Silent Disasters: Let’s turn up the volume

Image by IFRC/Finnish Red Cross

Last October, the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Somalia and Indonesia all were all hit by a flurry of natural disasters.  Yet of all of these, most people have only heard about Hurricane Sandy, which claimed 131 lives and caused major damages to the East Coast of the US. 

Media figures released by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) showed that the impact of Hurricane Sandy in the US grabbed almost 90 percent of all print and online media coverage of a set of 13 disasters from January 2012 to January 2013, across 160 countries.

The other "silent disasters" were food insecurity in both the Sahel and southern Africa, a tropical storm that struck Bangladesh in October, floods in Cambodia and Ecuador, a recent snap of extreme cold in Mongolia, disease epidemics in Uganda including Ebola, a series of earthquakes in Tajikistan, hand, foot and mouth disease in Vietnam, a dengue outbreak in El Salvador and the difficulties faced by Burundian refugees returning home from Tanzania.

The Red Cross and the European Commission have launched a media campaign this week to raise public awareness about the many “silent disasters” around the world that are under-reported, under-funded and often forgotten.

Over 90 percent of disasters around the world go unnoticed. They’re too small, inconvenient or overshadowed by other events. Without the attention of the public and the media, they often pass under the donor community's radar.

"Small-scale disasters may not reach our TV screens, but they still cast painful blows to millions of people every year, destroying their homes and livelihoods," said EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva, highlighting the work done by ECHO and the Red Cross to bring relief aid to hard-hit communities.

"Our joint efforts are more important than ever, as climate change, urbanisation and population growth are pushing up the number and impact of disasters,” Georgieva added.  

Each decade, disasters around the world are growing in frequency, severity and cost with no end in sight. By 2015 an estimated 375 million people - a 79 percent increase from 2011 - will suffer the ravages of devastating weather events. These figures are truly alarming.

Even during this time of economic austerity, slashing humanitarian budgets would amount to turning a blind eye to a costly reality that affects us all, and writing off the lives of the millions of families affected by disasters, Georgieva, added. 

Watch the campaign’s video, shown in cinema and on television in 11 European countries this month. It depicts people in comfortable homes eating, while disaster survivors look on in the background. Then the Europeans suddenly hear their voices… The campaign will also run on websites, social media (with the hashtag #silentdisasters) and in print.

Women who feed the world - Mothers of the Soil

Women show a young man from the city how to prepare the soil for planting in the Maisha Plus village in Tanzania/courtesy of Seven Torfin/Oxfam

 

Here is an article I wrote for the Indian magazine The Caravan about an innovative collaboration between Oxfam and the popular Tanzanian reality TV show Maisha Plus.

The idea was to celebrate the women who grow most of the food in developing countries and show viewers how important they are, how resourceful and creative they are, and how hard they work. 

I spent a week in the reality TV village, getting to know the 14 finalists and some of the young people, and watching them going about their daily activities. We would sit on mats they had woven and they would tell me their stories, which my lovely translator Abigail-Precious Ambweni, translated. I loved it!  Their stories moved me, inspired me, made me angry, made me happy – and I am sure the million of viewers who watched the show at night felt the same way.

Studies have shown that the best way to cut hunger in the world is to invest in women who farm small plots and ensure they have the same rights and access to resources as men. So let's do it!

Mothers of the Soil

 

A reality show turns its focus to women in villages

By Veronique Mistiaen | 1 February 2013

The latest season of Maisha Plus gave young contestants and viewers a taste of what women in Tanzania and across Africa go through to put food on the table. COURTESY SVEN TORFIN / OXFAM

 

THE LATE-AFTERNOON SUN bathed the small village in soft, golden light. With thatched huts scattered among palm trees, vegetable gardens, a well, and scrawny chickens scurrying about, it was the quintessential rural African scene. But a closer inspection revealed cables half-buried in the grey sand, and cameras hidden behind palm trees and shrubs.

