Disasters – Page 8 – Open Minds!

Sri Lanka: What killer waves united, killer humans divided again…

Today is the third anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, which left a trail of destruction in many countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Today we remember those who perished and salute those who survived and endured enormous hardships.

We thank everyone everywhere who donated to help, and curse those who plundered or squandered the outcome of that generosity.

As I wrote in my only published verse, When the Waves Came, written on 28 December 2004 – when the disaster’s full impact was dawning on the world:

When the waves came
Roaring and moving mightily,
Unleashing the power of
A million bombs exploding at once,
They didn’t care
And just didn’t discern
Who or what was in their way.

My basic premise was that the killer waves had been a brutal ‘equaliser’ of all men and women. It no longer mattered on which side of law, morality, economics or social class they stood. This was particularly apt for Sri Lanka, a land divided for a quarter of a century by an armed separatist struggle that has hardened fundamentalist positions at both Sinhalese and Tamil ends of our ethnic spectrum. Towards the end of the verse, I noted:

As we in the aftermath tiptoe
Through endless depressing scenes
Of death and utter devastation
Can we tell the difference
Between Sinhala and Tamil,
Or Muslim and Burgher,
Or soldier and rebel
Or policeman and prisoner
Or rich and poor?

For a few days after the tsunami, there was a flicker of hope that the lashing from the seas might finally convince everyone of the complete futility of war. Political cartoonists in Sri Lankan newspapers were among the first to make this point. One cartoon, appearing two days after the disaster, showed a government soldier and Tiger rebel swimming together in the currents, struggling to save their lives. (Indeed, there were some reports of them helping each other in the hour of need.)

The cartoonists and other media commentators asked a common question: what happened to the land, and the dividing border that both sides had fought so hard and long for?

Alas, what Nature proposed we humans (Sri Lankans) disposed. While the tsunami helped usher in a negotiated settlement to the long-drawn armed struggle in Aceh, Indonesia, it only created a temporary lull in the Sri Lankan conflict. As soon as both sides recovered from Nature’s blow, they were back at each others’ throats again. (This contrast has been studied by various groups – see, for example, the summary of a Worldwatch Institute study Beyond Disasters: Creating Opportunities for Peace).

Looking back three years later, all I can say is that the land killer waves temporarily and forcibly united, killer human beings have managed to divide again for petty political, communal and personal gains.

This boy, Thillainayagam Theeban, epitomizes that bigger tragedy. He survived the tsunami — but not the escalation of Sri Lanka’s ethnically driven civil war, which consumed his life in March 2007.

Theeban was one of eight surviving children – from India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand – whose remaining families we tracked and filmed for a year in Children of Tsunami media project, a citizens’ media response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Theeban was murdered by unidentified gunmen who stormed into his ‘temporary’ tsunami shelter on 3 March 2007. The death was linked to political violence that has engulfed Sri Lanka since 2006.

When the shocking news reached us three days later, our Sri Lankan camera team at Video Image and we at TVE Asia Pacific just couldn’t believe it. We were all in tears, and some of us were also angry. Theeban, who survived the killer waves 26 months earlier (but lost his mom and kid brother in the disaster) suffered many indignities in displacement. And now, he is gone.

We still don’t know who killed Theeban. He was abducted by an armed group sometime in 2006, from whom he escaped in early 2007. It is believed that Theeban was killed as a punishment for running away — and as a warning to all others.

He was 16 years at the time of his death. It is unlikely that his killers would ever face justice.

As I wrote in my personal tribute to Theeban in March 2007, published by UCLA’s Asia Media and MediaHelpingMedia, UK: “The disaster’s Sri Lankan death toll (close to 40,000 dead or missing) shocked the world when it happened within a few hours or days. Yet, at least twice as many people -– most of them unarmed and uninvolved civilians — have been killed in over a quarter century of fighting. That doesn’t always grab headlines.

“Thillainayagam Theeban has become another statistic in a ‘low-intensity conflict’ (as some researchers call it). And while this war lasts, it will continue to consume thousands of other young lives — a grim roll call of Sri Lanka’s Lost Generation.”

The third anniversary of the tsunami is a reminder – if any were needed – that man’s inhumanity to man is often worse than Nature’s fury.

March 2007 blog post: Remembering Theeban

April 2007 blog post: More memories of Theeban

Children of Tsunami: Documenting Asia’s Longest Year

When the Waves Came – the story behind the verse

I am a word-smith. Trained as a journalist and writer, I play with words (and occasionally make an honest living of it ) — but almost all of my published output over more than 20 years has been in prose. Not yet a creative writer (maybe someday!), I write mostly fact-based analysis or opinions.

One rare exception was when the Asian Tsunami struck three years ago in the last week of 2004. Extraordinary situations prompt extraordinary responses – and I went on to write the only verse I have so far published: When the waves came.

I was recovering from chicken pox when the mega-disaster that struck on 26 December 2004. The killer waves spared the Colombo city on the western part of coastal Sri Lanka where I live – and we were extremely lucky. But with close to 40,000 persons dead or missing (which was 1 in 500 of us), it was not a time to heave sighs of relief. We all knew people who were directly affected in one way or another: losing loved ones, suffering property damage, or seeing their jobs go up in the waves.

