social justice – Page 7

GlobalVision at 20: Insiders turned outsiders keep kicking

GlobalVision, the path-breaking media company anchored in New York with a truly global outlook and a strong commitment to social justice, completed 20 years this week.

It was launched in November 1987 out of one room in Soho (New York) as a mission-driven company with little money but a big idea: to improve news coverage of the world through an “inside-out” approach that would offer voices not usually heard on the air in the US.

The founders were Danny Schechter, who became, in his words, a “network refugee” from ABC News 20/20 and Rory O’Connor, then with CBS News 48 Hours.

As the company introduction says:

“The whole world is watching… From Baghdad to Beijing, from Madrid to Manhattan, information is moving at the speed of light. Media and communications technology are transforming our lives — and those of our six billion neighbors. But in the emerging global village, whose stories get told — and who gets to tell them?

“At Globalvision, we believe in telling stories from the inside out. That means working with other cultures — not at them –and helping people to tell their own stories in their own way, to a world that’s getting smaller every day.”

In an industry saturated with media companies known more for their style than substance, Global Vision has not only blazed new trails, but used moving images in ways that moved people towards social change, political reform and – just as importantly – constantly question and challenge conventional wisdom and traditional authority.

They have also never hesitated to challenge the fellow journalists and corporate media on their servility, acquiescence and willing suspension of journalistic norms in the United States, especially under the current Bush administration.

They have won numerous awards and professional recognition for its pioneering international newsmagazine South Africa Now, which first broke through censorship to smuggle footage out of what was once the land of apartheid — and later chronicled Nelson Mandela’s transition from prisoner to President.

The company followed up with another award winning series, Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne Hundter-Gault, which aired for four years in sixty-two countries around the world.

Danny and Rory have also directed and produced more than thirty hard-hitting documentaries, many involving controversial issues and investigations — some for the PBS “Frontline” series” and others for television systems worldwide. Current films deal with subjects such as America’s child farm workers, bridging the global digital divide, flawed media coverage of the War in Iraq, and the ongoing debt crisis that threatens the global economic system.

I met Danny in person only once – in the Fall of 1995, when I spent a few weeks in New York on a fellowship to study the United Nations. Danny was one of the more colourful people we met (besides lots of men in suits from the UN, only a few of whom I can now recall by name). Danny introduced himself as a (TV) ‘network refugee’ — and gave a workshop on television journalism in defence of the public interest and human rights that had a lasting influence on myself.

Ever since, I have followed his books, incisive NewsDissector blog and Global Vision output with much interest.

So here’s wishing Danny, Rory and team at GlobalVision many more years of kicking ass!

MediaChannel.org: Global Vision marks 20th anniversary

Read Danny Schechter on: The Days of Our Dominion: Global Vision celebrations 20 years in the trenches

Rory O’Connor’s tribute to the late Anita Roddick, a long-standing supporter of Global Vision

Portraits of Commitment: New face of HIV/AIDS in Asia

Today, 1 December, is World AIDS Day — and this is the new face of HIV/AIDS in Asia.

Well, at least one of 50 faces that my friend Shahidul Alam captured during this year for a UNAIDS-published book titled ‘Portraits of Commitment: Why people become leaders in the AIDS response’.

It profiles men and women who are confronting HIV/AIDS in their lives, professions, work places and families in a variety of ways, each of them remarkable and courageous.

In August 2007, Shahidul held an exhibition in Colombo that featured the South Asians who were photographed for the book. Adorning the cover of the exhibition brochure was this 17-year-old Bangladeshi girl, Sabina Yeasmin Putul.

And this is what Karen Yap Lih Huey of Inter Press Service/TerraViva wrote about her and the exhibition:

Sabina Yeasmin Putul has a silent, determined look with her left fist clenched tight in front of her face – a vision of strength, grace, and resilience all in one.

