see how $17 constitutes all kinds of problems.

“He’s out doing work,” I say. “Of course we’re going to reimburse him. There’s no question about that. If finance are going to push the matter I’ll pay the per diem out of my own pocket.”

Girma grins his habitual smile. “I know. But finance.”

Girma and I walk down the hallway to finance. He shows me to the desk of the particular finance officer responsible for this edict. He starts to re-hash the conversation the to of them had earlier. I don’t let him get all the way through.

“We will reimburse him,” I say to the finance officer, directly, in a voice that indicates I’m not asking for his permission.

He doesn’t put up any real resistance. “Well, you’ll need to sign his acquittal form.”

“Yes.”

“Will you be around next week to sign it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

And that’s quite literally all it took.

It’s troubleshooting little things like this (as well as much bigger things) that fills time out here. It’s not difficult. But in an organizational culture where the drive for compliance and the tyranny of petty systems takes precednence over ensuring our project work goes ahead, it’s a constant tussle. Without my intervention (and in a society like this where rank trumps protocol, all I really need to do is show up and give my verbal instruction), a systems-compliant finance officer would have cut short the work being done by my field-team actually engaging at the community level and trying to improve the quality of the work we do. By simply standing at his desk and saying that I’d approve an exception to policy- what ridiculous policy I’m excepting I’m not entirely clear- the problem is solved.

This little story- which took place this morning- is a microcosm for many of the challenges we face trying to ensure our field operations keep rolling. Without constant- constant- attention, the procedural requirements, paperwork and red-tape rapidly grind activities to a halt. In many ways, I have no particular skillset that isn’t greatly outweighed by the experience and ability of my field teams, in terms of actually providing assistance to the communities we work with. I see my main role here as making sure that the systems work to support my staff, not get in their way. And then I get out of their way as well.

This compliance culture is nobody’s fault, per se. It’s a culture common to many INGOs and, I don’t doubt, a plethora of other organizations as well. In fact, I understand that government offices generally have it much worse. And to be honest, I’m lucky enough to be working in an organization where I have a Country Director who backs me up, so I can be confident of stepping into a situation like this one (or, more importantly, one where we’re trying to push through high-level organizational change to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and impact of our field operations on a much larger scale), and when I tell staff to move the red tape out of the way, I know it’ll happen.

Sometimes after some negotiation…

It is, of course, a fine balance. On the one hand, administrative systems were designed to increase transparency and limit corruption. Driven first by donors, it is now increasingly pushed by the risk-averse inertia of organizations themselves, who are terrified of being publically caught out with inadequate systemic controls, fearful of the loss of donor funding that would presumably follow. Large government donors, with increasing layers of demands, don’t make this any easier either. Sadly, what we end up with is a wag-the-dog scenario where we end up putting so much emphasis on the controls that it becomes unwieldy to operate.

Aid organizations have a responsibility to seek a balance- ensuring appropriate accountability while maximising the speed and quality of field work. Donors, too, need to recognize that the more demands they place on implementing agencies- heavy reporting and fiscal requirements and micromanagement of tasks and activities- the more this can be detrimental to the communities we all exist to serve.

My heart is in operations. Helping stuff happen. Which is why I love this job. I get to push things out of the way, try to ensure a reasonable measure of accountability, but free up my teams to go do what they’re supposed to do and deliver our programs on the ground.

Of course, it’s also why I hate this industry sometimes. Because I watch, first hand, as administrative procedures delay funding and operations, occupy time and effort, and ultimately bog down our work until it becomes less efficient. And communities don’t get the services they’re owed.

Today, though, I’m just pleased I won’t be seeing Tibeb back until after the weekend.

Meanwhile, Over on Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like…

Inspired by an inspirational debate on the merits of capacity-building support-service staff with @ElSnarkistani, this co-authored post was spawned…

After all, what higher calling could an EAW find than to provide training and amelioration for the hapless local staff they find surrounding them in the office.

Feel free to check it out while I try and find something else entertaining to post here.