In the days following the disaster, the entire country was a giant funeral house. For a short while, at least, our utterly divided nation of Lanka was united — first in horror and then in grief.

I first heard about the disaster on local television – whose newscasters were struggling to make sense of what was happening. Tsunamis were not known in the Indian Ocean until then, and most people had not even heard of the term. Broadcast journalists had to improve with terms like ‘ferocious wave action’, ‘seas flooding land’ and ‘seas spilling over to coastal areas’, etc.

As the international news media started reporting the extent of devastation from all over South Asia and Southeast Asia, we realised that Sri Lanka was not alone – even though it had been battered very badly.

By Monday 27 December, the scale of the disaster was clearer, and the Sri Lankan death toll was already past 25,000 -– and counting. Search and rescue efforts were now underway, and relief agencies were continually updating their assessments of damage. The grim statistics kept rising by the hour.

The global family first watched in shock — and then started to react. Around the world, hundreds of caring people were dropping everything they had lined up for their Seasonal holidays and rushing to volunteer in Sri Lanka and other disaster hit countries. Inspired by the saturation media coverage, especially on television, caring women and men in far away corners of our planet were donating generously for disaster relief support. Children were breaking open their tills in which they’d carefully saved small change for months or years. Church congregations had special collections. Performing artistes were getting ready to have Tsunami aid concerts. Spurred and partly embarrassed by these citizen actions, governments belatedly started pledging massive volumes of aid. The worldwide response to Asia’s tragedy was deeply moving (the bickering and swindling came later).

My office (TVE Asia Pacific) was closed that week for Seasonal holidays, but I decided to go in and follow the disaster’s news coverage online (I didn’t have ADSL at home then.) Websites were often giving better coverage than TV channels, and the bloggers were rising to the challenge from many locations in impacted Asia.

I spent most of December 27 and 28 in my office. Weakened as I was by chicken pox, I didn’t rush out to help with relief efforts. I knew my limits. Instead, I was emailing regular updates to our friends and partners from many parts of the world who were concerned and anxious about our safety and well-being. Not being a blogger myself then, I was doing it on a one-to-one basis.

I slowly came to terms with a deep anguish that had built up since I first heard the dreadful news. I was badly shaken and numbed by the unfolding human tragedy and humanitarian crisis all around myself. No, I didn’t lose a loved one, or suffer personal property damage, but it was impossible not to be moved by the carnage and destruction all around. And at a scale that was unprecedented in my lifetime.

For hours on 28 December 2004, I watched the ‘doom and gloom’ television news coverage and monitored news updates online. At that stage, with little news yet emerging from Aceh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka had reported the highest death toll and the greatest damage. It was the biggest disaster in the island’s living memory.

When I finally gathered enough sense and wits, I wrote a verse ‘When the waves came’ – it was one way of coming to terms with the calamity. Its basic premise was that the killer waves had been a brutal ‘equaliser’ of all men and women. It no longer mattered on which side of law, morality, economics or social class they stood.

To drive home the point, I sprinkled the words of William Makepeace Thackeray throughout the verse:
“Good or bad, guilty or innocent —
they are all equal now.”

The verse was not meant for publication, and was only privately circulated for a few days. One friend who received it, Bircan Unver in New York, wanted to publish it on her Light Millennium website. After some persuasion, I agreed.

I wrote this verse with tears running down both my cheeks. I kept on typing, without wiping my face, as words poured out from my grief-stricken mind. This was the least I could do, as my tribute to everyone who perished or suffered by nature’s incredible fury.

Writing this verse was cathartic for me. Three years after it happened, I can now disclose what followed my writing of this verse: I closed the laptop, sat down on the floor, and completely broke down.

I have no idea for how long I cried: it must have been 20 or 30 minutes. There was no one in the office that day so I didn’t have to subdue myself. Of course, my tears were nowhere near as abundant as those who lost their loved ones to the tsunami. But they were no less sincere.

Looking back, I suspect that during those hours of sorrowful solitude, Children of Tsunami was conceived.

But that’s another story.

Photos courtesy TVE Asia Pacific

Communicating Disasters: Lessons From Titanic to Asian Tsunami by Arthur C Clarke

What do the RMS Titanic, which sank on her maiden voyage in April 1912, and the Asian Tsunami of December 2004 have in common?

Both were maritime disasters and, when they happened, both shook the world as few others did before or since.

And now, Sir Arthur C Clarke has linked the two tragedies that happened 92 years apart: he says they both illustrate how communications failures can compound the impact of a disaster.

Writing a foreword to Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book (co-edited by myself and Frederick Noronha, and just released), the inventor of the communications satellite revisits the two disasters that left deep impressions in his mind.

Arthur C Clarke was born five years after the sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ RMS Titanic while on her maiden voyage. His home town Minehead, in Somerset, was not more than a couple of hundred kilometres from Southampton, from where the Titanic set off, he says, adding: “All my life, I have been intrigued by the Titanic disaster.”