The 17-year-old Bangladeshi has a lot going for her. Mature beyond her age, she had a good understanding of what she has been through, as a daughter of a sex worker, and of how society sees and judges her. And she probably doesn’t know this – that her struggles inspired respected Bangladeshi photographer, writer and activist Shahidul Alam.

“The way she tackles issues regarding her mother and the people around her is powerful. Of course, among other things, she did martial arts and I thought rather than showing child of a sex worker, I photographed her as this powerful woman who came across with powerful ideas,” said Alam, managing director and founder of the Dhaka-based Drik Photo Library.

Posters of her in a martial arts pose was the face for Shahidul’s photography exhibition, a project produced by a team from Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography which is the education wing of the award-winning agency Drik.

Read the article in full on IPS/TerraViva

Read my Aug 2007 blog post on another Portrait of Courage: Rajiv Kafle of Nepal

Photograph by Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majorityworld

Protect journalists who fight for social and environmental justice!

In June 2007, I wrote about the late Joey R B Lozano, a courageous Filipino journalist and activist who fought for human rights and environmental justice at tremendous risk to his life.

For three decades, Joey survived dangerous missions to defend human rights using his video camera in the Philippines, a country known for one of the highest numbers of journalists killed in the line of duty. Joey went into hiding numerous times, and he dodged two assassination attempts.

Last week, a leading Filipino academic and social activist called for greater protection for local level journalists who cover social and environmental justice issues risking their life and limbs.

“Things are pretty savage at the grassroots level in some of our countries. Journalists who investigate and uncover the truth take enormous personal risks – the vested interests hire killers to eliminate such journalists,” said Professor Walden Bello, executive director of the Focus on the Global South (photo, below).

He was speaking at the Greenaccord Media Forum on 10 November 2007 in Frascati, Rome, where several dozen journalists covering environmental issues had gathered for a four-day meeting.

He delivered an insightful survey of social movements across Asia on environmental and public health issues, where he questioned the role of elites in the global South in standing up for what is right and fair for all people.

During question time, I asked him how he saw the media playing a role in social movements that he’d just described. It varied from country to country, he said, and gave several examples.

In China, most environmental exposes in recent years have been made by ‘very brave journalists’. Their investigations have compelled the local and central authorities to address the massive incidents of pollution and environmental degradation resulting from China’s economic march forward.

In South Asia, the record is uneven. Indian publications like The Hindu newspaper and Frontline magazine are at the forefront in reporting and analysing ‘almost exhaustively’ on environmental struggles in the world’s largest democracy.

In contrast, Singapore and Malaysia have no critical mass media to turn the spotlight on excesses or lapses, he said. In these countries, journalists as well as activists have turned to the web to express themselves — but even they are under pressure from their governments.

In Thailand, the two English language newspapers The Nation and Bangkok Post have both have a long tradition of covering environmental issues and supporting mass movements. A number of Thai language newspapers also have sustained coverage.

In his native Philippines, Prof Bello singled out the Philippine Daily Enquirer for persisting with environmental coverage and exposing environment related scandals. But that comes with its own risks.

“At the local levels, journalists who take up these issues face many threats, including the very real risk of extra-judicial killings. The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world today for independent journalists and human rights activists,” he added.

Journalists living in the provinces and reporting from the grassroots are more vulnerable than those based in the cities. This is precisely why local journalists need greater support and protection to continue their good work.

The local elites and officials would much rather silence such journalists. International solidarity for such journalists could make a big difference, Prof Bello said.

He had a suggestion for his hosts, Greenaccord, which annually organises what is now the world’s largest annual gathering of journalists and activists concerned about the environment: Invite and involve more local level journalists in the future forums.

That will give them a voice, and strengthen their resolve to continue the very important work they do.

Read April 2007 blog post: Can journalists save the planet?

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

True ‘People Power’ needed to fight climate change

Dealing with climate change – the biggest environmental threat faced by the planet today – requires building up a mass movement at the grassroots across the developing countries of the global South.