Time-Lapse

For those who don’t know what Time-Lapse photography is, time lapse involves taking repeated images over a regular time-interval, then stringing those images together to make a moving picture which runs at high speed. Pretty much anyone who’s ever watched a nature documentary will have seen time-lapse at work. Those really cool shots of sweeping landscapes with fluffy clouds building and sweeping across the horizon looking like waves on a sea-shore: That’s time-lapse.

And you can do that with your camera and some simple software, and it’s a lot of fun.

Some digital compact cameras have a time-lapse function built-in. My Canon Powershot G9, for example, does. It’s a bit restrictive, in that the camera only has two default time-settings (2-second interval and 10-second interval). And it’s on a Powershot G9. Which, while pretty decent for a compact, doesn’t produce the most high-quality images. In fact it exports at 640×480, which isn’t that exciting at all.

The real fun is in using a nifty piece of optics. Like a Canon EOS 5D and some top-range Canon glassware, so you can get some really nice images coming off the sensor. So, using a Canon TC80N3 remote control, I decided to give it a go.

There’s a few different things to think about setting up a shoot for time-lapse. The obvious one, is time. It can take a while, depending on what you want to shoot. You start by thinking about the output. If you’re wanting to create a movie, how long do you want it to be? Remember that if you’re looking at playing it back, you’re probably wanting to run it at about 20 frames per second to get a nice smooth playback. That means, for every second of playback, you’ll need at least 20 shots (more if you want to increase the fps rate). A movie less than 5 seconds long is a bit on the short side. So you’ll be needing somewhere in the vicinity of at least 100 frames, even for a little movie.

From there, and linked to that, you need to consider your interval rate. It can be whatever you want it to be, from 1 second to 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. For this, you need to consider a) what you’re wanting to shoot, and b) practicality. For example, capturing motion on a busy street, you will probably want a fairly short interval. One or two seconds between images will let you capture lots of bustle and motion. You’re capturing objects that will move across your frame in a few seconds- probably no more than 10. So if you extend your interval rate to longer than ten seconds, the person or vehicle who appears in the first frame, will have vanished by the second. If you want to track their motion across the frame, you want a shorter interval. However if you like the idea of having people randomly pop up and disappear, you can also get some fun effects that way, though maybe a bit more chaotic.

Other objects you might want to consider a shorter interval for are things like waves, and other smaller subjects that move quickly.

By contrast, if shooting landscapes and clouds, longer intervals may work better. The incremental change in the shape of a cloud from one second to the next is fairly minimal, so if you shoot cloud formations on a one-second interval, you’ll end up with a LOT of footage to go through to see the changes happening- either needing a redundantly-high fps rate, or quite a slow, uninteresting movie. Shooting every 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or even minute (probably dependant on wind-speed or convection on the day) will capture incremental changes more clearly. Likewise, changes in light over a patch of scenery or landscape, as the clouds’ shadows move or shafts or sunlight come through, is equally dramatic and occurs on a similar timescale.

Remember that the shorter the interval, the ‘slower’ the image will appear to move on playback, while the longer the interval, the more there will appear to be a fast-forward effect going on.

And so, coming back to time, depending on what you want to shoot, how long you want your movie to be, and what interval you’re going to use, you’ll have to budget time accordingly. If you want to capture bustle on a street, five minutes’ worth of shooting at a 2-second interval will net you 150 frames, which you can play back at 20fps to give you 7 1/2 seconds of movie. Capturing clouds building over a city skyline on a sunny afternoon, you may want to use a 20-second interval, so to get the same 150 frames for a 7 1/2 second movie, you’ll need an hour and a quarter. Simple maths. But getting time-lapse is a pretty time-consuming business!

Another thing to consider is your shooting location. A couple of things to think about here. First off, and this is a challenge I’ve faced every time I’ve shot, make sure your camera and tripod (yes, you need a tripod unless you want your time-lapse to have that handycam shake) are in a sheltered location. Sheltered, primarily, from wind.

This is problematic, because time-lapse is generally (not exclusively) an outdoor process. And so is wind. But also, some of the most enjoyable time-lapse subjects include things that move, particularly, clouds. And for clouds to move, you usually need wind. So there’s often a bit of a clash of interests here. Because when wind hits your tripod and the camera shakes, so does your time-lapse video, ruining the effect. You’ll see if you look at a couple of mine.