He is particularly interested in what happened to the Titanic’s distress call after she hit the iceberg at 11.40 pm on the night of 14 April 1912. “A series of unfortunate factors compounded the disaster. The most ironic among them was that the wireless operator on the Californian, located closest to the Titanic, had shut down for the day just 30 minutes before the first distress call was sent out. Had the Californian been listening, it could have responded hours before the Carpathia, the eventual rescue vessel.”

The Titanic disaster prompted the shipping community to introduce a 24-hour radio watch on all ships at sea. It also consolidated the role of maritime radio in distress signalling and rescue operations.

But, as fate would have it, the absence of a timely warning once again characterised the second disaster to touch Sir Arthur’s life. Arriving 10 days after his 87th birthday, the Asian Tsunami of December 2004 left a massive trail of destruction in his adopted country Sri Lanka and several other countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

He reflects:
“Astonishingly, a full century after the invention of radio, the Tsunami arrived without any public warning. The disaster’s death toll could have been drastically reduced if its occurrence — already known to scientists — was disseminated quickly and effectively to millions of coastal dwellers living on its predictable path. Even a half hour’s notice would have allowed people to run away from the coast, and in many affected locations there was just enough time to get to safety. But alas, that didn’t happen — and tens of thousands perished.

“It was appalling that our sophisticated local and global communications systems completely failed us that fateful day. The communications satellites that I invented, and the global Internet that one of my stories inspired, could have spread the warning, with the hundreds of radio and television channels across coastal Asia amplifying it.

“It is now known that the failures were human, not technological. To ensure better results next time, we need to achieve an optimum mix of technology, management systems and community preparedness — not just for tsunamis, but for many other hazards that we live with. We have to remember that delivering credible early warnings to those who are most at risk is both an art and a science.”

In his foreword, Sir Arthur sees the Asian Tsunami as a turning point for citizen journalism – ordinary people armed with digital tools bearing witness to unfolding events and then sharing it with others. He writes: “On 26 December 2004, many holiday-makers on affected beaches were armed with video cameras, and it was their ‘amateur’ images that later showed us the full force and fury of the unfolding disaster. Because it was distributed over a large area and occurred during peak holiday season, the Asian Tsunami was probably the most widely filmed disaster in history.”

This was not the first disaster that ‘citizen journalists’ covered, says Sir Arthur, but it marked a turning point in the growing phenomenon enabled by information and communications technologies (ICTs). “The post-Tsunami coverage showed that the professional and amateur divide had now blurred; there is a clear (and complementary) role that each can play.”

ICTs can do much in good times and bad, but as Sir Arthur recalls, the Tsunami also reminded us how disasters can make our information society vulnerable. “When electricity and telephone services — both fixed and mobile – went down in the worst affected areas, a century old technology came to the rescue: amateur radio enthusiasts restored the first communication links with the outside world, sometimes using the Morse Code to economise the power of car batteries.”

He quotes the President of the Radio Society of Sri Lanka as saying, “When all else is dead, short wave is alive.”

Sir Arthur’s perceptive foreword is a sobering counterpoint to the post-tsunami frenzy that we witnessed in the Indian Ocean rim countries. Yes, lacking a tsunami warning system – such as the one Pacific Ocean countries have – is a big gap that needed to be filled. But governments and development donors have rushed into setting up high tech, high cost early warning systems without due consideration for social, cultural and political realities of the intended beneficiary countries.

As we saw with some subsequent undersea quakes – such as the one off the resort town of Pangandaran, Java, on 17 July 2006, and the one off off Bengkulu, Sumatra, on 12 September 2007 – we have yet to achieve the right mix of technology, management systems and community preparedness in most coastal countries in Asia.

Governments, donors and UN agencies would do well do heed the wise words of Sir Arthur Clarke, who concludes his Foreword with these words:

“Communicating disasters — before, during and after they happen — is fraught with many challenges. Today’s ICT tools enable us to be smart and strategic in gathering and disseminating information. But there is no silver bullet that can fix everything. We must never forget how even high tech (and high cost) solutions can fail at critical moments. We can, however, contain these risks by addressing the cultural, sociological and human dimensions — aspects that this book explores in some depth and detail, from the perspective of both media professionals and disaster managers.

“The lessons of history are clear: if we are not careful, we can easily lull ourselves into the same kind of false confidence that doomed the Titanic.”

Read the full text of “Communicating Disasters: A Century of Lessons”, By Sir Arthur C Clarke
communicating-disasters-a-century-of-lessons-by-arthur-c-clarke.pdf

Or download foreword as contained in the printed book

After the Tsunami: Going the Long Last Mile in Sri Lanka

This is J A Malani. She’s an ordinary Sri Lankan woman living in Hambantota, on the island’s southern coast. Several hundred people in her town perished when the Indian Ocean Tsunami arrived on 26 December 2004 without any public warning. When the waves finally stopped their hammering, close to 40,000 people were dead or missing in the biggest disaster the island nation experienced.