Such a movement might be unpopular not only with the Southern elite but also with sections of the urban-based middle class sectors that have been the main beneficiaries of the high-growth economic strategy that has been pursued since the early 1990s, a leading southern activist cautioned in Rome last week.

Speaking at the Greenaccord Media Forum on 10 November 2007, Walden Bello, Filipino academic and executive director of the Focus on the Global South (seen in photo below, on the right), dismissed the notion that Asian masses are inert elements that uncritically accept the environmentally damaging high-growth export-oriented industrialisation models promoted by their governing elites.

“It is increasingly clear to ordinary people throughout Asia that the model has wrecked agriculture, widened income inequalities, led to increased poverty after the Asian financial crises, and wreaked environmental damage everywhere,” he said.

People in the South are open to an alternative to a model of growth that has failed both the environment and society, he said. For instance, in Thailand, a country devastated by the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and wracked by environmental problems, globalization and export-oriented growth are now bad words.

He added: “Thais are more and more receptive to the idea of a ‘sufficiency economy‘ promoted by popular monarch King Bhumibol, which is an inward-looking strategy that stresses self-reliance at the grassroots and the creation of stronger ties among domestic economic networks, along with ‘moderately working with nature'”.

But the southern countries cannot and must not rely on their elite to provide leadership, he said. “What is clear is that in most other places in the South, one cannot depend on the elites and some sections of the middle class to decisively change course. At best, they will procrastinate.”

The fight against global warming will need to be propelled mainly by an alliance between progressive civil society in the North and mass-based citizens’ movements in the South.

Delivering the Lectio Magistralis to conclude the 4-day international gathering of journalists, activists and experts concerned about the environment, Prof Bello traced the evolution of social movements on environment and public health in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia over the past few decades.

Read the test of a similar talk given by Walden Bello at the Trans National Institute in October 2007.

Prof Bello acknowledged that the environmental movements in the South and North have seen their ebbs and flows. “As with all social movements, it takes a particular conjunction of circumstances to bring an environmental movement to life after being quiescent for some time or to transform diverse local struggles into one nationwide movement.”

The challenge facing activists in the global North and the global South is to bring about those circumstances that will trigger the formation of a global mass movement that will decisively confront the most crucial challenge of our times.

And climate challenge is one among several challenges we confront today.

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account
People power India photo courtesy TVEAP image archive

Bretton Woods on fire: Hard times ahead for World Bank and IMF

As the California forest fires raged over many days in October 2007, it dominated the US and some sections of the global media. Focus was on how the fires started and what factors contributed to their rapid spread.

Below the media’s radar, another kind of ‘fire’ has been building up over the past few months on the US East Coast. According to one leading intellectual-activist that I heard this week, this is a development whose reverberations will be felt right around the world, and for years to come.

The Bretton Woods are on fire. Actually, it’s the Bretton Woods institutions, namely the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Speaking at the Greenaccord Media Forum in Rome on 10 November 2007, Walden Bello, Filipino academic and executive director of the Focus on Global South, suggested that the World Bank and IMF are headed for turbulent times as countries in the global South (majority world) assert themselves economically.

Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated upon and signed the Bretton Woods Agreements during July 1944. That marked the birth of the World Bank and IMF.

The World Bank and IMF are essentially lenders of money to governments for development purposes. If these lending institutions run short of borrowers, they will be out of business.

That hasn’t happened yet, but Bello (photo, below) identified several trends that must make the Bretton Woods duo worry about losing control.

According to Bello, the resistance is led by countries of Latin America, a region where the twin lenders have long been controversial. In May 2007, Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez announced it would be leaving both the World Bank and IMF.

Venezuela has repaid its remaining debts to the World Bank five years ahead of schedule and paid off its debts to the IMF shortly after Mr Chavez first took office in 1999. Bello says the oil-rich country has sought to provide alternative forms of credit and financial support for countries in the region. One such project is the “Bank of the South”, which aims to financially help Latin American countries to pay off their IMF loans ahead of schedule.

