9 Events that have Shaped the Humanitarian Industry

The humanitarian industry is a relatively new one in its current form. This makes it an interesting, frequently exciting one to be involved with, as it’s constantly changing. This can be a challenge, too.

I like to joke that the earliest disaster preparedness and response on record is Noah’s Ark. Then of course there’s the story of Joseph (he of Technicolour Dreamcoat ™ fame), who interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams of skinny cattle devouring fat cattle as an impending famine and subsequently requisitioned harvest surplus which he then redistributed to the hungry when said famine eventuated.

Humanitarianism as we know it today has, for better or for worse, become an industry, and has developed quickly from a relatively fringe activity best left to hippies and missionaries, to a multi-billion-dollar a year sector attracting a wide range of skilled and experienced professionals. It’s unique, dynamic and, certainly from an insider’s perspective, fascinating. But the way things look today haven’t popped out of nowhere. Over the last century and a half, the humanitarian industry has been shaped by a number of key events and moments that have given rise to its current dynamics.

1. The Battle of Solferino (June 24th 1859)

At the height of the Austro-Sardinian war, a Swiss businessman by the name of Jean-Henri Dunant travelled to the small Italian town of Solferino, where he witnessed the aftermath of a battle that left forty thousands dead and wounded. So struck was he by the plight of the casualties, many of whom were abandoned and left to die, or executed by the enemy, that he forewent his business plans and spent the ensuing days helping to organize medical care for the survivors.

The experience so moved him that upon returning to Geneva, he wrote up his memories, recommending the establishment of a movement of trained and neutral volunteers who could administer medical aid to the casualties of battle, and treaties offering such people protection. His recommendations became the foundation for what was to become the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as the first Geneva Conventions.

The Committee’s proposals, initially signed and endorsed by 12 nations in 1864, recognized the need for national committees of volunteers to provide medical assistance on the battlefield, but also enshrined the neutrality of wounded soldiers. The agreed international symbol, as laid out by the signed agreements, was a red cross on a white field- the inversion of the Swiss flag, itself a symbol of neutrality.

This notion of neutrality, and of non-combattants offering non-partisan support to the injured victims of warfare, became the founding tenet of modern humanitarian organizations, and the ICRC continues to this day to occupy a unique status under International Humanitarian Law and within the rules of warfighting. The Red Cross Code of Conduct forms the guiding set of 10 principles that most major NGOs voluntarily adopt as their core values, particularly enshrining the primacy of the humanitarian imperative, neutrality and impartiality.

2. The Aftermath of World War II and the Marshall Plan (1945, 1948-51)

Following the victory of the allied forces first in the European theatre, and subsequently in Asia, most of Europe in 1945 had been devastated. The extent of destruction caused by warfare and bombardment, the loss of millions of men at the peak of their economic productivity, and the diversion of years’ worth of resources into the machinery of war, meant that both society and economy across the continent was decimated.

Conversely, because it had stimulated its economy through the production of wartime assets without suffering any destruction of its mainland infrastructure, the USA had become the first country in history to economically thrive under conditions of warfare (a dynamic that has echoes today in how the economy operates while America is at war). In order to shore up its wartime allies, to assist with the vast humanitarian needs of post-war Europe, and no doubt to maintain the health of its key trading partners, Harry Truman’s government put together an economic recovery package of unprecedented proportions. It would see some USD 13 billion invested across western Europe.

Whether due to the plan itself, or due to the simple mechanics of post-war recovery, industrial output did increase substantially during the plan’s lifetime, and was deemed in many corners to have been a great success. The Marshall Plan laid out a framework for international foreign assistance that became increasingly the norm, with large bilateral or multilateral grants or loans provided to countries with struggling economies in order to lift their productivity and stability.

As well as normalizing the concept of foreign assistance on such a large scale, another interesting side-effect of such a large humanitarian crisis was the need to have capacity to deliver support, and so the US government agreed to allow private charitable organizations provide emergency relief to war survivors. Although the charity was not a new concept, this gave new impetus to non-governmental relief agencies, and many of today’s largest NGOs appeared around this time. CARE, which is an acronym for “Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere”, in fact originally stood for “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe”.

A third impact of the end of the Second World War was of course the founding of the United Nations (UN), to replace the defunct League of Nations that had failed so miserably to prevent World War II in the first place. This occured in 1945. As well as spawning a host of international agreements on everything from trade to human rights, the UN also gave birth to a spread of sub-organizations with specific mandates. Among the most pressing in the post-war years was the plight of the tens of millions of refugees forced from their home in the fighting- and thus was born the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in 1947, which three years later became the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), one of the most dynamic and critical international organizations in the humanitarian field today.

3. The Biafran Airlift (1967-70)

In 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria following a series of coups, counter-coups and ethnic killings, and the ethnic Igbo in the south of the country declared their own homeland, the state of Biafra. The Nigerian government responded by blockading Biafra, and a humanitarian crisis resulted, with millions of civilians caught up without food and medical supplies.

In response, a huge humanitarian operation was launched, and a mix of well-meaning volunteers and mercenaries, funded by charity organizations, began flying food and medical supplies into Biafra. The mission was fraught with danger- the Nigerian airforce would shoot down any relief flights claiming (most likely accurately) that weapons were being smuggled to the resistance. Flights were flown in at night, without lights, and landings orchestrated on roads in the bush where supplies could then be delivered to starving civilians.

By war’s end as many as three million people may have died, mostly due to a mixture of starvation and disease. The involvement of humanitarian actors, however, has subsequently been condemned. Not only did the relief flights facilitate the smuggling of weapons to the Biafran rebels, but some critics claimed that the relief assistance merely gave the Biafrans the resolve to hold out longer, exacerbating the humanitarian situation rather than surrendering and allowing the seige to end. One report put the toll due to humanitarian action at 180,000 dead. This was the largest and most high-profile instance to that point of humanitarian intervention being arguably partisan, and also contributing significant harm, not just good.

Another important cameo played out in the Biafran civil war. Red Cross workers were allowed to work in the war-affected areas to provide medical assistance, but under the guise of neutrality were not allowed to speak about what they were seeing. Witnessing atrocities against civilians committed by government forces, as well as attacks against humanitarian staff, this enraged some of the volunteers. Most prominent among these was Frenchman Bernard Kouchner, who felt strongly that the Red Cross’s stance on neutrality was an ethical compromise. He determined to establish an organization that was free of any government influence and could speak out on behalf of those affected by crisis, and the NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was born. MSF remains one of the foremost NGOs to this day, and is fiercely independant and proud (to a fault…?) of its independence from government, military and even international organizational influence. The actions of Kouchner and his peers also set a precedent for relief agencies advocating on behalf of the rights of the victims of conflict and injustice, not simply being silent responders.

Biafra introduced a whole new complexity to the idea of ‘neutral’ aid agencies on several fronts.

4. The Ethiopia Famine (1983-5) and Live Aid (1985)

From 1983, a combination of failed rains, civil warfare and the purges and collectivist policies of a communist dictatorship had pushed Ethiopia into one of the worst famines of the 20th century. By its end, 8 million people would be affected by famine, with between 500,000 and one million deaths. Images of its victims, made famous by BBC reporter Michael Buerke’s dispatches from the field, were broadcast onto TV screens across the western world, making the Ethiopian famine the first to really be witnessed by a western audience.