Survivor Malani and her neighbours – lucky to be alive – are naturally apprehensive about when the next disaster might arrive, in what form and from where.

And this time around, too, they worry whether there would be anyone to warn them about it.

There just might be. Since the big tsunami three years ago, several Sri Lankan telecom operators, civil society organisations, IT companies and researchers have come together to test out a community-based hazard warning system — one that would prevent the repetition of the nasty surprise Malani’s community experienced not too long ago.

‘Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Project’ (HazInfo project for short) was an action research project by LIRNEasia to find out how communication technology and training can be used to safeguard grassroots communities from disasters. It involved Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest development organisation, and several other partners, and was supported by International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada.

The project studied which information and communications technologies (ICTs) and community mobilisation methods could work effectively in disseminating information on hazards faced by coastal communities. The exercise was not confined to tsunamis alone; other rapid onset disasters such as cyclones and floods were also covered.

In its first phase, the project worked in 32 chosen coastal villages (all impacted by the tsunami) and mobilised local communities from muslim, Sinhala and Tamil backgrounds. Malini’s community was among those participating in this field testing of an approach that Sarvodaya hopes to roll out progressively to all 15,000 villages they work in.

That initial engagement by itself was reassuring to Malani. “This has helped us to get rid of fear and hesitation in our minds,” she said in a television interview recorded some weeks ago. “Now we know what we should do when a disaster strikes.”

That peace of mind is priceless to any human being, and that knowledge is liberating – particularly to one who has survived a major disaster that came from nowhere.

Malani is one of several beneficiaries featured in a 12-minute film TVE Asia Pacific recently produced. Several other participants from different coastal locations expressed similar views — and hopes that next time around, they will not be taken unawares.

The Long Last Mile can be viewed on YouTube in two parts:

The Long Last Mile, part 1 of 2:

The Long Last Mile, part 2 of 2:

LIRNEasia researchers analysed how each ICT tool or combination was integrated into communities to deliver timely warnings to those designated as first responders. The factors needed for efficient functioning of the hazard information hub were also studied. Read detailed findings and analysis here.

The HazInfo project grew out of a participatory concept paper that LIRNEasia developed in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. It noted that a national early warning system was a ‘pure public good’, and the responsibility of its supply would normally fall on the government. However, the paper acknowledged that, due to lack of capacity, “it is unlikely that the last mile of such a system will be provided by the local government or private firms operating in the marketplace”.

I have written a whole chapter on this project, titled Bridging the Long Last Mile, in Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book (co-edited by Nalaka Gunawardene and Frederick Noronha). Read that chapter here:

bridging-the-long-last-mile-final-text-formated.pdf

Tsunami Stories: How a film saved lives in Kosgoda, southern Sri Lanka

With the third anniversary of the Asian Tsunami drawing close, we are reliving memories of the mega-disaster that hit many parts of coastal Asia on 26 December 2004.

On 10 October 2007, I wrote the story of Tilly Smith, the 11-year-old English school girl whose geography knowledge helped save hundreds of lives on the Maikhao Beach in Thailand that day.

Here’s another story, which was related by Thyagee de Zoysa, a young Sri Lankan woman who until recently was working as Project Officer of CEE Sri Lanka, a non-profit educational charity that I am associated with.

In January 2007, Thyagee spoke at the European launch of TVE Asia Pacific’s latest environmental television series, The Greenbelt Reports</em>, held in Athens, Greece. There she made a passionate appeal for education and awareness to be put into action.

She drew from her personal experience, having survived the Indian Ocean Tsunami in her native village of Kosgoda in southern Sri Lanka. These are her exact words:

“I, myself, am particularly willing to participate in this project, as I was at my home on the 26th of December 2004, with my parents, until we heard a young man crying ‘Run to the temple, run to the hill, the sea is coming’. We ran — and it saved our lives.

“The young man told me later that he knew that the sea was going to come with full power because of a film that he had seen. A film, which was about a meteorite impact with earth and how a tsunami happens after that. He knew that, if there comes a day when the sea goes back towards the horizon, it then comes back again to take your life.

“It does not matter in what way you create awareness on the environment, be it books, films or the Internet. What matters is that you do it and make somebody understand the possible actions to take up. Believe me, I am grateful to this young man for saving my life and that of my family…”

Neither Thyagee nor the young life-saver could recall the name of the film, but it doesn’t matter. The film left a bit of knowledge in the young man’s mind which surfaced instantly just when it was needed. That helped save lives.

Alas, there were very few Sri Lankans – young or old – who had any idea about tsunamis prior to that fateful Boxing Day 2004.

Writing a foreword to Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book (co-edited by Nalaka Gunawardene and Frederick Noronha), Sir Arthur C Clarke refers to another rare exception: a retired sailor living in the coastal village of Galbokka recognised the tell-tale signs of the on-coming tsunami and rushed the entire community to safety.

The challenge we still face is to build everybody’s awareness on multiple hazards and what to do when hazards turn into disasters.