Ways to deal with this:

a) Use a heavy tripod (if you have one)

b) Try and put yourself in a sheltered location

Neither one foolproof, so you’ll have to do the best you can, but be prepared to come back another day if the wind is stiff and your camera’s rocking around, because it’ll probably ruin your output.

Another piece to consider here is anything else that might make your camera shake over time. If you’re in a busy area, is someone likely to knock into your tripod? Can you protect it? And vibrations from passing vehicles can also be captured- particularly on bridges and overpasses- ideal shooting vantages otherwise.

Finally, when thinking about placement, think about the passage of the sun. If you’re doing a shoot that’s going to last 3 hours, how will the sun transit across the sky? What will this do to your image? Will the sun move into your lens, and do you want this? Will it create flare, and do you want this as well? How will it affect your settings, and do you want to have your camera set on an automatic exposure setting so that it adjusts to changes in light, or do you want it fixed so that as light changes, drama may increase?

Different sorts of things to think about compared to your normal run-of-the-mill photoshoot.

At any rate, I’m pretty new to the whole time-lapse thing, but I hope to put more movies up soon. These will have to do in the meantime- and you can see some of the lessons I’m learning through them. I might make some comments on some of them at some stage, from a learning perspective, and try and find more time to actually do some more shooting!

Finally, to see some of the gorgeous things that cleverer people than I have done with time-lapse photography, see these two links, one of the Southern Ocean sky at night from southern Australia, and the other of a stand of trees in Norway changing with the seasons over the course of a year.

Timelapse Movies:

1. View of Halls Gap from a nearby shoulder of the Grampians. VIC, Australia.

2. Windmills near Ararat, country VIC.

3. Bustling street in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

4. Silverband Falls, Grampians National Park, VIC. This one is composed of long-exposure (2-second long) frames to give the water a silky appearance and blur out people, too.

5. View from our bedroom window over several hours one spring afternoon/evening. Melbourne.

A Day Without Dignity: The Power to Shoes

In mid-2006 I travelled solo across West Africa for a number of weeks. I hitched, bartered and generally coerced my way onto pretty much anything that moved (and found myself on many things that subsequently stopped moving). I had a backpack, a small wad of cash, and a single pair of flip-flops.

I liked my flip-flops. A couple of weeks before leaving I lost my sandals in an ill-conceived swim across the Niger River after a wayward current took me out of control and sucked them from my feet. I trust they ended their days in the care of some lucky fisherman. To ease my loss, a friend donated an old pair of flip-flops that had belonged to her brother. They were tatty, worn, and extremely comfortable. Travelling light, they were my only footwear.

Weeks later I found myself in a rickety Mercedez wagon with 8 other passengers, somewhere between Nouakchott and Atar, when the thong on my right flip-flop finally gave out.

Disaster. Here I was, white guy in the middle of the Sahara, and my beloved and only pair of footwear had just broken.

We were stopped in some nameless desert outpost, and a bunch of kids, seeing me limping with one foot in the dust, took pity on me and called me over. One scrounged in the dirt until he found a thin bit of discarded wire. With practiced expertise he fed this through the broken thong, down through the hole between the toes, and then into the bit of broken rubber I’d salvaged. A couple of tugs and twists later, and he presented the repaired flip-flop to me with a big smile. When I offered him some cash for his efforts he waved me away with a toothy grin.

The jimmy-rigged footwear lasted me all the way back to London, where I proudly (and to some consternation among my friends) showed them off.

***

A company called TOMS Shoes in the US is running a campaign called “A Day Without Shoes” today (April 5). It’s to raise awareness of children in developing countries who have to grow up without shoes, and asks people to spend one day barefoot to raise awareness of this fact. ADWS is also to help TOMS sell more shoes. TOMS has a buy-one give-one policy where they will donate a pair of shoes for each pair bought through their campaign.

(If you think I’m being cynical, our web-filter at work blocks access to the ADWS campaign site because it is categorized as ‘Shopping’).