Galvanized by public sympathy, a group of some of the most popular musicians of the day joined together, led by the enthusiastic Bob Geldof, to form Band Aid. They recording a song to raise funds for Ethiopian famine victims, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ which became a Christmas Number One in the UK charts in late 1984. In 1985, Geldof again coordinated efforts for a fundraising concert, held simultaneously in the UK and the US, which ultimately garnered an audience of a little under 2 billion people worldwide and raised an estimated $150 million.

The Ethiopian famine and the subsequent fundraising efforts marked a watershed moment in the history of aid fundraising. Large amounts of fundraising money were no longer just the domain of governments, nor were charities restricted to small pockets of whatever they could raise through collection baskets and faithful donors. Furthermore, the idea of a world out there- the third world- experiencing hardship was suddenly projected into peoples’ homes and made a part of their day-to-day consciousness. Since that time, people- particularly in the west- have remained aware of third world disasters. It is part of the collective experience and expectation that there is a poor world out there that suffers things that people in the west do not tend to.

On the up side, this has made the job of convincing people of the need to give easier. There is also a downside. Since Live Aid and many of the confronting images that were broadcast to shock people into giving, people have slowly become increasingly desensitized to images of suffering. The awareness-raising and media campaigns for the Ethiopia famine also represented the major incursion of shocking images into the public space, to the detriment of the dignity of survivors which has taken years to break down (and is still a challenge in some sectors).

5. The Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2004) and Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS)

The civil war between the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) ultimately resulted in two million deaths and four million refugees. Africa’s longest-running civil war, and possibly the most destructive, it too resulted in devastating images of famine as population groups were forced from their homes to settle in large, unsanitary camps where food supplies were precarious and disease rampant.

The international community established Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), a consortium of UN agencies and three dozen NGOs, in 1989, with the aim of delivering assistance to the mainly southern displaced people in camps both within and outside Sudan itself. A logistics airhead was set up in the small Turkana town of Lokichoggio, in Kenya, from which a vast operation of airdrops and relief deliveries was flown into Sudan. At the height of operations, Loki was the second busiest airport in Africa. OLS remains functional today, although not to the extent it was through the 1990s.

The civil war in Sudan was in part a proxy of the Cold War, and as such western allegiences found themselves favouring the southern rebels, both in terms of ideology and in terms of potential access to oil and mineral revenues in the long run. This was reflected in the huge amounts of funding that were invested in OLS, enabling such a massive aerial logistics operation. The offshoot of this was the explosion in budget of many of the NGOs party to OLS, catapulting some of them into the massive organizations they are today.

OLS also became an unwitting party to the conflict. Food aid became a weapon in the war on the ground, and was used to tactical advantage by both sides. By feeding humanitarian information to OLS, belligerents could influence where food drops were headed, and because populations would move to where the food was, they could thus influence the movement of people to their advantage in the field. It was an ugly ploy that cost the lives of thousands.

OLS’ involvement in the Sudanese civil war was a turning point in the humanitarian industry. As it became clear that the impact of food aid was having a detrimental effect on the people it was supposed to be helping, it began to become clear to the aid industry as a whole that they could no longer act out of the right motivations and still be operating with a clear conscience. The aid industry could no longer feign innocence- it was clearly becoming complicit in the conflict- and nowhere has this been more obviously demonstrated than in the Sudan civil war, and the ultimate secession of South Sudan as a state. With the humanitarian sector essentially propping up the southern government- even to this day- there is little doubt that South Sudan is a state that was created by the intervention of humanitarian actors. I have not seen any studies that suggest what the humanitarian impact might have been without OLS intervention, but I wonder whether the war would have lasted as long or cost as many lives, and I am utterly convinced that, for better or for worse, South Sudan would not be a state today.

The high profile of OLS, particularly the drama of large-scale airdrops, also had the unfortunate side-effect of cementing in the donor public’s mind that this was what aid was about- truck-and-chuck. It’s an assumption that twenty years on, the aid industry still struggles to re-educate the public about, making it hard to raise funds for other less appealing but often far more relevant issues such as human rights, advocacy and institutional capacity-building.

6. The Rwandan Genocide (April-July 1994)

During a hundred day period in mid-1994, Hutu extremists slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a calculated, cruel campaign of extermination. Based on old ethnic tensions, a history of tit-for-tat killing sprees, a hate-fueled propaganda message, and the meddling and inaction of international powers, the Rwandan genocide remains one of the darkest stains on the concience of modern history.

The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, at the time a rebel army, swept across Rwanda and eventually brought the killing of Tutsis to something of a denouement. The Hutu extremists, together with nearly two million ethnic Hutus, fled ahead of the advancing front and found themselves in dire camps on the rocky lava flows of eastern Zaire. Unable to dig pit latrines, and living in deplorable conditions, cholera broke out and killed tens of thousands of the refugees in a matter of weeks.

While the international community had stalled and stalled again during the genocide, images of Africans dying by the thousands on TV screens now galvanized them to action, and millions of dollars worth of aid was flown into the Hutu camps around Goma- while survivors of the genocide were still receiving scant attention. As dollars flowed into the camps, the orchestrators of the genocide and their militias consolidated control over the population (and the aid resources), preventing the return of Hutus into Rwanda to begin a reconciliation process, and even launching attacks back into Rwanda (which the newly-installed Rwandan government returned with gusto). Eighteen years on, fighting continues to plague the forests of eastern DRC (as Zaire has since been renamed), with vicious slaughter of civilians and proliferation of horrific rape a daily occurence, while old scores are settled by both sides. The invasion of Goma by the Tutsi-backed M23 rebel group this week is the latest chapter in this story.

The failure of the international community to act to stop the genocide (something that could have been done with the right political will), and then the subsequent outpouring of international sympathy and support to the very purpotrators of that genocide- all in the name of impartiality and the primacy of the humanitarian imperative- remains the blackest spot on the history of the aid community. The concepts of neutrality, impartiality and humanitarian imperative all took a beating, and where at one time they might have been considered black-and-white standards, since Rwanda there has been a new appreciation for the shades of grey they embody.

The Rwandan genocide was one of three humanitarian interventions that went horribly wrong in the early 90s- the others being Somalia (1993) and the former Yugoslavia (1992-95). In the former, aid was appropriated by warlords and used as a weapon against a suffering populace, ultimately leading to a catastrophic peace-enforcing intervention. In the latter, UN forces with a sketchy mandate struggled to make sense of the deep-seated hatred of the belligerents, their biggest failure being the murder of 8,000 men and boys by Serb extremists in the beseiged muslim enclave of Srebrenica- even while a battalion of dutch peacekeepers stood by and did nothing.

The aftermath of these failed interventions gave rise to a whole new understanding of the complexity of aid and the potential for humanitarian assistance to be outright unethical. Approaches such as Do No Harm, which are mainstream today, were birthed from the Goma debacle, while standards such as the Sphere Project arose, in part to try and ensure that humanitarian actors were singing from the same songsheet and not tripping over each others’ toes.