Communicating Disasters in digitally empowered Asia: A tale of two books

I have just spent a hectic week in Kuala Lumpur, and am just coming up for fresh air. That explains why this blog was silent for a few days.

I was at the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) held in the Malaysian capital from 11 to 13 December 2007. With several related events preceding the main conference, my week was completely full.

GK3 was a global platform for all those engaged in using ICTs (information and communication technologies) for meeting the real world’s needs and solving its problems — to reduce poverty, increase incomes, create safer communities, create sustainable societies and support youth enterprise, etc. (Read my impressions of GK3 in this blog post.)

The week’s assorted events saw two separate video films produced by TVE Asia Pacific being screened as integral components of two sessions. These were The Long Last Mile (on community-based warning of rapid onset disasters) and Teleuse@BOP (on telephone use patterns among low income groups in five emerging Asian economies).

That wasn’t surprising because we produce and distribute films that capture Asia’s quest for improving lives through sustainable development. But unusually for myself, I also had two books coming out during the week — one that I had edited, and another that carried a chapter I had written.

The first was Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book, which I co-edited with Indian journalist Frederick Noronha. It was the culmination of a year-long process that began with an Asian brainstorming meeting on Communicating Disasters that TVEAP convened in December 2006 in Bangkok. That meeting, attended by three dozen participants drawn from media and disaster management sectors, identified the need for a handbook that can strengthen cooperation of these two communities before, during and after disasters.

The book, comprising 19 chapters contributed by 21 authors, has a foreword written by Sir Arthur C Clarke, inventor of the communication satellite. Pulling together these contributions from the specialist authored scattered across the globe was no easy task for co-editor Fred and myself.

The book’s blurb reads as follows:

“Where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention,” said Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres who later became the Foreign Minister of France. Disaster managers and relief agencies acknowledge the mass media’s key role at times of distress. Yet, the relationship between media practitioners and those managing disasters can often be stressful, difficult and fraught with misunderstandings. Communicating about disasters sometimes ends up as communication disasters.

How can these mishaps be minimised, so that the power of conventional and new media can be harnessed to create more disaster resilient communities? What value addition can the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) bring in? In this book, media and development professionals from across the Asia Pacific share their views based on decades of experience in covering or managing a variety of disasters – cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, floods, landslides and tsunamis.

This book is aimed at journalists, disaster managers and civil society groups who want to use information and communication to create safer societies and communities.

The other book that came out in KL was Digital Review of Asia Pacific, 2007-2008 edition. It was launched during a workshop on Emerging Knowledge Opportunities (The Progress of ICT in Asia-Pacific and Other Parts of the World) on 12 December 2007.

The completely updated edition of the Digital Review of Asia Pacific contains authoritative reports on how 31 economies are using ICT in business, government and civil society written by senior authors who live and work in the region.

I have written the Sri Lanka chapter for the book, continuing a tradition I started back in 2003 with the first edition of the book. I was only sorry that I missed the session during GK3 where the book was launched — because I was moderating another session exactly at the same time in another room. But I was glad to join at least part of the post-launch reception and to meet with some fellow authors who were attending GK3.

Both books are multi-author books, and both have been in the making for a year or longer. It was quite a challenge to get 20 other contributors to come up with their chapters for Communicating Disasters. They were genuinely interested and supportive, but everyone being so busy, it took time and effort to pull together all the strands.

I was not the only common author in these books. My colleague and one-time co-author Chanuka Wattegama (now with LIRNEasia) has written two distinctive chapters on ICTs and disaster communication for the two books.

Many years ago, my friend (now international expert on terrorism and widely published academic author) Rohan Gunaratna told me that writing a book was like waging a small war. I don’t normally use military metaphors, because I deplore all things military, but I can’t resist extending Rohan’s analogy to say that compiling a multi-author book is a bit like waging a mini-war with a coalition of the willing!

New media anarchy is good for you!

“You people are too well mannered! I’ve never been to a conference where people are so properly dressed and so polite to each other!”

With these words, Neha Viswanathan made sure she had everyone’s attention. But it was not just a gimmick — she was contrasting the relatively more orderly, organised world of mainstream media (MSM) with the decidedly more anarchic world of new media — including blogs, wikis, YouTube and Second Life.

Neha, South Asia Editor of Global Voices, was speaking on a panel on ‘new media’ during the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ in Geneva this week (22 – 26 Oct 2007).

The panel topic itself showed the rapid change taking place in the humanitarian sector. As the panel premise said: “Within minutes of a disaster or conflict, the first images are seen on YouTube rather than CNN, and probably to a larger audience. YouTube, Flickr and blogging are bringing wars, disasters and their humanitarian consequences to the attention of the public, government and aid agencies more efficiently than ever. It’s now possible to keep watch on a Darfur village through satellite imagery, or take a virtual tour of a refugee camp.”

The panel was to discuss whether citizen journalism and new collaborative/ networking technologies are improving humanitarian response, and review how the humanitarian community is faring in this new environment.

My own views on this are found in another blog post: New media tsunami hits humanitarian sector – rescue operations now on!