We were in a make-believe village, built from scratch at a secret location in the Pwani region of Tanzania. The village was the set for Maisha Plus, a Big Brother-type television show, whose latest season was produced in collaboration with the international development charity Oxfam, and ran from October to December last year. Twenty-five young men and women from cities were competing in a standard ‘survival’ format show, but this season the show also had a special segment in which 14 women who farm small plots of land in rural Tanzania competed for the title of “Mama Shujaa Wa Chakula” (Female Food Hero). This segment was an extension of a show Oxfam had introduced the  previous year.

Oxfam estimates that their female food heroes show reached 25 million Tanzanians in 2011, through television, as well as through discussions on radio, social media and newspapers—even in remote villages, people gather at night in community centres to watch it. “The idea behind the show is to give young contestants and millions of viewers a taste of what women in Tanzania and across Africa go through to put food on their tables with limited resources and in the face of enormous challenges,” said Mwanahamisi Salimu, a coordinator with Oxfam. “It is an opportunity to push for them to have access to the same rights and resources as their male counterparts, and a way to scale up the voices of women farmers.”

The women contestants arrived in the village first, and stayed for two weeks, performing the tasks they would in their own daily lives—clearing land, planting vegetables, milking goats, fetching water, cooking cassava and building chicken coops. The young people, who joined the women at the end of the women’s stay, learned these skills from them over a week, before being left to survive on their own for the next eight weeks. Viewers voted winners from both groups, influenced as much by the contestants’ performance of the tasks as by their personalities and life stories.

In Tanzania, as in many African countries, women produce much of the food that feeds people. Few, however, own the land they farm or enjoy the same rights as men. In a pre-show interview to Oxfam and Maisha Plus, Tatu Abdi, a contestant from the Tanga region said, “Women are treated as tractors, but they have to treat their husbands like angels.”

The 14 women on the show were selected from among more than 7,000 applicants from across the country, and were in many ways typical of the millions of women who farm small plots of land. But the participants were also chosen for their unique life experiences and the challenges they had overcome. Eline Olotu Orio from the Kilimanjaro region, for example, managed to fight her community’s deep-seated patriarchal tradition and acquire a piece of land when she was only 20 years old. Nearly two decades later, this land supports her family, and Orio continues to improve her farm with innovative ideas—among these is a metal granary to protect her produce from the region’s scourge of rodents, which can eat up as much as 30 percent of a farmer’s crops. Another contestant, Emiliana Aligaesha from the Kagera region, couldn’t feed her nine children on her primary-school teacher’s salary, and so turned to agriculture. She now grows coffee, banana, beans and maize, and supplies quality seedlings to other villagers. Dorah Myinga from the Southern Highlands took a loan to buy a tractor—a step unheard of for a woman, let alone a widow. She now tends her 12-acre farm, and also earns money by renting her tractor out to other villagers.

To prepare for the show, a team from Oxfam and Maisha Plus spent a month criss-crossing the country to document the lives of these and other finalists. In the process, they uncovered some of the issues that hinder women’s progress: they often don’t own the land they work on, they struggle to get fair access to markets, they lack proper training and adequate tools, and they often face threats of violence. In almost all the villages, women complained that they were the ones seeding, planting, weeding and ploughing crops; but when harvest time came, men took over—sometimes selling the crops and keeping all the profits. In Orio’s village, women talked of a horrifying “season of rape”—a time when maize has grown so tall that some men hide in the fields, and attack, rape and even kill women. “The weeding season has become the raping season,” said one woman from the village during an open forum with Oxfam. “Since no men tend to the farms and women’s farms are very far from villages, rapists take advantage of that. We buried a victim a couple of weeks ago.”

Pencils against bullets?

 Reporters Without Borders' team wishes you an excellent 2013

 I've just received this greeting e-card from Reporters Without Borders, the international reporters' organization fighting for freedom of information.  I really like it: the simplicity of the drawing and the powerful message.  Am just wondering who is winning....