It’s great when for-profits use their wealth to look for solutions to poverty. Definitely. When they do it well. And by well, I mean it has to be effective, sustainable, thoughtful, appropriate and needed. TOMS and ADWS falls a little short.

First, it fits neatly into the SWEDOW category (Stuff We Don’t Want), right alongside winning concepts such as the Million T-Shirts campaign. It’s about giving stuff, and giving stuff is not a structurally sound solution to poverty, often creating more problems than it solves.

Second, it’s not really that dignified. ADWS characterizes kids in developing countries as shoeless objects of our sympathy. It focuses on what they don’t have instead of what they do (such as ingenuity, creativity and resilience). In effect, it places a value on their lifestyle based on their lack of access to the same materialistic options that we have.

***

People almost everywhere have access to shoes. Maybe they’re not $200 cross-trainers. Maybe they’re jimmy-rigged flip-flops or thongs made from the rubber off a car tyre. But I have yet to find a place where nobody has shoes (which is not to say I don’t go to places where some people don’t have them). Even in Tonj, southern Sudan, in 2004- one of the most globally disconnected markets on earth- you could find cheap flip-flops for sale from the handlebars of a bicycle.

Instead of throwing shoes at kids, maybe we could sit and learn about shoes from them. I’ve now applied the trick this kid in Mauritania taught me half a dozen times to other broken flip-flops. Children in developing countries are masters of improvisation and creativity, whether it’s about shoes, or toys, or some other facet of childhood. I hope that when my own kids are teenagers they’ll exhibit the same sort of initiative and creativity- as well as veering away from our western knee-jerk response to chuck something out the moment it’s broken.

***

I am not suggesting that it’s a good thing that children live in poverty or lack material goods. I am suggesting that the dearth of shoes in poorer communities is not the blight that TOMS implies. There are things we can learn from people in these contexts if we stop and see them as people with resilience, skills and insight, rather than as subjects for our sympathy. We need a collective mindset shift.

There are far worse things out there than having to wear a pair of second-hand flip-flops instead of the latest MTV-driven foot-trend. Lack of health-care, for example, which causes millions of preventable child deaths per year. Lack of shoes won’t factor highly on mortality and morbidity statistics. Why don’t we use the world’s available resources to stop kids from dying from malaria first, and then spend what’s left after that to get them nice shoes.

I’m not suggesting that TOMS is the worst organization in the world for wanting to give out shoes. I’m not even suggesting that wanting to turn a profit and help people at the same time is intrinsically a bad thing- although the motivation to make a profit can often blind people into making bad decisions (and exploiting people’s emotional reaction to poverty to make a mint would be a pretty feral trait). Using for-profit resources to make a difference in the developing world is a great approach. Really. But let’s do it right. Let’s not just give stuff.

***

TOMS, I get that shoes are your thing. If you’re really serious about wanting to provide footwear to the world’s barefoot children, try looking at a totally different form of investment. Instead of donating a pair of shoes for each pair purchased, take the cash equivalent of that donation (the production cost of the shoe plus the shipping/handling/storage/distribution costs) and instead sink that into local shoe manufacture.

You could set up your own production facility, but far better still would be to find out who’s already making shoes in a particular area and invest in their operation. Use your cash as capital investment to improve their production processes. Use your technical expertise to improve their marketing and distribution networks. Use your knowledge of corporate social responsibility to ensure that their labour practices don’t exploit workers, and that their environmental practices are up to scratch. This way your expertise is passed on to local businesses which can grow and flourish, and even have a knock-on effect into other ventures. Local people have jobs. Local suppliers have product they can sell and also turn a profit from. Local entrepreneurs learn new skills. Local households have income which they can spend whichever way they like.

You can see that, if you just give the shoes away, you forego all that good stuff above that you have the potential of acheiving. Not only that, but you’re actually working in the opposite direction- undercutting local manufacture and distribution, taking from their profits, and stymying the potential for local growth.

Give it some thought. Don’t take the easy way. There are no quick fixes to poverty. Don’t insult those of us who dedicate our lives to this stuff by implying that there are.