Neha’s take was slightly different. She started reminding everyone that the new media activists were unruly and not always polite. The blogosphere is very much a contested and contentious space where arguments rage on. Not everything is moderate, balanced or ‘evidence-based’ (to use a new favourite phrase of the humanitarian community).

But in times of crisis or emergency – whether disasters or war – new media activists are increasingly the first responders. The anarchic nature actually provides them with an advantage: they are distributed, self-organising and motivated. There is no central newsroom or coordination point telling them what to do. In typical Nike style, they just do it.

As an example, she described World Wide Help, whose introduction reads: “Using the web to point help in the direction where it’s most needed”.

This blog was started by several founders and members of the SEA EAT (South East Asian Earthquake And Tsunami) blog, wiki and database, all of which gained worldwide attention at the time of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004. The group, now calling themselves The World Wide Help Group, has since remobilised to aid in other relief efforts.

Read the whole story of the SEA EAT Blog: A Candle in My Window by Peter Griffin, one of its co-founders

As Sir Arthur C Clarke has also noted, the 2004 tsunami marked a turning point in how citizen journalists and other new media activists respond to emergencies. Since then, the power of new media has been unleashed on many public interest issues and humanitarian causes. As an example, Neha cited the online campaign against street sexual harassment in India.

In Neha’s view, new media can collate authentic testimonials of those directly affected by disasters or other crises, and keep the public attention (and thereby, political interest) on emergencies beyond the first few days.

Her advice to humanitarian aid agencies: keep looking at the new media, especially blogs, to find out what people at ground zero are saying about relief and recovery work.

“Bloggers are not objective – they talk openly, and express themselves freely,” she told the largely prim and proper Geneva audience, where some participants had referred to the meeting as ‘this august gathering’!

Finally, in situations where MSM (the formerly big media!) are shut down, restrained or intimidated into not carrying out their watchdog role, it’s the new media that fills the voice. Neha described the pro-democracy struggles in Nepal in 2005 – 2006 as an example where the people power struggles continued to be reported and commented on after the autocratic king clamped down on all print and broadcast media.

Read my August 2007 blog post: The Road from Citizen Kane to Citizen Journalist

‘Embedded’ or aloof: Media’s choice in covering emergencies

In many disaster and conflict hot spots of the world, journalists and relief aid providers work closely together. There are times when journalists play good Samaritan and aid workers dabble as reporters. In the difficult field conditions of emergencies, this is understood and accepted.

But should journalists become ’embedded’ in humanitarian operations? If so, how impartial or independent would their coverage be?

This issue kept coming up during the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ in Geneva this week (22 – 26 Oct 2007). The majority aid officials and handful of journalists present didn’t always agree.

UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations increasingly recognise the power of media, especially broadcast television, to raise public awareness on emergencies. This, in turn, influences political commitments, aid donations and relief operations themselves.

But how close can the media get to aid agencies before they lose their sense of perspective and independent analysis? If journalists becoming embedded with the military in conflicts is frowned upon, what about media’s de facto embedding with humanitarian missions?

There was no consensus on the issue, but a few of us stressed on the need for independent media — independent of governments, aid agencies and other vested interests — to take stock of crisis situations and report, reflect and analyse on what they find.

The presence of nosy reporters might be an occasional irritant to some aid agencies, especially if they have things to hush up, but at the big picture level it can serve everyone’s interest — especially those of affected groups.

Alain Modoux, a former red cross official who went on to become an assistant director general of UNESCO, reminded us how governments often stand in the way of free flow of information on emergency situations. The reasons for such suppression vary: some don’t want to admit failures on their watch, and others fear public discussion and debate, especially at international level, on what is happening in their own country.

Governments can — and often do — bring pressure upon aid agencies to fall in line (or risk being thrown out). In such situations, it’s only the independent media that can take stock of rapidly changing situations and highlight the unmet needs and any disparities in the emergency response.

Then there is the media’s traditional watchdog role. The humanitarian sector is now the world’s largest unregulated industry – billions of dollars flow through the sector every year, most of it public funds (direct donations or taxes collected by governments). Yes, the aid agencies all audit their accounts and the UN has stringent regulations on how they can spend money. But there’s nothing like a bit of media scrutiny to keep everybody clean and honest…

Follow the money! This is what journalists are taught and trained to do – and with good reason. In emergency situations following the money often brings up instances of waste, corruption and mismanagement that aid agencies would rather not talk about.

Swiss journalist Edward Girardet (photo, above), who specialises in in media, humanitarian aid and conflict issues, has been making this point for a long time.

As he has written: “Humanitarianism should not ‘belong’ to any one group. What the international aid industry urgently needs is more hard-nosed and independent reporting.”

That is unlikely to happen when individual journalists are too cosy with aid workers or their bosses.

Ed was at the Geneva Symposium this week, once again making a case for a viable media watchdog capable of reporting the real causes behind humanitarian predicaments, including how the international community responds.

Read my June 2007 blog post quoting Ed Girardet: Can the media tame the alms bazaar?

In one intervention, I suggested that the media can become the ‘conscience’ of the humanitarian industry – to ensure transparency and accountability of resources, decisions and conduct.