In October 2007, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz endorsed the Chávez plan to create a pan-regional bank for Latin America. Professor Stiglitz, a Washington insider and former World Bank chief economist, said the Bank of the South would benefit the region and give a welcome shakeup to western lending institutions.

Read March 2006 commentary by Mark Engler in Common Dreams: Latin America Unchained: Will the U.S. Lose its Influence Over Countries That Have Paid Off Their IMF Loans?

These trends, coupled with the rise of a new set of Southern countries willing and able to provide loans or grant aid to fellow countries of the South, are slowly but steadily eroding the domination and power the Bretton Woods twins have exercised for over half a century, Bello said.

Some of these alternative lenders are giving money with fewer conditions and restrictions. These include China, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. This is what the editor of the influential US journal Foreign Policy called ‘rogue aid’ in an article he wrote in the journal’s March/April 2007 issue.

As the global South asserts itself and begins to exercise the power of their recent economic growth – which, ironically, is partly thanks to past borrowing from the Bretton Woods twins, the coming years will be crucial for the future World Bank and IMF.

The fire in the Bretton Woods is only just smouldering. But watch that smoke…

* * * * *

Walden Bello won the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel) in 2003, for his decades of advocacy, activism and research. As the award foundation noted: “Walden Bello is one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalisation, combining the roles of intellectual and activist. As a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist, and through a combination of courage as a dissident, with an extraordinary breadth of published output and personal charisma, he has made a major contribution to the international case against corporate-driven globalisation.”

While campaigning on human rights he saw how the World Bank and IMF loans and grants were supporting the Marcos regime in power. To expose their role, he took the risk of breaking into the World Bank headquarters in Washington, and brought out 3,000 pages of confidential documents. These provided the material for his book Development Debacle (1982), which became an underground bestseller in the Philippines and contributed to expanding the citizen’s movement that eventually deposed Marcos in 1986.

Read full profile on Walden Bello on Right Livelihood Award website

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

Beyond coffee and bananas: We need fair trade in international media!

Fair trade is gaining momentum worldwide. More products are coming within the scope of fair trade in more countries.

That’s certainly good news in a world full of exploitation, inequality and unfairness at various levels.

But are we, in the mass media whose business it is to gather and deliver news and information, yet part of this good news ourselves? In other words, isn’t it high time there was fair trade in international media products too?

This is the simple question I raised this week at the V Greenaccord International Media Forum on the Protection of Nature, held from 7 to 11 Novmeber 2007 at the historic Villa Mondragone in Frascati, some 20km southeast of Rome.

During the 3.5 day international gathering of journalists and scientists concerned about the environment, we had several speakers referring to fair trade in Europe and at a global level. As more consumers become aware of environmental and social justice considerations, they are doing something about it in their buying of goods that are fairly traded, we heard.

The Wikipedia describes fair trade as ‘an organised social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods.’

The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine and fresh fruit.

Fair trade is all about creating opportunities for small scale producers in the developing countries to get organised and supply directly to consumers in different parts of the world. When they sell direct, with few or no intermediaries, they can earn three or four times more, and that money will enhance their incomes, living standards and societies.

Fair trade is certainly a cherished ideal, but it’s mired in complex economic and political realities. The globalised march of capital, profit-maximising corporations and developed country farm subsidies are among many factors that make fair trade difficult to achieve.

Fair trade activists are well aware of these realities. Their success is built on connecting producers with individual consumers. The proliferation of new media – especially the Internet – has made it easier to sustain such communications.

But the fair trade movement is still largely rooted in goods, not services. In my view, this is necessary but not sufficient in a modern world economy where nearly two thirds of global GDP comes from the services sector. (The Wikipedia’s breakdown for global GDP is agriculture 4%; industry 32%; services 64%).