 It also reminds me that while the Leveson Inquiry has exposed the seediest aspects of our profession, where journalists debase their skills to stalk celebrities and ordinary people and bug their phones, many other journalists are applying them to nobler causes.

World Leprosy Day 2013: breaking the cycle of poverty and stigma

Evelina Juba, Leprosy Village, South Sudan

This Sunday is World Leprosy Day 2013, but few people are likely to take notice. Few might even know that leprosy still exists today.  But it does: it affects more than 15 million people across the world and each year nearly a quarter of a million new cases are detected: that is almost one person diagnosed every two minutes. Over half of all newly-reported cases occur in India. 

It might be the oldest disease known to mankind, but it is very much a disease of our time - a disease of poverty caused by a bacillus called Mycobacterium Leprae (a distant relative of the TB bacillus). Most people are naturally immune and the disease is easily cured with multi-drug therapy, but the majority of people affected live in developing countries where resources are scarce and poverty is widespread.

South Sudan is a case in point. Unofficial data points to the UN’s newest member state as having the world’s highest prevalence of leprosy.  After decades of civil war, South Sudan became an independent country in 2011.  But nearly two years after its independence, its people face a daily struggle for survival with severe food shortages. Recent field trips made by The Leprosy Mission England and Wales revealed a woeful lack of healthcare available to those affected by this devastating disease.

The charity’s head of programmes coordination, Sian Arulanantham, said: “I witnessed such abject poverty in South Sudan and there is a real humanitarian crisis within this new nation.  Leprosy is thriving in the squalid conditions in which people are forced to live and there are insubstantial health services available to diagnosis and treat what becomes an extremely debilitating disease.”  The charity is working with the government of South Sudan to try to alleviate some of the suffering people with leprosy have to endure.

While leprosy is not very contagious, the fear and stigma associated with it are – and that’s what makes it such a difficult disease to eradicate. Bible-old stigma and discrimination are still prevalent today and see entire families having their job opportunities, education, marriage prospects and dreams shattered.

Fear fuels a vicious circle which begins with people hiding the first telltale patches on their skin in order to avoid being shunned by their families and driven to the fringes of society. Since 1982, leprosy is easily cured with a simple course of antibiotics, but if left untreated, it can cause irreversible disabilities. The antibiotics can halt the progression of the disease, but cannot undo the damage.  Leprosy causes nerve problems, which can lead to a loss of sensation in the hands and feet, meaning everyday activities are fraught with danger.  Burns go unrecognized and stones in shoes unnoticed, causing ulcers and bone resorption.  The resulting disability can lead to the amputation of limbs.  Leprosy also damages nerves in the face causing problems with blinking, eventually leading to blindness.

On World Leprosy Day 2013, The Leprosy Mission of England and Wales is urging government and people to “concentrate on breaking the cycle of poverty which, along with stigma, sees leprosy remain a 21^st century disease.” 

Landfill Harmonic – Turning trash into music

My New Year resolution as a journalist is to try to focus more on solutions rather than on showing problems, and write stories that leave people with hope and the will to do something rather than feeling helpless.

Here is a perfect example: a beautiful story about people turning trash into music.  The people of Cateura, Paraguay, make their living scavenging through a huge landfill on top of which their slum was built. One day, one of them found a discarded violin shell. It gave them the idea of building recycled musical instruments out of rusting oil cans, pieces of wood and metal, old tools and other trash.  They soon managed to put together a whole orchestra made out of recycled instruments (it sounds amazingly good!) and it has transformed their lives.  

  “The world sends us garbage. We send back music,” says Favio Chavez, the orchestra’s director.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Women Farmers in Tanzania - I'm a farmer, get me out of there!