Partnerships between media and aid workers is fine, as long as the media remain somewhat aloof and detached.

And it’s not the global media who can or will stay with the stories as recovery takes months or years. We all saw in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami how quickly the global media’s news interest went down.

In the long term, empowering the local journalists to ask the right questions and go in search of answers.

Read this blog post reproduced in Asia Media Forum

Read this blog post adapted in MediaHelpingMedia

New media tsunami hits global humanitarian sector; rescue operations now on…

Geneva, 25 October 2007 (MovingNews): The global humanitarian sector has been hit by a ‘new media’ tsunami, causing widespread damage and massive confusion in Geneva.

Giant waves — carrying blogs, wikis, YouTube and other new media products — have simultaneously swept over several aid capitals of the world, including London, New York and Tokyo.

United Nations and many other international relief organisations are among the worst affected. These aid agencies, usually among the first to arrive at the scene of major disasters or crises, found their information and communication capacities severely depleted.

“This is entirely a man-made calamity, and we just didn’t see it coming,” the UN spokesperson in Geneva said in a brief message released using the old-fashioned Morse code. “Our risk registers, log frame analyses and satellite technologies gave us no advance warning.”

Eye witness reports said some agencies were completely marooned on old media islands, saddled with very large numbers of completely unreadable documents going back to decades.

First casualties included assorted spin doctors carrying out propaganda for UN agencies. One perished while trying to sanitise the Wikipedia entry about his agency head.

Meanwhile, several dozen injured or badly bruised public information officers have been treated at a language clinic. Some will undergo trauma counselling.

“We have never been exposed to this level of open and two-way communication,” a survivor from UN OCHA said. “We were so used to always being in control, always telling others what to do and how to do it. I still don’t know what hit us!”

In a major show of solidarity, the world’s computer, telecommunications and media industries are rushing emergency teams to provide relief and recovery support.

“For decades, the UN, red cross and other aid agencies have responded to many and varied emergencies. In their hour of need, we have decided to come to their help,” a joint tele-com-media industry statement said.

Other survivors are being given first aid in simple, jargon-free public speaking. Those who respond well will be treated with basic courses in participatory communication methods.

The emergency coordinators have ordered that any spin doctors found alive be quarantined to prevent the spread of the fatal infection known as MDG.

As the recover process continues, ICT activists plan to conduct more advanced exercises — such as how to produce PowerPoint presentations with less than 20 words per slide.

“But we have to take things one step at a time,” a relief worker said. “These people have just had their entire frame of reference collapse all around them. They are in deep shock and disbelief. It will be a gradual process.”

It has now been established that a few alert officials had anticipated the new media tsunami well ahead of its dramatic arrival. But their warnings were ignored, as it now turns out, to everyone’s peril.

In Washington DC, the United States has just designated veteran broadcasters Walter Cronkite , Bill Moyers and Oprah Winfrey as their New Media Tsunami Relief Ambassadors. In the coming weeks, they will tour the decimated UN, red cross and other humanitarian aid agencies, taking stock of the global disaster and sharing their collective wisdom on telling the truth to the public simply and well.

You, dear reader, are now invited to continue building this unfolding scenario:

How soon and how well will the humanitarian sector raise its head from the new media tsunami?

Will they learn lessons from this disaster, or might they soon return to business as usual?

What would happen to the massive outpouring of goodwill, voluntary help and aid?

Message to aid workers: Go mobile — or get lost!

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

This short, urgent message of a single individual has already joined the global humanitarian lore. It was sent by SMS (a.k.a. mobile texting) from the sender’s own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. Sokor found these numbers by surfing at an internet café at the north Kenyan camp.

The Economist used this example to illustrate how the information dynamics are changing in humanitarian crises around the world. In an article on 26 July 2007, titled ‘Flood, famine and mobile phones’, it noted:
“The age-old scourge of famine in the Horn of Africa had found a 21st-century response; and a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed. It was also a sign that technology need not create a ‘digital divide’: it can work wonders in some of the world’s remotest, most wretched places.”

Elsewhere in the article, it added: “Disaster relief is basically a giant logistical operation. Today’s emergency responders can no more dispense with mobile phones or electronically transmitted spreadsheets than a global courier company can. But unlike most couriers, aid donors operate amid chaos, with rapidly changing constraints (surges of people, outbreaks of disease, attacks by warlords). Mobile phones increase the flow of information, and the speed at which it can be processed, in a world where information used to be confused or absent. The chaos remains, but coping with it gets easier.”

Image courtesy WikiMedia

All available indicators suggest that the future of humanitarian assistance is going to be largely dependent on mobile communications. Despite this reality, old habits die hard. I sat through an entire presentation on ‘Innovation to Improve Humanitarian Action’ at the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ in Geneva this week — and not once did I hear mobile phones being mentioned. A group of 15 – 20 people had deliberated for 2 days to come up with their vision of ‘the potential of emerging technologies and approaches used in the field and globally to strengthen information sharing, coordination and decision-making’ in humanitarian work.