I can’t immediately find how much the print, broadcast and online media contribute to that 64%, but it must be significant in the media saturated world today. And certainly the flow of media products — text, audio, photographs, moving images, online content and derivatives of these — has become more globalised in the past two decades.

So why not begin to agitate for fair trade in media products when they cross borders? Why aren’t we practising fair trade in our own media industry even as we cover fair trade as a story in our editorial content?

I didn’t get a very clear answer from fair trade activists that I posed this question to this week. While agreeing with me that the same fair trade principles can be applied to the media sector, they acknowledged that each sector has its own dynamics and must develop realistic ways to accomplish fair trade.

So it’s up to us who produce, distribute and manage assorted media products to begin this transformation from within.

Let’s not kid ourselves about what we are taking on. As I wrote in a blog post in September 2007:

“In the media-rich, information societies that we are now evolving into, media and cultural products are an important part of our consumption — and therefore, more of these have to be produced. In the globalised world, more television and film content is being sourced from the majority world — or is being outsourced to some developing countries where the artistic and technical skills have reached global standards.

“But in a majority of these media production deals, the developing country film and TV professionals don’t enjoy any fair terms of trade or engagement. Their creativity and toil are being exploited by those who control the global flow of entertainment, news and information products.

“This is why the top talent in the global South become assistants, helpers and ‘fixers’ to producers or directors parachuting in to our countries to cover our own stories for the Global Village. Equitable payments and due credits are hardly ever given.”

In the same commentary, I added:
“Unfair trade in film and TV is also how the unsung, unknown creative geniuses contribute significantly to the development of new cartoon animation movies or TV series, as well as hip video games that enthrall the global market. Lacking the clout and skill to negotiate better terms, freelancers and small companies across the global South remain the little elves who toil through the night to produce miracles. They work for tiny margins and even tinier credit lines. Some don’t get acknowledged at all.”

Read my blog post: Wanted: Fair trade in film and television!

Raising this amidst 60 journalists and producers from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean attending the annual Greenaccord meeting, I pointed out that many of us were keen to contribute to media outlets beyond the countries where we are based. It gives us a chance to tell our stories to a bigger audience, and to have our voices heard about a range of issues and topics important to our communities.

And yes, the additional income that such work brings in is quite useful too, thank you.

Heads were nodding when I pointed out how hard it is for a talented, hard working journalist based in the majority world to break into the tightly controlled international media outlets. Even when they make an occasional breakthrough, they are often exploited by being paid lower professional fees for the same output and quality of work.

Or worse, majority world journalists are slighted and insulted for being where they are and who they are, rather than be judged on the merit of their work. As I wrote in a commentary published by SciDev.Net in November 2005: “Media gatekeepers in the North often dismiss the better-informed and equally competent Southern professionals — saying, insultingly, that ‘they don’t have the eye’! And for years, I have resisted the widespread practice of Northern broadcasters and filmmakers using the South’s top talent merely as ‘fixers’ and assistants.”

All this makes it imperative for us in the globalised media — in the developed North and developing South — to begin agitating for fair trade in media products and services. As in other products, we are not looking for charity or tokenism or a lowering of standards. We must strive for fairness and equality while working on building the capacity of southern journalists to generate world class media products.

And as my friend Darryl D’Monte — whom we missed dearly at this year’s Greenaccord forum — has been saying for years, publishing each other’s stories is one great step forward.

Mahatma Gandhi put it this way: we must be the change we wish to achieve.

Note: My own organisation, TVE Asia Pacific, practises what I preach here, and always engages local camera crews when we film TV stories across Asia. We will be taking up Fair Trade in Film and Television (FTinFT) as a campaign from 2008.

Image of camera crews courtesy Pamudi Withanaarachchi of TVEAP.

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

Say ‘Mooooooooo’! Mixing grassroots and ICT in KL…

Remember the ‘Alphabet Soup’ made up of the endless acronyms and abbreviations (A&As) coined by the development and technology communities? (See July 2007 blog post: Who makes the best Alphabet Soup of all?)