In addition, the highly complex nature of operations following Rwanda began to make it clear that aid work was no longer just about well-meaning do-gooders with a social conscience. Humanitarian actors needed to be able to work within the highly complex contexts which aid found itself being delivered in- to be able to work both with the technical aspects, and also the political ones. Where up to and throughout the 1980s it was generally enough to have a heartbeat and a willingness to work in the field, the fallout from Rwanda, Somalia and Yugoslavia saw a push towards the ever-increasing professionalisation of the aid sector.

Ultimately, Rwanda served as a deeply humbling experience for the humanitarian industry. If nothing else, it robbed the industry of the moral high ground, and forced it to accept its place as a player within a political landscape, often to the detriment of the people it purports to support. No event before or since has communicated this message so clearly.

7. The Bombing of the Canal Hotel (August 19th 2003)

Following the September 11 attacks on US soil, the United States led a ‘coalition of the willing’ against alleged terrorist targets, first in Afghanistan from late 2001, and subsequently in Iraq from early 2003. While the aerial assaults and troop incursions quickly broke the conventional forces of both nations (where they existed), the result was a bitter and drawn-out insurgency overlaid on a highly complex set of tribal and sectarian divisions that has turned both nations into two of the most unstable places on earth today.

As coalition forces swept through different parts of each country, the UN and NGOs flooded in behind them to pick up the pieces- providing humanitarian assistance to areas that had been difficult for them to reach in prior times due to political and security restrictions. With pro-coalition governments in each nation ostensibly supporting the foreign presence, humanitarian space opened up rapidly, and was quickly filled by humanitarian actors.

The net effect of this to the anti-western belligerents- who saw the coalition invasion of their homelands as an occupation and who framed it as an attack on Islam- was to view (not entirely without cause) the presence of western aid workers as simply a second wave of the occupation. While the first was a military presence, the second was a cultural colonization that sought to unravel conservative social norms with western notions of human rights, gender equality, tolerance and so-forth. The humanitarians became the enemy.

On August 19th 2003, a truck bomber drove into the compound at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, based out of the Canal Hotel. 22 people were killed, mostly UN staff, among them Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative to Iraq, whose office was allegedly specifically targeted. One hundred were wounded. The attack was claimed by al Qaeda in Iraq. It was followed a month later by another bombing at the same site, and then a month after that, by a coordinated series of bombings that also targeted the Red Cross compound, killing 12. When it became clear that the humanitarian industry was no longer considered neutral by the belligerents but was being specifically targeted, NGOs and the UN withdrew rapidly from Iraq and began remote operations, based mostly from Jordan.

While aid workers had suffered incidental attacks, particularly while carrying out operations in active conflict zones, and had even suffered occasional deliberate attacks (for example the killing of six Red Cross workers in Chechnya in 1996), this was the first time that the industry had been targeted by a high-level campaign sending such a clear message. It did not mark the end of such attacks, either. Among other subsequent high-profile deliberate targeting of aid workers include the murder of 5 MSF staff in Afghanistan in mid-2004, the abduction and execution of CARE’s Iraq program director Margaret Hassan in November 2004, and the murder by militias of 17 ACF workers in Sri Lanka in August 2006. Roughly two hundred aid workers a year are victims of violence while on operations.

The Canal Hotel Bombing essentially set a precedent that said the humanitarian industry was no longer a neutral, impartial body but a party to the conflict, and as such a legitimate target. The industry has not been the same since. Aid workers now go through intensive security training before deploying to insecure areas. Aid agencies are jumpy about pulling their staff from hostile situations. Where once an aid agency’s logo might have protected them from violence, there are many places in the world where it is now seen to be something that puts them at risk. Significant portions of NGO and UN aid budgets are now spent on security, and in some parts of the world, NGOs struggle to differentiate themselves from military actors and government contractors who are agents of foreign policy and do not hold to humanitarian principles. No single event in the last ten years has had a bigger impact on the landscape of humanitarian action in insecure environments than the August 2003 bombing.

8. The South Asian Tsunami (December 26th 2004)

Early in the morning on December 26th, an enourmous tectonic rupture beneath the Indian Ocean triggered an earthquake of magnitude 9.2, generating a gigantic tsunami. The wave struck the Indonesian region of Aceh first, where the wave height was estimated at as high as twenty metres coming ashore, before other devastating waves washed up against southern Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and eventually even the east coast of Africa. More than 230,000 people died and five million were impacted.

The event made the term ‘tsunami’ a household word as shocking images of destruction emerged on television sets and the toll grew almost hourly, almost defying belief. Western audiences, particularly struck by the devastation on the tourist beaches of southern Thailand, where thousands of European holiday-makers were among the casualties, poured sympathy and money into the subsequent relief response. Ultimately, $14 billion would be provided in international humanitarian assistance.

The public response to the disaster was unprecedented and overwhelming. NGOs quite literally received more money than they knew what to do with- and while one (MSF) publically closed its appeal once it had reached an amount it felt it could work with, most others continued to allow the funds to flow in, creating a massive surplus. The result was an organizational disaster as agencies tripped over themselves to try and spend their funds in a timely manner, squabbling over response sectors and geographical areas in order to stake out their territory and not dissapoint their donors. Many smaller NGOs popped up specifically in response to the tsunami with no knowledge of the humanitarian sector or its standards, and coordination across the board became at points nearly disfunctional.

The massive response to the tsunami- an admittedly enourmous natural disaster- occured against the backdrop of a number of other major world crises, particularly the war in Darfur, but also a devastating conflict in DRC, both of which were suffering from a paucity of international attention and funding. This frustration was exacerbated by the fact that the actual humanitarian needs following the tsunami were not as great as the scale of the event itself might suggest. While the death toll was high, the damage was limited to relatively narrow coastal areas, and the countries most affected (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand), while overwhelmed, all had some national capacity to cope. Nor were the majority of survivors at the same level of risk as those in IDP camps in Dafur or eastern DRC.

This reality led NGOs into a period of considerable soul-searching, and the revamping of fundraising processes, particularly around the concept of raising too much money for a crisis that did not need the funding, and how that funding might be redirected. The issue of transparency around NGO spending became a prominent theme.
The single biggest criticism, however, remained that of coordination. Although the UN’s cluster system had begun to be piloted, the failures within the humanitarian community in this regard created a renewed impetus for focusing on collaboration. In the years following the tsunami, the UN’s Humanitarian Reform program has become mainstreamed, and coordination between major humanitarian actors is now the norm- if at times still flawed- in any significant humanitarian response, and the central role of UN OCHA is largely undisputed.

The vast amounts of money raised and the numbers of humanitarian actors involved did however create a prime testing ground for a number of cross-agency initiatives. Humanitarian accountability, for example, was piloted across a range of response programs, while the notion of interagency evaluations also gained traction. Existing humanitarian standards such as Sphere were given a rigorous outing, and found to be largely robust.

Other knock-on effects of the tsunami response relate particularly to donors. The disaster set a new precedent for a shocking event against which all other disasters would be measured. It demonstrated just how fickle western donors could be (not a new truth)- the outpouring of assistance was demonstrably linked to people’s identification with Thailand as a holiday spot. It also raised the issue of donor fatigue. So many people had given significant amounts to the tsunami response that it became difficult to fundraise for any other disasters, including areas of arguably greater need, such as Darfur.

