The Debating Chamber

Balazs Horvath is poverty reduction advisor for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, United Narions Development Programme(UNDP). Any opinions expressed are his own.

Ours is the world’s only region to see a large decline in carbon emissions since 1990, while experiencing the greatest increase in income inequality. This was largely the result of higher energy prices after the collapse of planned economies and the economic transition in the 1990s.

However, some of the world’s most carbon intensive economies are still in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Poverty and lack of opportunities for youth, minorities, women, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups also remain at alarming levels.

Social, economic and environmental challenges must be addressed as one to set the region on the path to sustainable development.

Effective policies are needed to jump-start transformation toward sustainable development. This could lead to the emergence of more efficient investments, production and consumption patterns, and increased competitiveness.

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Lyndon Haviland is senior strategy fellow at Aspen Global Health and Development. The opinions expressed are her own.

On Saturday April 7th, Joyce Banda became Africa’s second sitting female president. As President of Malawi, Banda succeeds Bingu wa Mutharika who died of cardiac complications last week.

Once hailed as the “Economist in Chief” Mutharika leaves Malawi impoverished with some of the worst maternal health indicators on the continent – and with many donors, the United States and Britain included, having suspended aid.

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In a recent blog post I referred in passing to some of the hype surrounding “crowd-sourcing” projects in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

That’s not to criticise the volunteers – mostly in the United States – who collectively devoted hundreds of hours to charting the needs of quake survivors on online maps, based on SMS texts sent from the disaster zone.

My point was that their gate-crashing of the relief response in Haiti posed a welcome challenge to the traditional humanitarian system – but also generated hyperbole about the effectiveness of crowd-sourcing in actually saving lives.

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Fernando Espada is field research manager of DARA's Humanitarian Response Index. DARA is an independent organisation committed to improving the quality and effectiveness of aid for vulnerable populations suffering from conflict, disasters and climate change. The opinions expressed are DARA's.

The humanitarian sector is used to dealing with crisis situations, which usually implies making the most of what they have in difficult contexts.

And what they have comes -- with few well-known exceptions like Doctors without Borders -- from government donations, mainly Western countries. The same countries that are living one of the worst financial crisis in recent history with no end in sight.

Western governments are in the process of controlling their deficits by downsizing expenses, including humanitarian aid budgets.

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Melissa Cole is the UK’s leading female beer writer. The opinions expressed are her own.

A passionate advocate for all things brewed, she is renowned for her fun and accessible approach to chatting about her subject.

However, between the beer market and her own profession of journalism, she finds the consistent ‘niching’ of female writers as only being qualified to comment on their own gender worrying, but not as frightening as the level of vitriol often aimed at them by Internet trolls and, even worse, their human contemporaries.

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Jemilah Mahmood is senior research fellow at the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP), King's College, London. The opinions expressed are her own.

The humanitarian sector should learn a lesson from the Oscars by using the media and the influence of prominent women in the Diaspora, to play an important role in tackling big humanitarian issues.

This year's Oscars are a perfect example of how women's issues can be championed using film as a media tool to highlight certain sensitive issues and produce tangible, sustainable change.

The 84th Academy Awards honoured as best documentary, the Pakistani film "Saving Face", directed by the husband and wife team, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Daniel Judge, which charts the personal stories of women subjected to horrendous acid attacks in Pakistan.

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Samantha Nutt is founder of War Child Canada/USA and author of the Canadian bestseller, Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid. The opinions expressed are her own.

As the feminist movement stirred the imaginings of school girls in the early 1960s, my Scottish grandmother – then an editor at a Toronto-area daily and a feisty woman predisposed to ruling her own roost as well as any within six city blocks – betrayed her daughter’s dreams.

My mother, a diligent and capable student who would be the first in the family to graduate from high school, was instructed to shelve her post-secondary plans and attend secretarial school.

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Luam Kidane is a graduate student and community organizer studying indigenous governance, transformative education and art as resistance. She is currently based in Toronto. The opinions expressed are her own.

As I sat and deliberated on the theme for this year, “Rural Women: Ending Poverty and Hunger”, the hypocrisy of white supremacy is impossible to ignore.

How can we speak of ending poverty and hunger while refusing to recognize the systemic conditions which make poverty and hunger commonplace for black peoples, indigenous peoples, and peoples of colour?

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Terrine Friday currently teaches schoolchildren in London and is completing her MSc in gender, media and culture at the London School of Economics. She holds a BA in journalism from Concordia University in Montreal and is a former Reuters journalist. The opinions expressed are her own.

The United Nations (U.N.) stated 2012 International Women’s Day theme is “Rural Women: Ending Poverty and Hunger” and its secretary-general is calling on “all partners to recognize the contribution of rural women to our world, and to help them do even more for our shared future.”