***

To finish my flip-flop saga: When I reached London I met some friends of the people I was staying with. They were a very sweet couple who noticed me careening around London in this ratty pair of flip-flops and were quite horrified. So much so that, without consulting me, they went out and bought me a brand new pair of flip-flops.

I was incredibly touched by this generosity. It was a beautiful gift from near-strangers, and if you’re reading this guys (you know who you are) that gesture has stayed with me all these years. That said, I didn’t actually need new flip-flops, and I didn’t actually want new flip-flops. I liked the ones I had. More to the point, tatty as they might have been, I was incredibly proud of them. I’d travelled 7,000km of West Africa in them, had had them patched together, and they were part of my story. In the end, much as I appreciated them, I barely wore the new flip-flops.

I’m not saying that people won’t want new shoes if you offer them some. I’m sure they will. I am suggesting that maybe they don’t actually need them as much as you think they do. And I’m suggesting that maybe, rather than just giving people something you’ve decided you want to give them, you should ask them what they’d actually like.

If you rock up in a village with a bag of shoes and say “would you like some free shoes? I have some to give away” they will, of course, say yes. But do you think this is giving people a choice? Do you think this is giving people respect? Imagine instead if you rocked up in a village with a mind towards dignity and an empty agenda and asked people, “if you could have anything, what would you like most?”

I suspect the response might be quite different.

***

PS- TOMS, if you’re really going to go ahead with this, maybe you could join forces with this guy…?

This post written as a contribution to @Good_Intents counter-campaign to the TOMS A Day Without Shoes campaign, “A Day Without Dignity“. Click here for a full listing of posts.

Photo: Tuareg sandals in Saharan sand dunes, Niger, Dec 2005.

Habits of a Change Junkie

After the better part of thirty-two years I reckon I’ve got something of a hold on who I am, but even now I still have the capacity to surprise myself from time to time.

Take administration, for example. Not very long ago I described myself (perhaps with an excess of transparency) to a prospective employer as ‘an administrative black hole’. It’s not my strong suit, and my colleagues know this as a pain-filled reality.

And yet, in the five weeks since my fiancée and I have been engaged (bearing in mind neither she nor I would call ourselves organizational titans), we have managed to book a wedding venue, hold an engagement party, buy an engagement ring, buy a wedding dress, lock in someone to marry us, book a photographer, purchase honeymoon flights, pin down (90% of) a guest list (including overseas visitors) and sign a one-year lease on a property we’ll move into- and more besides. All this while finishing a university degree and looking after a five-year-old (she) and managing a busy job including crises in Pakistan, Somalia and Niger (I).

So apparently I do in fact have an administrative bone in my body. Somewhere.

(Actually both she and I attribute our spurt of productivity to the Informant HD app on the iPad, which we both use and swear by as a personal organizer; we’re such a twenty-first century couple…)

Something else I’m discovering about myself- with mixed feelings- is that I am more susceptible to habits than I previously realized.

I’ve always considered myself pretty comfortable with change. In fact, that would be an understatement of gross disproportion. Change is a modus operandi of near pathological frequency. I find change in many regards easier than stability. This is largely courtesy of my TCK upbringing, and spending most of my schooling in the high-flux fishbowl of the UN system in Geneva. Change is a crutch and a coping mechanism. I thrive off it, and when everything else falls apart, I run to it rather than face my demons.

(I’d like to point out, for those noting the incongruity between this paragraph and former commentary regarding upcoming marriage that this change dependency is something I’ve been working on for a while now, starting with the commitment I made to a fridge last year…)

But within the tumult of a lifestyle that’s seen me spend time in more than thirty-five different countries in the last seven years, in more different houses, apartments, hotel-rooms and misc than I could possibly count, and on more than a hundred different emergency projects of various kinds around the world, there are little pockets of habit that protrude like rocks out of a sea of turbulence.