9. The Haiti Earthquake (January 12th, 2010)

When a large (7.0) and shallow earthquake struck near Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, it was that city’s vulnerability rather than the enormity of the quake itself that resulted in the scale of catastrophe that ensued. Between two and three hundred thousand people died, as many more were injured, and a third of Haiti’s population affected. Against the backdrop of a fragile political and economic state with entrenched poverty, and the intensity of destruction within the city itself, the impact was devastating.

Because almost all major infrastructure in Port-au-Prince was damaged or destroyed, aid floundered reaching the survivors. Reporting on the disaster was fast. Within a couple of hours of the quake, it was headline news, and details were pouring out aided by social media. Within twenty-four hours, most major networks had journalists and film crews on the ground filing reports, and the world’s giving public, again shocked by the scale of the tragedy, began to give.

They also began to ask questions. Within seventy-two hours, criticism was being ladled out that the emergency response was too slow, that international responders were not doing enough to get aid to the victims. The ever-accelerating news cycle, aided and abetted by Web 2.0, was looking for ways to build on the story. People, not understanding the complexity of aid as anything more than truck-and-chuck logistics, grew rapidly frustrated with what they saw as unacceptable delays.

The Haitians too played to the media. Savvy and well-connected themselves, they understood the potential of broadcast images to rally support for their crisis, and there were numerous reports of crowds playing up and becoming aggressive only once the news cameras were on the scene.

Crowdsourcing of disaster response information came in to play. Use of text messaging, combined with web-based crowd-sourcing platforms, triangulated the location of trapped victims and directed search-and-rescue teams to dig them out. The question of whether this was a good thing or not remains unanswered.

Haiti became the world’s first participatory disaster in many ways. Not only were people following along with information in near-real time- and contributing to it- but so too people felt that they had a right to get directly invovled. While the South Asian Tsunami had generated a lot of startup NGOs, the scale paled compared to what happened in Haiti. Due to its proximity to the US, as well as strong ties through the Haitian diaspora there, thousands- literally- of well-meaning but thoroughly unqualified citizens filled suitcases with money and flew on over to Haiti to contribute to the relief efforts. At one point, there were reported to be over ten thousand NGOs operating in Port-au-Prince.

While the UN coordination mechanisms had become well established by the time of the Haiti earthquake, they were insufficient to deal with the sheer number of ‘humanitarian’ actors, leading to accusations of poor coordination. In fact, most major humanitarian actors were coordinating reasonably well under the circumstances. The problem was, the influx of do-it-yourself do-gooders had no knowledge of the standards of behaviour developed to manage exactly this sort of issue, and simply did their own thing. Ironically, despite nearly thirty years of increasing standardization and professionalisation of the aid sector, Haiti marked a return to the days where anybody with a heartbeat, a will, and a wad of notes could carry out aid work.

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From its humble beginnings as a simple set of agreements around the treatment by volunteers of wounded soldiers a hundred and fifty years ago, the humanitarian sector has ballooned into a high profile, multi-billion-dollar and increasingly professional industry. The clear-cut principle of neutrality has been built upon, and then increasingly nuanced as the implications of high-value aid resources flowing into conflict and post-disaster settings has become increasingly understood. Aid workers have gone from being unsung heroes protected by their badges, to targets in an increasingly violent playing field.

Increased critical awareness of the impact of aid has led to the development of more and more standards and tools to unpack that complexity, while tragic mistakes have lent a sombre, self-critical and often cynical edge to the notion of international do-gooders.

The expectations of a giving public have shifted too, from a time when charity was the domain of churches and old ladies, to today where major emergencies become causes celebres among teenagers or corporate businessfolk, and revenues are measured in the billions. So too as the world has shrunk, ease of travel has increased, and communications media has accelerated, the giving public is increasingly interacting with disasters in near-real-time as they unfold, creating expectations often unrealistic at best, very often ignorant.

Aid now operates in a highly politicized environment with rapid changes, almost incomprehensible flows of information, and a vast and shifting range of constituents, all of whom require satisfaction on one level or another. With every major disaster or event, the aid world changes, and the goal-posts shifts.

For all its failings over the decades, one thing that stands out is that the aid industry- like many of the people who have to respond on the ground- is by very nature flexible and adaptable, changing as its circumstances change. It’s made its mistakes, and it remains a deeply flawed sector. But for all that, I couldn’t see myself in any other.

What do you think? Are there any other key events in the history of humanitarianism that you feel have had a major impact on the development of the sector?

What the Heckistan?

I live [for the time being] in Australia. Folks here call it “The Lucky Country”. You could probably query the title if you wanted to. In the source reference (a book of the same title by Donald Horne) the title is applied ironically, suggesting Australia has the good fortune it does not through the skill of its inhabitants, but the happenstance of rich resources. There’s certainly not much lucky to celebrate if you’re an indigenous Australian- disease, slaughter, disenfranchisement, and today largely socially marginlized with the destruction of 40,000 years of cultural history now a reality rather than a threat. Australia has its fair share of natural disasters. Last year’s Black Saturday bushfires ripped across huge portions of rural Victoria with devastating results. Over a decade of drought has crippled the livelihoods of many many farmers. Intense flooding and tropical storms are commonplace in coastal regions, while many populated areas- the eminently livable Melbourne foremost among them- discovering that they are not sustainable with current resources.

But compared to Pakistan, there’s not a lot to complain about really.

The Less Lucky Country

The country’s name means, literally, ‘Land of the Pure’ or ‘The Holy Land’, but recently you’d be forgiven for stamping it with the moniker ‘The Unlucky Country’.

Pakistan’s history has been one dotted with challenges. From its inception as a nation during the 1947 partition with India (when it was in fact two countries- West Pakistan, and East Pakistan) it’s had a violent past. Up to a million people reportedly died during the mass population movements which saw nearly 15 million people uprooted and despatched to ethnic homelands in the north of the Subcontinent. In 1971, between 300,000 and 3 million more died in the civil uprising that saw Bangladesh birthed from East Pakistan.

Decades of political instability saw Pakistan as an uneasy client state of the US during the Cold War, where the seeds of today’s Global War on Terror (GWOT… what a great acronym) were sown. (For an absolutely unmissable analysis of the nexus between Bin Laden, the Pakistani intelligence service ISI, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the CIA, read Ghost Wars by reporter Steve Coll). Coups and assassinations have abounded. For a while the nation was suspended from the Commonwealth due to accusations of political repression.

Today the simmering tension between the central government and the fiercely autonomous north-western frontier has given rise to a fluctuating cycle of low-level insurgency-type violence and large-scale military manouevres. Last year, an offensive in the Swat and surrounding valleys by the Pakistani army, in an effort to shake loose insurgent strongholds, displaced over 2.5 million people in a series of rapid surges that were some of the largest, fastest population movements since the Second World War. The civil war continues, where attacks on convoys and government targets are counterbalanced by army raids and airstrikes by US drones. The shady relationship between Islamo-Fascist extremists and the ISI continues to lurk.

In October 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook northern Pakistan, killing 80,000 people, injuring over 100,000 and hundreds of thousands- if not millions- affected- placing it by any standards as one of the largest natural disasters in what has been a half-decade of massive events (South Asian Tsunami, Cyclone Nargis, Sichuan Earthquake and Haiti Earthquake).