Last week in Geneva, attending UN OCHA’s conference on information for humanitarian action, I realised that the humanitarian community has its own share of A&As, some more memorable than others. HIC, SPHERE and FAST stuck in mind.

In this strange jungle, nothing is quite what they seem. While still recovering from that overdose, I was hit by the latest in the field of ICT (that’s information and communication technologies for you): believe it or not, it’s called MOO.

Well, actually the correct spelling is MoO (the middle o is lower case). It’s described as “a place where people SEEK and OFFER expertise, experience, project support, ideas, solutions and other resources that leverage on knowledge and ICT to fulfil the needs of ‘Emerging People, Emerging Markets and Emerging Technologies’.”

Wow, that’s somehow sounds important. This is going to happen as part of a big platform of events called Global Knowledge 3, inevitably abbreviated as GK3, to be held in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia, from 11 to 13 December 2007.

According to the load of hype on the conference website, the will be a ‘Virtual MoO’ and the ‘Physical MoO’ and the anticipated 2,000 conference participants will be browsing both, “seeking an exchange”.

Ok, let me not prolong the suspense any longer. MoO stands for Marketplace of Opportunities, which GK3 is supposed to create or inspire for all those engaged in using ICT tools for meeting the real world’s needs — to reduce poverty, increase incomes, create safer communities, create sustainable societies and support youth enterprise, etc.

Of course, if we browse through the massive GK3 website, we will be overwhelmed with a whole heap of technicalities, self-important hype and knowledge made incomprehensible to all but those who are already within the charmed ICT circle.

For example, take a deep breath and read how the conference is introduced:
“GK3 will explore concrete solutions and possibilities within the interplay, interface and interweaving of issues related to the Knowledge for Development (K4D) and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in the context of our globally evolving societies, economies and technologies worldwide.”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Or, shall I just say: Mooooooooooooooooo!

PS: Despite this skepticism, I’m planning to be there – I can’t afford to miss this chance to meet fellow activists who are so concerned about welfare at the grassroots.

PPS: An informed little bird says GK3 has milked development donors well and truly for this 3-day extravaganza. I hope someone will calculate the cost of development aid dollars per ‘Mooo’…

Can somebody please update ‘The Development Set’ by Ross Coggins?

At the UN European Headquarters in Geneva this week, while attending a conference of humanitarian aid workers from around the world, I heard two of them compare the flat-beds in business class of two international airlines.

The conversation was more than just a passing one. They were passionately discussing the relative merits of different business class seats and perks.

I almost felt like butting in and saying that Singapore Airlines – the world’s finest airline, no argument – has just created a new product that they can now lust after: personal cabin suites in the air.

Coincidentally this week, on 25 October 2007, Singapore Airlines began operating the first commercial flights of the new Airbus380 double-decker super-jumbo.

Here are two images from the airlines’s website:

I’m all for humanitarian aid workers being well paid, well protected and well cared for. After all, they risk life and limb for the rescue, relief and recovery of large numbers of people caught in disasters or conflicts.

Perhaps I’m being naive, but there’s something incongruent about aid workers aspiring to flat-beds and space beds in the air.

Which reminds me, it’s about time somebody updated the well known poem, The Development Set, by Ross Coggins. First published in “Adult Education and Development” September 1976, it’s now more than 30 years old — the luxuries both in the air and on the ground have evolved a bit in that time.

Graham Hancock’s book “Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business” gleefully reprinted this poem in the 1980s.

I’m no poet, but there’s a need to update this to include GPS, satellite phones, four-wheel drives, and yes, business class beds.

If you are not familiar with the original poem, here it is:

The Development Set
by Ross Coggins

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet
I’m off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!

The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations
We damn multi-national corporations;
injustice seems easy to protest
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution —
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like “epigenetic”
“Micro”, “macro”, and “logarithmetic”

It pleasures us to be esoteric —
It’s so intellectually atmospheric!
And although establishments may be unmoved,
Our vocabularies are much improved.