It might be that aid workers are all frustrated computer geeks…because all their talk was about collaborative and networking software, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the use of really high resolution (read: oh-so-sexy) satellite imagery, and the latest analytical tools — all requiring high levels of skill and personal computers with loads of processing power.

But no mobile phones! This was too much to let pass, so I raised the question: did you guys even consider this near ubiquitous, mass scale technology and its applications in crisis and disaster situations? And how do you engage the digitally empowered, better informed disaster survivors and crisis-affected communities?

I also recalled the example of Aceh tsunami survivors keeping each other informed about the latest arrivals of relief supplies – all through their mobile phones (as cited by the head of MERCY Malaysia on the previous day).

It turned out that they did discuss mobiles — well, sort of. Amidst all the gee-whiz talk about high tech gadgets, I received a short answer: widespread as mobile phones now are, ‘these systems are not fully integrated or compatible with other information platforms’ — whatever that means! The group’s spokespersons also pointed out that since mobile services are all operated by commercial (telecom) service providers, using their networks involves lots of ‘negotiations’. (I would have thought it’s the same with those who operate earth-watching or communications satellites.)

The message I heard was: mobile phones are probably too down-market, low-tech and entirely too common for the great humanitarian aid worker to consider them as part of their expensive information management systems. For sure, everybody uses them to stay in touch in the field, but what use beyond that?

What uses, indeed. If today’s aid workers ignore the mobile phone revolution sweeping Africa, Asia Pacific and, to a lesser extent, Latin America, they risk marginalising their own selves. The choice seems to be: go fully mobile, or get lost.

Fortunately, the panel discussion that followed — on ‘Envisioning the Future’ — partly redressed this imbalance. The panel, comprising telecom industry, citizen media and civil society representatives, responded to the question: what will our humanitarian future look like and what role will information play in supporting it?

Leading the ‘defence’ of mobiles was Rima Qureshi, head of Ericsson Response, part of the global mobile phone manufacturer’s social responsibility initiatives. She reminded us there were now 3.4 billion (3,400 million) mobile phones in the world — and it was growing at 6 new mobile connections every second. By the time she ended her 8-minute talk, she said, some 3,000 new mobiles would have been connected for the first time.

This represents a huge opportunity, she said, to put information into everyone’s hands whenever and wherever they need it. And mobiles are all about two-way communication.

The new generation of mobile phones now coming out are not locked into a single telecom network, and have built-in global positioning (GPS) capability. This means the phone’s location can be pinpointed precisely anywhere on the planet — which can be invaluable in searching for missing persons in the aftermath of a disaster.

Wearing her Ericsson prophet’s hat, Rima said: “Everything we can do on a personal computer will soon become possible on a mobile. Mass availability of mobile phones, able to connect to the global Internet, will represent a big moment for human communication.”

And not just Ericsson, but many other mobile phone makers and network operators are rolling out new products and services. The new mobiles are easier to use, more versatile and durable, and come with longer-lasting or renewable sources of power. Wind-up phone chargers have been on the market for some years, and some new mobile phones come with a hand-cranking charging device that makes them entirely independent of mains electricity. With all this, the instruments keep getting cheaper too.

And if aid workers ignore these and other aspects of mobile realities, they shouldn’t be in their business!

Rima described another Ericsson initiative called Communication for All. It’s trying to harness the power of shared network, across commercial telecom operators and networks (but with some development funding from the World Bank) to deliver coverage to rural areas that aren’t as yet covered fully. The rolling out of coverage would have profound implications for disaster managers and aid workers.

As James Darcy, Director of humanitarian aid policy at the UK’s Overseas Development Institute, noted from the chair, the future of humanitarian communication is already here — but the sector needs to have more imagination in applying already available technologies for new and better uses.

My colleague Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICT researcher and activist from Sri Lanka, made the point that 3.4 billion mobiles raise new ethical considerations. For example, while it is now technologically possible to track the movement of every mobile phone – and therefore, in theory, each unit’s owner – this knowledge can be abused in the wrong hands. (I’ll write a separate blog post on Sanjana’s other remarks.)

Not everyone in the audience was convinced about the future being mobile. Soon enough, the predictable naysayer popped up: saying only 2.4 per cent of people in Sub-Saharan Africa as yet owned mobile phones, and Internet access was limited to only one per cent. Blah, blah, blah! (I was half expecting someone to blurt out the now completely obsolete – but sadly, not fully buried – development myth that there are more phones in New York city than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. That didn’t happen.)

Funny thing was, we were discussing all this at the Palais des Nations, the European headquarters of the UN, which is just literally across the street from the headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the authoritative monitor of telecom and ICT industry data and trends! It seemed that the gulf between some humanitarian workers and the telecom industry was much bigger than that.

Of course, being connected – to mobile, satellite and every other available information network – is only the first step. We can only hope humanitarian workers don’t end up in this situation, captured in one of my all-time favourite ICT cartoons (courtesy Down to Earth magazine):

Read about Sri Lanka’s pathfinding action research by LIRNEasia and others: Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Project