And now, we have the floods.

2010 Monsoon Floods

Before I go any further, I want to make something very clear- and not just because article 10 of the Red Cross and NGO Code of Conduct stipulates that beneficiaries of assistance are treated not as helpless victims, but survivors with dignity. Pakistan is a country of intense and spectacular beauty. I myself have only travelled in the south- Karachi and Hyderabad, along the Indus River which even now is expecting a new surge of floodwaters- and I was deeply touched by the generosity of the people there. I enjoyed the bustle and the dense hum of daily life that exists in those cities crammed together, and the Pakistani colleagues with whom I’ve worked at different points over the years are lovely people. I have been wanting to visit the Karakorum Ranges- K2 particularly- for many years, and were it not quite so risky right now, have a real hankering to drive from Peshawar down the Khyber Pass as well. Someday, insh’Allah.

But these guys have had it tough recently.

It’s hard to downplay the magnitude of what’s happening out there right now. The volume of rain that fell- a result of stalled monsoonal weather systems- has resulted in flooding that in critical terms hasn’t caused the same loss of life as some other quicker disasters we’ve faced. But as of today, the Pakistani government is saying that 20 million people in the country have been affected. 20 million. That number doesn’t really mean much when you read it on paper. I know, because I’m writing it, and it leaves me cold. In fact studies have suggested that we, as humans, are not really able to connect emotionally with numbers higher than about 300- the size of a tribe or large extended family, courtesy of our old troglodytic days. But 20 million is about the population of Australia. Affected by one flood event. It’s more than one in ten Pakistanis- a country that is the 6th most populous in the world.

By contrast, the Haiti earthquake is said to have affected about 3 million people. The South Asian Tsunami, maybe 5. The war in Darfur, about 5 million as well.

In fact there are more people currently affected by the floods in Pakistan than in Cyclone Nargis, the Haiti Earthquake and the Tsunami combined.

And while the term ‘affected’ is a bit of a vague one- comparing people affected by floods with people affected by earthquakes is a bit like comparing Apples and PCs- there’s little doubt that the impacts are severe. Displacement, loss of homes, loss of assets, loss of farmland and cattle. Infrastructure is being destroyed even now that will take years to rebuild. The aftermath and implications will only really be understood when the floodwaters recede. This will take 5-6 days in northern Pakistan, and upwards of 2 weeks to even begin in the flatter lowland areas of southern Pakistan such as Sindh- where the flood waters are still rising and expected to surge. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who also toured Port-au-Prince after January’s earthquake, has called the disaster the worst he’s ever seen, and was reportedly visibly shaken on his trip. That’s a pretty big call from a guy who really knows what he’s talking about.

What’s Going On?

Everybody loves a good yank on the old Climate Change tail. The answer may not be as simple. Not that I’m suggesting climate change is simple, I assure you.

Interestingly, climate scientists have suggested that there could be a link between the flooding, and the crushing heatwave that has been burning western Russia to a crisp these past few weeks. An uncharacteristic ‘blocking high’ is perched over central Asia, allegedly disrupting the flow of the high-altitude jetstream and pushing saturated air where it wouldn’t ordinarily be at this time (parts of northern Pakistan received a year’s worth of rain in a week).

A blocking high (explains the ex-Geographer with glee) is a very stable anticyclonic weather feature (high pressure systems, or anticyclones, are caused when cool air descends from upper reaches of the atmosphere). Ordinarily, high pressure systems form, then move on or break down as they are affected by any other number of weather patterns. When these systems remain stationary for long periods of time, they’re known as blocking highs. They’re not uncommon. Growing up in the Alps, we frequently experienced blocking highs that would sit for weeks at a time, pinning low-level cloud in the bottom of the valleys but leaving the peaks bathed in glorious sunshine (resulting in what’s known as a temperature inversion). They are associated with dry weather and extended periods of sunshine, hence turning Western Russia into a tinderbox.

Beyond that, we don’t really know. Links are being discussed to ENSO trends (the infamous El Nino/La Nina cycles) as an intermediate factor. Weather and climate form such a complex system (with healthy spurts of chaos thrown in) that it’s very hard to predict beyond the micro-level what is going on, and it’s equally difficult to attribute causality.

It’s important to acknowledge that there’s a certain level of statistical randomness in what occurs; as with any system which has chaotic or random elements in it, you’ll end up with variations on a bell-curve distribution. This event happens to sit at the extreme end of one of those curves. It’s not a smoking gun (or even a dripping faucet) in support of any climate change theory. It is, however, a predictable outcome (globally, not specifically) of alleged climate change. The effect of climate change is to stretch out the arms of that bell curve, so that events at either end of the spectrum grow more severe. While in the one direction we can’t really attribute the Pakistani floods to an obvious cause or universal trend, we can expect, if the theories on Global Warming are correct, to see more and more events like this one in coming years.

For a more technical overview of ENSO, MISO and the Pakistan floods, check out this article on the IRIN news service.

In the meantime, please remember the people of Pakistan while this crisis- already overlaid on a highly complex political scenario- continues to deepen.  For those motivated to give, check out the list of NGOs on the right-hand column of this blog.

A Picture of Hope

A friend of mine, Steve, flew into Haiti about 36 hours after the quake.  He’s communicating daily on what he’s seeing out there.  His update this morning came in by Skype.  It moved many of us with its honesty and poignancy. I wanted to share it with you.

“I had a moment of joy today. One of my colleagues was being interviewed by Channel 9 in a park that’s been turned into a camp. As the reporter talked to Ruth I sat on a ledge. Two little girls came up and smiled at me nervously, looking at my camera, and laughing. I smiled and took their picture and showed it to them. They howled in laughter. We then got into giving each other high fives and low fives. And a few more pics. It’s the children. They are the reason I do this work. They break my heart over and over when i see them in such dire circumstances. But they are so resilient. They can still laugh and play in the midst of despair, almost oblivious. Adults should stop and learn from their children more often. Life is rough. But it’s never too late to smile and have a moment of joy, even in a disaster like this one.”

-Photo and text from Steve, Aid worker currently in Haiti

Why Aid is Slow Getting into Haiti- Re-posted

The above-mentioned piece has now been re-posted following publication as an editorial in Australia’s The Age newspaper. Fun times.

Article now posted under the “Articles on Aid Work” section of this site- click here to read more.

Why Aid is Slow Getting into Haiti- Where Did You Go?

Hi folks,

The article I posted on Friday about the constraints faced by the international community on getting aid into Haiti has had to be pulled from my site for a little while. The piece is being picked up by The Age newspaper (one of the larger national papers in Australia) to be run as an editorial tomorrow and they have requested I suspend the post until after the paper is published tomorrow. I’ll have the post back up by 9am Melbourne time Tuesday. Sorry about that. Thanks for all of you who have dropped by to read, leave comments, retweet, etc. etc.- I’ve really appreciated the interest and coverage.

Tris

Why Aid is Slow Getting in to Haiti

It’s been two and a half days since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, leveling the city and killing what the Red Cross is estimating up to 50,000 people. Hundreds of thousands more are injured or homeless.