When the talk gets deep and you’re feeling numb,
You can keep your shame to a minimum:
To show that you, too, are intelligent
Smugly ask, “Is it really development?”

Or say, “That’s fine in practice, but don’t you see:
It doesn’t work out in theory!”
A few may find this incomprehensible,
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.

Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.

Enough of these verses – on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.

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

Share (information) if you really care: Challenge to humanitarian community

Why can’t we humanitarian workers talk to each other in the field?

Why must we, instead, badger and harass people affected by a disaster or war, asking them for the same information over and over again?

With these simple yet important questions, Dr Jemilah Mahmood, President of MERCY Malaysia, started off the first panel discussion on humanitarian realities at the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). The meeting, held in Geneva from 22 – 26 October 2007 at the Palais des Nations, has brought together over 200 persons involved or interested in information and communication aspects of humanitarian work.

I was nearly dozing off on a surfeit of humanitarian jargon and acronyms when Jemilah started her reality check. The medical doctor turned humanitarian leader spoke from her heart, and spoke such common sense that sometimes seemed to elude the self-important UN types.

Jemilah argued that there was a greater need for community based information gathering and communication, rather than just data mining that often takes place in crisis or emergency situations.

“Communication with affected communities needs to be a genuinely two-way process,” she said, echoing the discussions at my own working group on ‘Communicating with affected communities in crisis’.

She talked of people in Aceh, Indonesia, and elsewhere who survived the tsunami — and then faced a barrage of questions and questionnaires from an endless stream of aid workers, many of who asked the same questions again and again! Why couldn’t the first group/s who surveyed survivors not have shared the information they gathered, she wondered.

“I sometimes see how humanitarian agencies are fighting with each other to keep field information to themselves,” she revealed.

There is also a need for humanitarian workers to be more sensitive to and respectful of affected people’s culture and social norms. For example, it is inappropriate to go to predominantly muslim communities and ask about their sexual habits or probe incidents of rape — even though gathering such information would be relevant in some situations. “The humanitarian workers need to find the right ways to tackle these and other challenges,” she said.

Sometimes well meaning aid workers inadvertently overstep their boundaries. In the aftermath of the Pakistan earthquake of October 2005, community meetings were scheduled at times when the people had to break their day-time fasting.

Today’s crisis affected people are becoming better informed and more empowered. Jemilah recalled how mobile phones are increasingly spreading news and information among crisis affected people on the arrival of new food or medicinal stocks. Once in Aceh, the news of vaccine stock arrival spread within hours through mobile texting or SMS, prompting thousands of people to turn up asking for this service.

The humanitarian community needs to combine technology, common sense and human considerations to deliver better services and benefits, she argued. “Technology alone won’t do this for us, but it offers us useful tools,” she said.

She added: “There are huge opportunities to use modern communication technologies to plan better, reduce disaster risks and have a well coordinated response in times of disasters.”

In short, we need locally relevant, low-cost solutions to improve information gathering, information sharing and communication all around, she argued.

MERCY Malaysia is an internationally recognised medical and humanitarian relief organisation. “MERCY Malaysia is not just a response organisation,” says its president Dr Jemilah Mahmood. This realisation came during the Afghanistan crisis (in October, 2001), when members decided it would be more prudent to look towards providing Total Disaster Risk Management (TDRM) to ensure that affected communities become more resilient after a disaster.

Since its inception, MERCY Malaysia has served hundreds of thousands of victims of natural and complex humanitarian disasters from Kosova, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran and Sudan. Hundreds of volunteers, both from the medical and non-medical field, have been trained and deployed to these areas. Dr. Jemilah Mahmood herself has led most of these missions at home and abroad, in particular to Kosova, Indonesia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently to Palestine.

Read The Star newspaper (Malaysia) article on MERCY Malaysia on 12 October 2007