Women farmers at the Maisha Plus Village teach youngsters from the city how to grow and prepare their food/Sven Torfinn

I spent a few days in a typical African village in Tanzania with thatched huts, water well, goats and scrawny chickens scurrying about, but this village was actually built from scratch at a secret location in the Pawni region. It was the set for a Big Brother-type show organized by the international development charity Oxfam and the popular Tanzanian reality TV show Maisha Plus. Fourteen women who farm small plots of land in rural Tanzania and 26 youths from the cities competed for the titles of "Mama Shujaa Wa Chakula" (woman food hero) and youth food hero.
 
The idea was to give young contestants and millions of viewers a taste of what women in Africa go through to put food on the table with limited resources and in the face of enormous challenges. It was also a rare opportunity to celebrate them, put farming and gender issues on the agenda and force politicians to listen.

Here is a short blog post I've written for the Economist:

Farming in Tanzania

I'm a farmer, get me out of here

Dec 18th 2012, 9:57 by V.M. | DAR ES SALAAM

STARS of most reality television shows spend their time nibbling earwigs, sunbathing and bickering. Those taking part in a Big Brother-style show recently broadcast in Tanzania, however, had a more productive experience.

Fourteen farmers, all women, and 26 urban youngsters were thrown together in a specially constructed village under near 24-hour TV surveillance. The women set daily tasks from their own lives—growing vegetables, looking after cows or fetching water—which the teenagers had to complete in order to survive. The farmers were given farming tips and got to talk to politicians and policy-makers in the "diary room".

In Tanzania, as in many African countries, women produce much of the food that feeds their people, but few own their land. "Women are treated as tractors, but they have to treat their husbands like angels," said one of the contestants.

The Women Food Heroes competition, run by Oxfam and "Maisha Plus", a popular Tanzanian reality TV show, gave the young contestants and its viewers a taste of what women in Tanzania endure to put food on the table. It was a rare opportunity to promote women’s voices and celebrate their contribution, says Mwanahamisi Salimu of Oxfam. It was also a chance to push for them to have access to the same kind of support and rights already available to men farmers, she continues. It showed that small-scale agriculture is a sustainable way of feeding the country.

Broadcast nightly on the biggest national network and promoted on social media, radio and newspapers, the programme reached more than half the population. In the countryside, people gathered in community centres to watch it. Its popularity has forced politicians to talk about farming, a subject about which they are usually fairly quiet.

The winner, Sister Martha Mwasu Waziri from Dodoma, who won $6,300 to buy farming equipment, says she wants to turn her farm—which she built on a scrap of wasteland—into a demonstration farm to show others what they can achieve. "I learned so much here and that is more important to me than winning the competition," says Mary Kamwaka Maumbi, another finalist. "I’ve learned how to do a crop calendar, when to start breeding my pigs and when to inoculate them, how to get my produce to the market and what to do with my money.  I’ll put everything into practice and will show others how to do it.  It will have an impact on my whole village."

Women Connect, Build Peace

Here is a great initiative that brings together women from Arab, Muslim and Western communities around the world to help breaking down cultural and religious stereotypes and misunderstandings.

The Connection Point Dialogue was launched a year ago by Peace X Peace, a global women’s peacebuilding network, to counter the alarming rise in Islamophobia.

It is a forum for open, informal, real-time communication that can humanize distant peoples and expand worldviews.  The first phase was a blog where women from all over the world could write, ask questions, debate and learn about one another. The second phase uses videoconferencing to further the cross-cultural exchanges.

Stephanie Knox Cubbon, one of the program’s facilitators, says:  "Though we come from different places, we share many challenges and issues, and together we can learn strategies to overcome these challenges. The Connection Point Dialogue allows women not only to examine these challenges, but to brainstorm ways to take collective action to make the world more peaceful for everyone....in today's increasingly globalized world, a program like this is needed now more than ever."

Founded in 2002, Peace X Peace (pronounce Peace by Peace) involves 20,000 women in 125 countries.  Their programs promote gender equity and peacebuilding through leadership development, mentorship, public policy and intercultural dialogue. They are great! Read more about them here and look for their posts on my blogroll.