Already- and who can blame them?- people are complaining at the slow pace of aid delivery. At the time of writing (Friday night in Australia) there had been reports of angry residents blocking roads with the bodies of earthquake victims in macabre protest (I’m not sure how this is supposed to improve aid delivery).

It isn’t uncommon, in the wake of a disaster, for aid to take a while to reach those who need it. There is always footage of some angry resident complaining that promised aid has not arrived. However in the prevailing culture of Port-au-Prince, dissatisfaction of this kind swiftly leads to violence. This is a problem that needs fixing fast, or there will be a lot of very cross Haitians, who have over the years repeatedly demonstrated a penchant for angry mobs and violent protest.

In addition, slow aid delivery gives the international community in general a bad name. The UN and NGOs get flak in the media. Our donors get suspicious and edgy. We get given less money. (I hear the eyeballs of the cynics out there rolling, but in reality this does mean, for better or for worse, less material assistance reaching people directly impacted by the disaster, which is ultimately what we’re about).

In the case of Haiti, there’s every reason to think that aid delivery is going to be slow, and far slower than appears acceptable in the face of a disaster of this magnitude. It will be easy to point the finger at governments, charities and the UN for not overcoming obstacles in their way and doing what they’re supposed to do best. However, let’s take a moment and look at why aid has been- and will continue to be- slow reaching Haiti’s victims.

Airports– Port-au-Prince has one. It’s small for an international airport. I’ve flown into it, and there’s not much there. I understand it actually has capacity for nine or ten planes at a time. Planes take time to land, to offload, and to take off again. There’s things like refueling, paperwork and clearances to consider. Different types of planes require different types of equipment to offload them, and different amounts of time.

The airport was damaged in the earthquake and is not yet back up to full capacity. Planes need fuel, but there’s very little available in Port-au-Prince, and it’s heavy and expensive to fly in.  Airport staff are among the victims, and many will be digging their families out of rubble. The US army is reputed to be stepping in to manage the airport. A strict system to allow planes in and out of the airport will be established, placing an absolute ceiling on the physical volume of aid that can come in. In other words, it doesn’t matter how organized, prepared or resourced you are: there’s only one airport, and it can only process so much cargo a day.

Seaports- The main seaport in Port-au-Prince was damaged in the quake. The access road from the port to the city is ostensibly buckled five feet into the air. Aid ships have already been turned away from the dock. Offloading cargo ships at a modern dock isn’t a matter of pitching sacks over the side- there are 20- and 40-foot steel containers to contend with which must be craned or trucked off decks. If the heavy lifting gear is damaged, you can have all the aid supplies in the world- you can’t offload it. Until the port is functioning again, there will be serious restrictions on how aid can get through.

Roads– As of today the roads into Port-au-Prince from neighbouring provinces were largely accessible. However roads inside Port-au-Prince remained blocked by debris and by people too scared or unable to return home. Some roads are accessible by four-wheel drive. Heavy trucks- those not damaged in the quake- will struggle to get through the debris. There will be a limited number of transport vehicles (and drivers to run them) available, and a limited number of access roads to drive on until they are cleared. So even if supplies make it to key points of entry, distributing them within the city will be a slow process, again limited by available logistical resources.

Neighbours– The Dominican Republic borders Haiti, was unaffected by the earthquake, and has seaports and an international airport. It is already established as an alternative logistics hub for the relief effort. Roads between the two countries aren’t great and there are reputed to be some safety issues in driving them. Again the limitations on (and inflated cost of) transportation vehicles- trucks and helicopters- from the DR to Haiti will be the main limiting factor.

Communications– Landline, cell-phone and internet communications (not to mention power) are all down at the moment in Port-au-Prince, so communicating with different parts of the city to identify access routes, populations, resources and alternative solutions is difficult. Communicating needs to the outside world is also difficult. Problem-solving, especially where multiple stakeholders are involved, such as trucking companies, government bodies or partner NGOs, is complex and frustrating when telecommunications are not functioning.

Staff– Many if not most of the UN and international agency staff- national and expatriate- in Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake have been affected. Some have been killed. Many have lost homes, or loved ones, or both. Many will be unable to assist in relief operations. Key roles lie unfilled. The same is true of transportation companies, service providers, and government departments overseeing infrastructure and logistics. New staff are flying in to fill some of these gaps, but they are less familiar with the Haitian context and will not make decisions as smoothly or as quickly as their local counterparts may have.

Solutions– All of this not to say that the operation is hopeless, or nothing can be done. The response community as a whole and as individuals are aware of these challenges, and are tackling them in a myriad of different ways, so that hopefully, over the coming days, solutions will be found. Access roads can be cleared, staff brought up to speed, communication systems replaced and streamlined systems put in place. However the reality is, this will still take time.

During this time, an equal reality is that people will die. Men, women and children injured in the earthquake will not get the treatment they need. Infants forced to drink unclean water because the pipe network has broken will die from dehydration brought about through diarrhoeal disease. Frail or chronically ill people left shocked and exposed without shelter may pass away.

We acknowledge this will happen. But the constraints listed above will not simply go away because we don’t like them. We will address them as quickly and efficiently as possible, and we hope that in doing so, the number of people who die needlessly will be minimalized. We hope that in doing so, we will not make unecessary mistakes that cost the lives of innocents.

Many of these challenges remain outside our direct control, lying either with physical constraints that are effectively absolute, or with levels of state authority we cannot easily manipulate.

Of course it is not acceptable to sit back, throw up our hands, and say, “Oh, there’s nothing we can do to solve this problem. Woe is me!” We must- and are- throwing all our efforts at these problems to solve them.

But in keeping the above in mind, we should be careful not to slam the international community unfairly for the slow delivery of assistance into a highly complex and challenge-wrought environment.

The optimum solution is to have the necessary systems and resources in place before an event like this occurs. Alternative logistics plans, sufficient hardware, expanded port and airport facilities, redundant systems of governance should an event paralyze the existing structure.

As you can see when you write it out, not very realistic.

What is important to bear in mind is that the most valuable resources are the ones already on the ground. Our organization, for example, already had stockpiles of emergency supplies based in different warehouses around the country that could be immediately mobilized, irregardless of airport snaffus. Likewise, over 350 in-country staff to call on to assist without needing to fly them in, many of them already trained and experienced in disaster response. Many other agencies are in a similar position.

Community members are always the first responders and the people who, far outstripping the efforts of the UN and NGOs, save the most lives. They pull loved ones and neighbours from the wreckage, share the limited resources they themselves have with their communities, and are both the first and most effective responders.

By providing the local people themselves with basic first-aid, rescue and survival skills- not to mention encouraging people to have an emergency stockpile- food, candles, bottled water- the effectiveness of this first response can be greatly enhanced. This is undoubtedly the most effective and impactful way forward, and is the way many NGOs, my own included, continue to approach disaster relief in concert with more traditional response mechanisms.

Today all we can really do is hope that the authorities able to make decisions make them wisely, and that those attempting to overcome obstacles find creative insight. And we can pray that the community members themselves who have survived the earthquake and are now supporting others will continue to have the strength and capacity to keep their brothers and sisters in good health and spirits.