In order to highlight awareness of rural women living in poverty, “the U.N. General Assembly adopted resolution 62/136 on 18 December 2007, through which the International Day of Rural Women was established.

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Jane Cocking is Oxfam's humanitarian director. Her comments are in response to Oxfam's report Crises in a New World Order

In September 2009, an earthquake hit Sumatra, Indonesia. Shortly afterwards, the first Oxfam staff arrived. They found thousands of people whose homes had been damaged or destroyed already living in shelters made from tarpaulins pre-positioned by Oxfam, and distributed by local organisations in the disaster’s immediate aftermath. 

Such local action will be the future of humanitarian aid. In a world where multiple ‘mega-disasters’, like the earthquake in Haiti and floods in Pakistan, have almost overwhelmed the international system’s ability to respond, a new model is emerging. It values local NGO and civil society partners more than ever before. Their local knowledge and proximity to events makes them key to providing efficient and effective humanitarian responses, which can meet future demand. It also recognises the vital role of national governments and local authorities.

In much of the world, Oxfam’s aid increasingly flows through local organisations. In countries where conflict and instability make it too difficult for international NGOs to operate, such as Somalia, working with local partners is the only way to reach populations that are in critical need of continued support. The delivery of aid by local groups can also strengthen communities and build local resilience.  

This marks a shift in the delivery of humanitarian aid that Oxfam welcomes wholeheartedly, but it is seismic and brings with it ethical and practical challenges.

The capacity of crisis-affected countries is enormously varied. Some states are increasingly effective in preparing for and responding to emergencies, conscious of their responsibilities to their citizens, and willing to meet them. In Bangladesh, for example, the government provided more than half of the response to 2009’s cyclone Aila, with 37 per cent coming from international NGOs like Oxfam, and nine per cent from the UN.

In almost every region however, there are governments that are not prepared, lacking the capacity or political will – or both – to meet the humanitarian demands of crisis-affected populations. The combination of effective state structures and active NGOs and civil society groups is too often absent in countries vulnerable to disasters.

The challenge for international NGOs is to build capacity among local organisations, offering them the technical and financial support that they need to deliver rapid and high-quality emergency responses; and at the same time encourage states and support states to fulfil their responsibilities to assist their own citizens in emergencies.

Significantly, this is a long-term project, and it does not free humanitarian agencies from having to act fast when disasters strike now.

In December, tropical storm Sendong killed more than 1,000 people in the Philippines. Prompted by typhoon Ketsana two years earlier, the government had been doing a lot to improve its disaster response. Oxfam, in parallel, had seen itself increasingly as a supporter of local NGOs. But when Sendong struck the island of Mindanao, the local government was unprepared, and we found ourselves having to do more than we had planned.

The work of international NGOs remains as vital as ever. In some places they will respond with their own operations for years to come. Yet, their contribution will be increasingly measured by how they complement and contribute to the efforts of partner organisations operating in crisis-affected countries. The greatest challenge will be to do that while responding to the new crises that will not wait for local capacity to be built up.

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Matt Baugh is senior representative for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Somalia. The opinions expressed are his own.

So far, we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement to host a Conference on Somalia in London next month.

After 20 years of sliding backwards, it’s clear – and welcomed by many – that Somalia needs a step-change in effort, both from the international community, but also Somalia’s political leaders.

This is what the London conference is about – bringing together in London senior representatives from over 40 governments, multilateral organisations and Somali authorities to agree how the international community can step-up efforts to help tackle the root causes and effects of the problems in Somalia.

Twenty years of civil war in Somalia have had a dramatic effect on Somalis.

Somalia is the most affected by the drought in the Horn of Africa – the UK estimates that 50,000 to 100,000 people may have died in Somalia, half of them children, since famine was declared almost six months ago.
 
The United Nations (U.N.) estimates that 250,000 Somalis remain at risk and almost 2.5 million Somalis are displaced in the country and across the region.

And if that wasn’t reason enough to act, an entire generation of children – Somalia’s future – has grown up with guns, not school books. Somalia is one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman. And while some Somalis are thriving financially, not enough is being invested in Somalia’s future.

And it’s clear from my meetings with many Somalis, that the people of Somalia want change. So the London Conference is about making the most of the opportunities in front of us:

-       The opportunity to support a more inclusive and representative political process when the transitional period ends in August 2012;

-       The opportunity to help people return to Mogadishu and rebuild their lives in that city

-       The opportunity to take further action against Al Shabaab and piracy

-       The opportunity to reinforce the relative stability in areas of Somalia, such as Somaliland and Puntland and in the south

To realise these opportunities we need more effective international and Somali leadership and a more coordinated approach focused on actions.
The UK aims to act as a catalyst for this new approach.

Together with colleagues in London and in British missions around the world, we continue to consult widely with our Somali and international partners. These consultations will continue over the next weeks.

