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from The Human Impact:
India’s growing global humanitarian role: Is it enough?
India is increasingly seen as an important player when it comes to supporting nations hit by disasters or conflict, as well as for development, but given its size and influence, is it really doing enough to help resolve global crises?
Many, like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), think not, especially when it comes to addressing humanitarian issues at an international level.
"I am of the very strong opinion that India - which has an enormous influence due to its population, economic growth and history - will have to play a more assertive role in the world," Yves Daccord, ICRC director general, told AlertNet recently.
Daccord, who was in India earlier this month to boost relations with New Delhi and seek ways to engage the government more in hot spots such as Afghanistan and Myanmar, said it was imperative that India be much more active.
from The Human Impact:
IF campaign to end hunger seems a bit iffy
By Maria Caspani
Techno music and revolving images of hungry babies were among the most disheartening, not to say disturbing aspects of the event that kicked off the 'Enough Food for Everyone IF' campaign at London's Somerset House this week.
The catchphrase – ‘There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet 2 million children die from malnutrition every year' – was repeated so many times during the hour-long event on Wednesday evening that, by the end of it, I felt like the words had lost their meaning.
from The Human Impact:
Looking ahead to 2013: what stories will make the headlines
Journalists working for Thomson Reuters Foundation’s AlertNet and TrustLaw news services cover humanitarian issues, climate change, women’s rights and corruption around the world. We asked the team to highlight some of the stories on their radar in 2013.
Editor-in-Chief Tim Large kicked off with his top stories:
1/ Countries in transition: My eye is on South Sudan as violence threatens to erupt along its disputed northern border; Myanmar as foreign money flows in; Arab Spring nations as they finish new constitutions; Afghanistan as it braces for NATO troop withdrawals; Pakistan as aid diminishes and cracks widen between military and judiciary… And of course Syria, where it’s hard to imagine the humanitarian situation getting any worse. Sadly it can.
from The Human Impact:
Cash aid transfers should be standardised – report
Aid agencies and donors should develop a “tool box” for the use and distribution of cash transfers to improve effective aid delivery, according to a new report from the Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP).
Cash and voucher programmes are increasingly being used in regions where security problems interfere with the delivery of such traditional forms of aid as food.
from The Human Impact:
Insecurity hinders aid distribution in northern Mali
As Mali tries to restore order after the recent coup, a key challenge for the interim civilian government will be getting aid to people as the country verges on a humanitarian disaster.
Dioncounda Traore took over as Mali's interim president on Thursday after leaders of a March 22 coup agreed to return power to civilians. Nearly 80 percent of Malian territory comprising the northern regions of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal is under the control of a mix of Tuareg-led rebels, who have declared an independent state in the north, and armed Islamic groups.
from Global Investing:
BRICS: future aid superpowers?
Britain's aid programme for India hit the headlines this year, when New Delhi, much to the fury of the Daily Mail, described Britain's £200 million annual aid to it as peanuts. Whether it makes sense to send money to a fast-growing emerging power that spends billions of dollars on arms is up for debate but few know that India has been boosting its own aid programme for other poor nations. A report released today by NGO Global Health Strategies Initiatives (GHSi) finds that India's foreign assistance grew 10.8 percent annually between 2005 and 2010.
The actual sums flowing from India are, to use its own phrase, peanuts. The country provided $680 million in 2010. Compare that to the $3.2 billion annual contribution even from crisis-hit Italy. The difference is that Indian donations have risen from $443 million in 2005, while Italy's have fallen 10 percent in this period, GHSi found. Indian aid has grown in fact at a rate 10 times that of the United States. Add to that Indian pharma companies' contribution -- the source of 60- 80 percent of the vaccines procured by United Nations agencies.
from The Human Impact:
Introducing ‘The Human Impact’
Two Congolese boys comfort each other in a hospital in Goma, Feb. 10, 2009. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly
Welcome to "The Human Impact", a new blog by journalists of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
from Africa News blog:
Is Africa drought a chance to enact new UK policy?
New ways of managing aid are being debated in Britain as global concerns mount over a hunger crisis devastating the drought-affected Horn of Africa.
Randolph Kent, director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King's College in London, says the crisis provides a perfect opportunity for the British government to test its recent promise to reform how it responds to humanitarian emergencies.
from Africa News blog:
Update on the refugee camp that now lives in the sky
(Updates reaction from ECHO in paragraph 9)
Screen grab of the introduction to the online game "The City That Shouldn't Exist"
A few months ago I wrote a story about a controversial online game posted on Facebook called the “The City That Shouldn’t Exist” that was consequently pulled off the Web days after its launch amid claims it objectified refugees and lacked sensitivity.
from The Great Debate UK:
Aid: In favour of zero-tolerance
By Laurance Copeland
After one year, the progress report on the Coalition reads “Moving in the right direction, but with a lot more to do”.
Nonetheless, it is a prisoner of its commitment at the outset to leave two departmental budgets untouched: the NHS and international aid. It is not simply the amounts of money involved (colossal in the case of the NHS, relatively small for aid). It is also the signal it sends that there is such a status as sacrosanct, which immediately begs the question from policemen, firemen, teachers, the legal system, the armed forces: why isn’t our budget sacrosanct too?