Putting the Complex Back into ‘Complex Humanitarian Emergency’

In the aid worker’s lexicon of Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) we call them CHEs- Complex Humanitarian Emergencies.  They’re what we get when we layer a natural or human-made disaster over a situation that was already pretty messed up to begin with (see, for example, Darfur, or the war in Eastern DRC, or northern Pakistan).

CHEs are typified by large-scale emergency events (usually covering a significant portion of one country, or several countries), generally involve some level of acute emergency layered over a chronically unsuccessful context (a cyclone, or food shortages, or a mass displacement of people in a war zone or an unstable region), and usually take place in a situation where the national or regional government is either unwilling or unable to solve the problem, and is therefore characterised by failure of state or governance systems.  They also usually take years, and sometimes decades, to resolve.

Basically, they’re screwed.

Interestingly, CHEs don’t necessarily make a big splash in the media.  Eastern DRC is the case-in-point of this sort of situation, but others include the Central African Republic, eastern Chad and northern Uganda, all of which spend very little time grabbing headlines but are archetypal ‘forgotten’ complex emergencies.

This week, we have a grand example of an emergency that is anything but forgotten, but certainly highly complex.  The earthquake which struck Haiti less than 72 hours ago has effectively flattened the capital, Port-au-Prince, and current estimates from the Red Cross suggest that 45-50,000 people have been killed, with tens of thousands more injured and hundreds of thousands homeless.  As much as a third of the tiny island nation’s population has been directly impacted by the disaster.

But Haiti too bears all the hallmarks of a CHE in the making.  Although on the surface it appears to be a natural disaster, like the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, or the Padang earthquake in Indonesia earlier this year- both of which were relatively ‘simple’ emergencies, with functioning (if overwhelmed) state structures and relative stability- the hallmarks of Haiti’s instability are already bubbling to the surface.

What is it that makes the Haiti context so complex?

Geography– Port-au-Prince sits snug against a harbour, ringed by extremely steep hillsides.  The hillsides themselves are crammed with shanties.  When the shaking started, these shanties crumbled into the valleys, taking access roads with them.  The congestion of blocked roads and the relatively small amounts of flat land in Port-au-Prince make it difficult to move about amidst the destruction.

Poverty– Haiti was a poor country to begin with- currently ranked 149^th out of 182 countries on the UNDP’s Human Development Indicator.  30% of the country had access to clean drinking water.  The country struggles to maintain enough food for the population at attainable prices.  Infrastructure is underdeveloped, trade (and therefore transportation) links are limited, building codes are often ignored and disaster preparedness measures not implemented.  With a baseline like this, there is very little resilience, or bounce, in the national coping mechanisms to manage a disaster of this magnitude.

Governance/Administration– Haiti’s government is fragile at best, suffering repeated coups and attempted coups, and currently largely propped up by the international community (backed by US political and military intervention, and 9,000 UN-mandated Brazilian peacekeepers).  Services, such as health-care, policing and emergency response were already weak.  With the earthquake, these services and structures have largely collapsed.  The government is effectively not functioning.  The scale of the devastation far outstrips the capacity of existing emergency services to respond, but even if it didn’t, because the disaster has focused on the seat of power, those very people who should be running those response services- paramedics and policemen- are themselves victims- dead, wounded, or freeing loved ones from rubble.

The UN and NGOs– While the chronic insecurity in Haiti over the years has bred a stable population of international and national aid workers, this populace was themselves not spared.  The UN has lost over 150 staff and peacekeepers, with their headquarters flattened.  As the driving force supporting government and national security services, their effective removal from the picture now leaves a huge vacuum.  NGOs themselves have also been hit, with most charities losing staff members and building facilities, hardware, and connectivity.  Staff themselves are victims, many of them still trying to locate loved ones among the rubble.  Many will not be in a position to return to their posts for some time.

Cyclone Season– From April onwards- three short months away- tropical storms and cyclones will start spawning in the Atlantic Ocean and sweeping over Hispaniola.  Every year Haiti takes at least one direct hit, and usually several, from these violent storms.  90 days (3 months) is a standard block of time during which to run the emergency phase of an operation, but it will take years (at least) to rebuild Port-au-Prince, replace basic services, repair damaged infrastructure and maintain the wellbeing of the population during this process.  Haiti’s populace are vulnerable to storms at the best of times, living as they do in ravines and on steep-sided mountains.  Without the protection of concrete buildings, the hundreds of thousands of people likely to still be in temporary accomodation such as tents or makeshift shanties will be at great risk when the next storm-season comes aroun.

Logistics– Port-au-Prince has an international airport of a moderate size- it can take commercial jets but does not have a large capacity, creating a log-jam in aircraft handling.  The road from the airport is damaged.  The seaport is also damaged and ships cannot dock.  Roads internal to Port-au-Prince are clogged with debris and temporary settlements- people refusing to return to their damaged homes (if they are still standing) for fear of aftershocks.  The international airport in Santo Domingo, in neighbouring Dominican Republic, is the alternative airport of choice, but is also strained to capacity, while roads between the two nations are not in great condition and somewhat insecure.

Security– Port-au-Prince is one of the world’s more colourful cities- by which I don’t just mean the paint on the walls, but the level of danger.  A kidnap capital, foreigners tend to remain behind barbed wires, are leery of spending much time walking around on the street, and avoid public transportation.  Criminal gangs run large portions of the slums, while drug cartels exploit the country’s fragile security services to make Haiti a base for drug-running operations.  Fragile and unpopular governance has provided Haiti with multiple and often bloody coups, rebellions and put-downs, and the capital and other urban areas are home to regular riots and violent protests.

Outmigration– With the capital city in ruins, people are streaming out into the countryside as road networks open up.  Many of them are injured or have lost everything.  While identifying and supporting hundreds of thousands of earthquake-affected citizens within the compact confines of Port-au-Prince was already a daunting prospect, trying to locate, register and assist a population that is rapidly spreading across the countryside is a staggering logistical challenge.

Over the next weeks, dozens of aid agencies, foreign governments, military forces and UN agencies will coverge on Port-au-Prince, attempt to identify the people most at need of assistance, and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of supplies, materials, food and medication.  This will be accompanied by thousands of foreign nationals.  Working with national counterparts, these various organizations will attempt to distribute assistance as evenly as possible to the highest standards possible.  In order to acheive this aim, they will have to contend with the above complexities.

And that’s just for starters.

Aid is a complex business.  Aid agencies of every colour get lots wrong, good intentions or no.  There’s plenty of criticism out there about the way these agencies do business, and a lot of it is merited.  By the same token, lives will be saved and vastly improved in many cases.  Where aid doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to, it’s worth bearing in mind a few of the complications that can make doing this job a mind-knottingly challenging prospect.

How would you resolve the Haiti earthquake dilemma…?

When Disasters Get Personal

When I got out of bed this morning, I hadn’t expected to make the evening news.

It was pure chance that I chose to put on a t-shirt with our organization’s logo on it- one of a slowly growing portfolio of branded clothing I’m slowly accumulating after a series of trips to disaster responses in the field.  T-shirts, caps, utility-vests… the staple uniform of good aid-workers the world over.