From these early discussions, there’s growing agreement on a series of measures to support Somalia, including: providing sustainable funding for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM); support for Somali security and justice sectors; agreement to what should succeed the transitional institutions in August 2012; a package of support to Somalia’s regions; a renewed commitment to collectively tackle the terrorist threat emanating from Somalia; breaking the piracy business model; a renewed commitment to tackling Somalia’s humanitarian crisis; and improved international handling of Somalia issues.

So, the momentum towards the conference is building. We’re realistic enough to know these are complex issues that will not be solved overnight. We will need to build on and support the work of the U.N., African Union (AU), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the vital role of civil society in Somalia, and we will require sustained political commitment and concrete action, including from Somalia’s political leaders.

But what’s agreed in London will be an important step.

Please let me know what you think. Whether you agree or disagree with this emerging agenda – your comments are always welcome, either below or on Twitter using #LDNSomalia.

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John Sauer is assistant director, thought leadership, Water for People. The opinions expressed are his own.

It’s often said that the solutions exist today to solve the challenges of the lack of access to water and sanitation.  

After visiting Water For People’s Sanitation as a Business programs in Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi over the past three weeks I think it’s time to partially challenge that message.

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Sharonann Lynch is HIV/AIDS Policy Advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières’ Access Campaign. The opinions expressed are her own.

Just over 10 years ago, doctors and nurses working for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) started to provide treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS in projects in Thailand and South Africa, where before they had simply provided palliative care as people withered away. 

Having seen the dramatic impact treatment has on people’s lives and on communities, we’ve scaled up treatment in our projects, which now span nearly twenty countries, with 170,000 people receiving life-saving HIV drugs. 

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Competing French and Anglo-Saxon models of charitable intervention are under the spotlight in a new book assessing the future of humanitarianism in the 21st century.

“Many Reasons to Intervene: French and British Approaches to Humanitarian Action,” delves into the history of humanitarian work, paying special attention to groups operating within the United States, Great Britain and Switzerland, publisher Columbia University Press said.

The study “reveals existing forms of action that Médecins Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, and others have perfected over time and through rigorous trials,” the publisher said on its site.

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Randolph Kent is director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College, London. The opinions expressed are his own.

Some of the most favoured words in the humanitarian lexicon reflect potential stagnation in creative thinking and mind-closure to the greater threats of the future.  

I would stigmatise "practical" and "academic" as foul words for the future which threaten the efforts of those who recognise that saving lives by mitigating future threats will require new thinking and greater sensitivity to global transformations.

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By Dr Rhona MacDonald, International Health Protection Initiative

According to Marco Baldan, the chief war surgeon of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “One of the first victims of war is the health-care system itself.” Sadly, he is absolutely right.

In 2008, the ICRC launched a study to examine how violence and armed conflict affects health care in 16 countries where it works and the resulting report, Health Care in Danger: Making the case, gives a shocking factual narrative of the widespread nature of the attacks on patients, health-care workers and facilities, and on medical vehicles.

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Could a malnourished eight-year-old really look like a three-year-old? Were the 28 orphans in the primary school clinic really so stunted by years of hunger that they had the bodies of toddlers, as the authorities claimed?

Or had they been assembled here for our benefit, infant imposters wheeled in to add poignancy to North Korea’s appeal for food aid?

Western nutrition experts who have worked in the country for years assured me that such extreme stunting was absolutely the norm.

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Joe Cerrell is director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation European office. The opinions expressed are his own.

Ten years ago, I sat around a conference room at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to weigh-in on a decision about whether to contribute to the then newly-established Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. 

Born out of a group of donors that joined together following the G8 summit in Japan, the Global Fund aimed to aggressively confront a global health crisis by targeting three deadly diseases.  At the time, the Gates Foundation was smaller in size than today, yet there was consensus around the table that the investment was warranted. 

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By Katie Nguyen

LONDON (AlertNet) - Journalist and press officer. It's not the happiest of relationships, often locked as we are in mutual need and mutual mistrust.  

So imagine how startling! outlandish! refreshing! it was to hear the head of World Vision's communications and campaigns team saying he was on the side of the media. Not only did he say that, he also made a point of saying it was not the job of a journalist to be "nice" to aid agencies.

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By Duncan Green, Head of Research for Oxfam GB

Real Aid: Ending Aid Dependency is a smart new aid-report-with-a-difference from ActionAid:

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Randolph Kent is director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King's College in London. The opinions expressed are his own.

How come khat can be delivered anywhere in Somalia virtually at anytime?

Isn’t it amazing that you can you get chilled Coca-Cola in almost every town in the country? Why is the mobile telephone system so effective in Somalia though there are no regulatory authorities?

