The quiet humanitarian - interview with Andreas Kamm of the Danish Refugee Council

 

I’ve interviewed Andreas Kamm, Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) for Development Post, a new development quarterly magazine.  I relished this assignment as I think DRC does a fantastic job and I deeply respect and admire what they do. 

 Fittingly, they have just been names as the world's best humanitarian NGO in 2013 by Global Journal, an American magazine which has analyzed  and compared 450 international NGOs and ranked the top 100. To see the whole list, click here.

DRC was formed to address the European refugee crisis caused by the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Today it works with refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) in more than 30 countries, including some of the world’s worst conflict zones and most fragile states, such as Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Chechnya and South Sudan. 

It is an unusual organization as it is formed of 30 member organizations and voluntary groups. They are known for using strategic partnerships to achieve better results and for involving and supporting beneficiaries, local communities and local and national authorities in their humanitarian efforts across the world.

Andreas Kamm/courtesy of RDC

 

When I asked one of Kamm’s colleagues, Mary B. Anderson, to describe him, she said that what she admired the most in him, aside from his obvious managerial qualities, was his kindness: that he managed to deliver and do his job while remaining deeply caring.  I really liked that and can see this kindness reflected in the values of the organization.

I was fascinated by Kamm’s description of how they find new ideas.  Most of DRC’s innovations, he said, originate in the field where staff working there notice various needs and opportunities. Kamm explained: “the SMS-based complaints system our team in Somalia has developed is a good example. It used to be a slow and problematic process to insure that the aid promised was in fact delivered on the ground. The SMS feedback system is an innovation that has paved the way for accountability and dialogue with aid beneficiaries, as communities and beneficiaries can use SMS, Tweeter and Facebook to lodge complaints, point out problems with distribution of aid or mistakes made by DRC.”  Ideas like that are collected from DRC staff all over the world by the headquarter in Copenhagen, then redistributed to all of their projects.

I also liked his suggesting that the world should do more than just removing dictators.  There are currently about 40 fragile states, such as Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the refugee and IDP problem will keep growing because this number is increasing. “We see a need to do more to support the development of peace and democracy in countries of conflict.  We shouldn’t expect problems to simply disappear when a dictator falls, for example, because they actually tend to grow and create many years of instability," he told me.

And on the impact of climate change:  "There might be as many as 200 million people displaced in 2050 because of climate change. This is a huge challenge and it will lead to conflicts, and thus create even more refugees.  The rich part of the world should be willing to do much more to get down to the root cause of the problem and put more efforts into building fragile states – but it is not an easy task.”

Read my full interview with Andreas Kamm in the spring issues of Development Post.

International Women’s Day – stop violence against women

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day, celebrated all over the world today (8 March) is: “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.”

Commemorations under way across th world are focusing on ending violence against women, which affects up to 7 in 10 women. It occurs in multiple forms in all countries and settings. It impacts women and their communities, hampering development, and also costing countries billions of dollars annually in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet stresses that discrimination and violence against women and girls have no place in the 21st century. “Enough is enough”, she says in a message of both outrage and hope that discrimination and violence must end.

To celebrate International Women's Day, the UN is launching its first ever song “One Woman” - a rallying cry to inspires listeners to join the drive for women's rights and gender equality. This musical celebration of women worldwide features 25 artists from across the globe. It reminds us that together, we can overcome violence and discrimination: "We Shall Shine!" 

And now a bit of history:

The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March during International Women’s Year 1975. Two years later, in December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.

International Women’s Day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe. Since those early years, International Women’s Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women’s movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women’s conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point to build support for women’s rights and participation in the political and economic arenas.

Increasingly, International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.

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?