The text went off in my pocket around 9am.  We knew it was going to be bad almost instantly.  I think I probably swore when I read it.  My phone is hooked up to a global disaster monitoring service which provides near-real-time alerts of earthquakes and tsunamis around the world.  This one warned of a 7.0+ magnitude quake just outside Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.  I’ve been to Port-au-Prince, seen how the shanties cling like brittle limpets to the fragile hillsides around the harbour.  The shallow depth- just ten kms down- meant that the shaking was going to be severe, the damage extensive.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, I’ve been lucky enough that up till now, I haven’t lost any personal friends to the trauma factory that is aid-work.  None the less, the more I work in disasters, the more friends I make in risk-prone areas, and the more diverse locations I visit, the more that disaster events like today’s devastating earthquake in Haiti strike home.

Just as the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami struck a chord with television viewers throughout the western hemisphere (not for the decimated population of Aceh, but for views of familiar Thai beaches being washed away), so too when a disaster hits a place I’m familiar with, it makes it feel that much closer to my heart.  I’ve referred to my time in Haiti in just the last few days on this website, as a place that’s left a special mark on my memory.  Port-au-Prince is a place in my head I can relate to.  I know what rush-hour feels like there.  I’m familiar with the children in their school uniforms, blue skirts and shorts and white shirts, the girls with little blue bobbins in their wiry hair.  I remember the sight of UN peacekeepers patrolling the roadways in the back of open pickup trucks, the dreadful pockmarked roads, and the flimsy shanties that crawl like acne up the sheer mountainsides that hem the city in.

Three friends of mine, two Canadian and an Australian from my office here in Melbourne, flew into Haiti this weekend to carry out a workshop with our organization.  It took us several hours this morning before we could confirm they were alive and unhurt, thankfully based out of the north-eastern town of Hinche some hours from the epicentre.  They are now giving us regular updates of their experience as they try and support our local office in Port-au-Prince with scale-up and emergency operations.

Colleagues I met and whose company I enjoyed during my visit are tonight searching among the debris for loved ones.  While I’m relieved that the initial reports indicate none of our staff have lost their lives, I pray for them as many of them still struggle to discover the fate of their family members.  These are men and women I know by name.

It’s been a busy day, one of emotional ups and downs.  Concern at the initial news of the earthquake.  Uncertainty at the fate of people I care about.  Relief at discovering their safety.  Sadness at the details of the earthquake that continue to pour in.  Grief on behalf of colleagues many thousands of miles away.  I’ve done a couple of stressful interviews for radio and TV, and enjoyed the support and comradery of my proficient and professional team-mates as we’ve gathered the information and made the decisions necessary to do our jobs in support of the field operations.

On the one hand, I thrive professionally off engaging with disaster response work.  It’s the raison d’etre for my profession.  On the other, when events like the Haiti Earthquake affect people you know and care about, it ceases to be a distant operation, a detatched reality, or some sad event that takes place on televisions and computer screens.

Tomorrow we’ll learn more of what’s happened out in Haiti.  I begin my day early enough to prep for a 6am radio interview, and from there I’ll be in the office feeding off the time-window that overlaps with our team in Port-au-Prince so that we can begin pulling together resources and providing support which will help them do their job in assisting people affected by the disaster.  For many of our team on the ground, they themselves will be disaster-affected, adding an additional complexity to their ability to respond.  And however personally I may take an event like this, I know it’s nothing compared to what it is like when your own city, your own home and your own family are struck.

Thoughts and prayers tonight rest with the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been violently and dramatically altered today at the whim of our fragile planet.

All photos taken April 2007 on Ile de la Gonave off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Moments in Space and Time #9: La Gonave

On a work assignment in Haiti, it was easy to see why Port-au-Prince was considered a bit of a no-go zone. Crime and the risk of kidnapping kept us behind coiled-wire barricades in hotels and using alternating routes to drive through the streets, while Brazilian blue-helmeted peacekeepers were stacked, fully armed, into the back of circulating pick-up trucks patrolling the streets. Favellas crammed the steep mountainsides that hemmed in the capital and overlooked the sprawling harbour, fragile and impoverished, and washed away by every passing cyclone. While the scenery was alluring and the people colourful, there was an intensity and oppression about the place that was quite invasive.

The second half of the trip, however, was spent on the island of La Gonave, a half-hour flight by light aircraft off the coast. Peaceful, idyllic and eye-wateringly beautiful, the white rocks and rich green flora leant the place an air that suggested the Swiss Family Robinson could have settled well here. The people were friendly, the village streets safe to walk. The roads were horrendous but the beautiful landscape and diverse vegetation made the journeys worthwhile.

Before catching our flight home, a colleague and I asked the driver to take a detour down to the coastline near the airstrip. In the tropical sun, clouds billowed over the mainland and the white coral beach was searing to look at. Within the reef, the water was still and quiet and bath-warm, translucent and quite magical. We walked a little way along the coastline, then went for a swim in the shallow sea. It was an absolute highlight of our time in the country, and a place that I hold in a special place in my memory.

Caribbean Aerial

On a monitoring trip to Haiti in 2007, we visited the idyllic island of Gonave.  Haiti, it should be pointed out, is anything but idyllic.  Port-au+Prince, the capital, is one of the world’s most dangerous cities, with a violent gang culture, routine political and criminal violence, and a propensity to mob.  UN Peacekeepers patrol the streets in white open-backed trucks, and foreign visitors are advised not to walk the streets alone.  The risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking is high.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with standards of living similar to those in much of sub-Saharan Africa.  It is vulnerable to hurricanes each year, and the combination of steep hills and widespread deforestation makes the rural population extremely vulnerable to landslides, and lowland areas to mudflows and flashfloods.  Thousands have died in the past decade.  The economy is fragile and food production systems are shaky.  One of the hardest-hit by the Global Food Crisis, 2008 saw widespread food rioting in many parts of the country.

Ile de la Gonave is a few miles off the Haitian mainland, a small dot of  an island accessible by ferry or by small plane.  Home to some fifty thousand people, it has a steep spine built on a foundation of bleached coral edging that slips into a shallow aquamarine sea.  Open ground burns white beneath a tropical sun.  Palm trees and red-flowered Flamboyants grow from the shallow soil.  In the interior, tree cover is broken by steep terraced fields between small Latin American style villages and homesteads.  The pace of life is simple and quiet.  There are few vehicles, far more donkeys.  The roads- rocky coral paths rutted by tropical rains and unforgivingly hard against shot spring-leaf suspension- are the worst I’ve driven on, anywhere- and I’ve driven on some corkers.  But the place is safe, and the people smile, and Gonave couldn’t be further from the frenetic anger that simmers on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The views flying in and out of the island were magnificent.  Tropical afternoon sunlight made the sea shine beneath us, while we could see the island, its small towns, and the reef surrounding it, like we were looking down from space.  The little Cessna we flew in touched down on a strip of crushed coral a few yards off the beach, one of the more memorable flights I’ve taken- but then, flying in small aircraft is always fun because the views are so much clearer, the sense of being airborne so much more tangible.

From the ground, the views were no less picturesque, and on our last afternoon on the island before flying back to Port-au-Prince (and a memorable tropical downpour that night), I took these pictures from the coral beaches, looking out over the sea I would shortly be cruising several thousand feet over.