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A post from a blog by Duncan Green, Head of Research for Oxfam GB and author of 'From Poverty to Power'. The blog is a personal reflection by the author. It is intended to provoke debate and conversations about development, not as a comprehensive statement of Oxfam's agreed policies.

Back in March there was a fascinating exchange between Ros Eyben and Claire Melamed on the role of measurement in development work (my commentary on that debate here). Now one of Oxfam’s brightest bean counters (aka ‘Programme Effectiveness Adviser’), Karl Hughes, explains where Oxfam has got to on this:

Eric Roetman, in a recent 3ie working paper, A can of worms? Implications of rigorous impact evaluations for development agencies, tells a provocative tale of the experiences of International Child Support (ICS) in Kenya carrying out randomised control trials (RCTs) in partnership with several  world-renowned quantitative impact evaluation specialists.  ICS saw itself evolve into a “development lab”, where the bulk of its staff became devoted to supporting the organisation’s research, as opposed to development, operations.  Given ICS’s desire to revert back to its roots, it eventually opted to get out of the RCT business. 

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George de Gooijer is an expert in (organisational) learning. Marianne Kjellen works with the United Nations Development Programme Water Governance Facility at Stockholm International Water Institute. Arno Rosemarin is Senior Research Fellow of the EcoSanRes Programme at Stockholm Environment Institute. The opinions expressed are their own.

Practical examples from around the world on how people are shifting the sanitation paradigm were the focus of the seminar “Knowledge and Capacity Development in Water, Sanitation and Environmental Management” at the 2011 World Water Week in Stockholm.

Organized by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Cap-Net, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Water Governance Facility at Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the presentations formed the basis for a lively discussion on the different kinds of information and knowledge required to effect change, and how that information and knowledge can be packaged.

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Marine Robert is co-founder of Women’UP and a delegate at the 2011 One Young World Summit in Zurich. The opinions expressed are her own.

Women'UP is a young and very active association that aims to create bonds between young female students and existing professional female networks.

After attending the inaugural One Young World summit last year as delegates, Adeline Braescu-Kerlan, Emmanuelle Duez, Idrisse Traore-Celini and I (Marine Robert), were motivated to start Women’UP.

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One Young World ambassador Elliott Verreault is founder and CEO of It’sOneHumanity. The opinions expressed are his own.

Citizens of the world are increasingly demanding more from their leaders, organisations and businesses, and humanitarian organisations are no exception. 

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This blog is part of an AlertNet special multimedia report on statelessness

Albert Einstein was one. So was Nobel prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And so are up to 15 million others worldwide – people living without nationality, without passports, without rights.

Einstein and Solzenitsyn were only stateless for a time. Millions of less famous people who on paper don’t exist can look forward to entire lives barred from education, healthcare, credit, overseas travel and formal employment.

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By Tim Large, AlertNet Editor

Help us shine a light on the global aid industry

From the loose change you drop in the charity collector’s bucket to the tax revenues that flow as official development assistance, global aid is multi-billion dollar business – worth almost $150 billion in 2010, all told.

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Laura Crowley is media and communications officer at WaterAid. The opinions expressed are her own.

If efforts to eradicate global poverty are to succeed, the needs of the poorest and most excluded people must be considered at every level of planning and development, WaterAid said at Stockholm World Water Week on Sunday.

The international charity led a seminar called "Closing the Gap: Building on success in Equity and Inclusion", together with UNICEF and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

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Daniel Yeo is senior policy analyst at WaterAid. The opinions expressed are his own.

The world is in the midst of a water crisis. The typical story is that fresh water supplies are running out and that we are bleeding the earth dry.

Water, one of the fundamentals for all life, is getting scarcer so we need to value it more and manage the fresh water resources to ensure that they don’t run out. But the real story goes deeper than that.
 
There is solid evidence behind concerns over scarcity. The 2030 Water Resources Group suggests the world will face a 40 percent global shortfall between forecast demand and available supply by 2030, and that by then more than a third of the global population will be living in river basins coping with significant water stress.

The negative effects of this water stress can be felt across the world’s ecosystems as rivers silt up, habitats are destroyed and people struggle to farm and grow crops.

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This is an op-ed by Ross Mountain, director general of DARA, an organisation that focuses on improving the quality and effectiveness of aid

We all know that women and girls living in areas of armed conflict and disaster suffer the worst consequences of crises due to their heightened vulnerability. We also know dozens of initiatives, conferences, reports, and guidelines have been elaborated with the aim of mainstreaming gender-sensitive approaches in responses to humanitarian crises.  Why then does our field research in crises such as Haiti offer such a bleak perspective on gender as a priority for all humanitarian actors?

This year we visited 9 crises in the compilation of the 2011 Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) and found that too often the specific needs of women and girls were being inadequately taken into account by humanitarian agencies both in the immediate response and in long term-recovery efforts, despite acceptance of the principle that aid should be non-discriminatory and based on needs.

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