I’m writing this post from Bangkok’s Suvarnibhumi International Airport, a terminus I’ve passed through no less than fifteen times in the last three years. Each time I come here I have my own little routine. As long as I have more than an hour’s layover, I start by grabbing a bite to eat at Burger King (usually chicken tenders, fries and a sprite). Then, I will walk from one end of the concourse to the other (a distance of a good mile or so)- possibly repeating this step several times if it’s a long layover (good to get some exercise between legs, and reduce the risk of blod clots). After that, I go to the Cream and Fudge factory, and buy myself some concoction of ice-cream mixed with white chocolate chips on the cold slab, before boarding my flight. So ingrained is this little ceremony that I feel cheated on my visit if this doesn’t occur.

Other rituals are equally mundane. Coffee is a recent addition to my life (filed, with several others, under ‘fiancee’), but has quickly been elevated to an almost sacred status where my first port of call after installing my laptop on my desk on a weekday morning is to go straight downstairs to the cafe and order a latte. Little productive happens before this event.

I have developed a particular predilection towards french toast with bacon and maple syrup, which I am almost certain to pick off a brunch menu in any cafe I step into where such artery-clogging goodness is available. My work day (once latte has been procured) begins with checking four personal websites (Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail and this blog) and three professional ones (BBC news, Reuters Alertnet and HEWS). I struggle to step into any day if I haven’t had a shower right after getting out of bed. I always know exactly where my keys, wallet and office security pass are when i leave the house because I always put them in exactly the same place, without needing to think about them.

In fact, in some regards, I’m nearly sedentary.

When I stop and look at my lifestyle, and the journey I’ve been on this past couple of decades, I guess indulging in a little routine here and there is a pretty understandable foible for a self-confessed change junkie. It makes some sense. With this much ebb and flow, having a couple of notes of stability amidst a cacophony of flux provides some hooks to hang a different sort of meaning off. A little reliability and a little safety. Though I’m careful not to let it go to my head. I’d hate to become predictable.

And now I’m sitting on board a flight bound (eventually) for Niamey, a[nother] place I’ve called home. We used to have routines there, too. Church on Sunday nights at the Sahel Academy. Four-cheese pizza at l’Exotique. Biere Niger and brochettes at the Grande Hotel at sunset on a Friday night. I’m looking forward to trying them out again. Because there’s some comfort in the familiarity amidst all the instability.

And besides, if they’ve all changed, that’s okay too. Because I love it really.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Suvarnibhumi Airport

A Test of Connection

The purpose of this post: to see if the dubious wireless connection in my hotel room is strong enough to allow me to export a post from my iPad…

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Niamey, Niger

This is a Trial Blog Post

I’m attempting to write a blog post offline with the iPad app ‘BlogPress’ and post it to my Wanderlust blog. This will be useful while I’m travelling this month and away from my computer and from internet connections for blocks of time.

I’m also testing out some of the HTML and formatting options such as different colored fonts, larger and smaller fonts, underline, bold, italic and other formatting options, and of course photos.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Melbourne

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A Hundred Thousand Thank-yous

This morning the WordPress stats counter indicated that I have had 100,000 visits to my site since I started this blog 18 months ago.

While I realise this isn’t on a par to finding a cure for AIDS, or even sleeping sickness, it does give me a reason to pause and smile.

I want to thank everybody who’s dropped in during this time and watched this blog evolve since I first started it in October 2008, when I was living (and diving- sigh) in Papua New Guinea.  I hope it’s been an entertaining ride.  I’ve certainly enjoyed it- and enjoyed interacting with the many of you who’ve left comments and started conversations during this time.

I realise that in perspective, this isn’t a particularly newsworthy event.  Especially in the world in which I tend to inhabit, where we’re still struggling to house people in Haiti before the monsoon begins, provide shelter for homeless survivor’s of Chile’s quake before winter sets in, figure out how to help millions of children at risk from starvation in Niger and Chad, or manage ongoing low-visibility crises in Darfur, Sri Lanka, northern Pakistan, and thirty other countries worldwide.  So I won’t go on about it much.

But 100,000 visits is, well, quite a few.  And I’m pretty humbled by the attention and interest.

I wish you all a great day, and look forward to more posts, visits, comments and conversations into the future.

Many many thanks!

MA