United Nations – Page 12

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

All Geneva photos courtesy UN-OCHA Flickr on Global Symposium+5

The many lives of PI: Crisis communication and spin doctors

Where does public information (PI) work end and public communication (PC) work begin?

And how can we separate public information work, which is mostly institutional propaganda, from public communication of issues and knowledge directly relevant to saving lives or improving them?

This is the question that we often grappled with this week in Geneva, during 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 from 22 – 26 October 2007 at the Palais des Nations, brought together over 200 persons involved or interested in information and communication aspects of humanitarian work. I was part of working group on ‘Communicating with affected communities in crisis’.

I raised the importance of separating PI from PC from the very beginning of our discussions. PI and public relations (PR) both have their place, I said, but it was not in the same league as communicating issues and knowledge.

Members of my working group – drawn from humanitarian organisations, UN agencies and the media – broadly agreed with this view. But many couldn’t help sliding back to their own agency’s PI/PR agendas during our discussions!

This is no accident. In this age of spin and soundbites, many development and humanitarian agencies are under pressure to raise their individual profiles in the public eye. In trying to do so, they give far higher priority – and resources – to PI/PR than to engaging in issue-based communication, or, to use one of their own favourite phrases, ‘evidence based advocacy’.

For public communication to assume its rightful place in the development process and humanitarian intervention, all key players will need to be more restrained with their PI/PR agenda. But looking around the massive UN complex in Geneva, where a dozen UN agencies are competing with each other for the public’s and media’s attention, I can’t quite see this happening soon.

I touch on this in an essay in August 2007 titled Cheque-book development corrupting the media. Here’s an extract:

“As development organisations compete more intensely for external funding, they are increasingly adopting desperate strategies to gain higher media visibility for their names, logos and bosses.

“Communication officers in some leading development and humanitarian organisations have been reduced to publicists. When certain UN agency chiefs tour disaster or conflict zones, their spin doctors precede or follow them. Some top honchos now travel with their own ’embedded journalists’ – all at agency expense.

“In this publicity frenzy, these agencies’ communication products are less and less on the issues they stand for or reforms they passionately advocate. Instead, the printed material, online offerings and video films have become ‘logo delivery mechanisms’.”

So the first step would be to deliver less logos and more real information.

Read my other relevant blog posts:

August 2007: Cheque-book Development: Paying public media to deliver development agency logos

April 2007: Say MDG and smile, will ya?

April 2007: MDG: A message from our spin doctors?

The Al and Pachy Show: Climate Change gains public momentum

Compared to former US Vice President and climate campaigner Al Gore, the name Rajendra K Pachauri might not be as widely recognised. In fact, I wonder how many Americans can even pronounce the name correctly.

But Dr Pachauri is a scientific heavyweight himself, and is the other half of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He chairs the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was announced as joint and equal winner.

He may be less glamorous than Gore, but Pachauri is just as ardent an advocate for the world to seriously tackle global warming. It was Pachauri’s dedicated work ethic and “ability to build and inspire a team” that helped the IPCC to win the world’s most coveted prize.

Read Rajendra Pachauri’s first reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize announcement

In a profile of the Indian engineer turned scientist-diplomat, The Christian Science Monitor noted: “If Gore is the frontman of the crusade against global warming, then Pachauri runs the engine room.”

Like Gore, Pachauri is a global-warming pioneer. Since the late 1980s, the former industrial engineer has sought to use science to convince skeptics and CEOs of the need of reducing mankind’s atmospheric imprint. Now, he warns that if the problem is not addressed, developing nations will bear the brunt of the crisis, suffering for a situation they did not create because they have not the resources to mitigate it.

In their profile, The Christian Science Monitor quoted Tulsi Tanti, a friend and founder of Suzlon, Asia’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, as saying: “He has been one of the pioneers and voices of reason in the field, not just calling attention to an environment in peril but creating solutions by bridging the gap between academia, business, policymakers, and the public.”

Read full profile from The Christian Science Monitor of 15 October 2007

I first met and interviewed Dr Pachauri in October 1990, during the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva. That was one of the first international scientific conferences that I covered as a journalist, and Pachauri was kind enough to grant me a long interview. We spoke less of climate and more about energy security and innovative energy solutions. At that time he was head of India’s Tata Energy Research Institute, which was later renamed as The Energy and Resources Institute, still abbreviated as TERI.

Our paths have occasionally crossed since, in different parts of the world, and Dr Pachauri has always remained accessible and articulate. I last met him in Rome in the fall of 2003, during the annual GreenAccord Media Forum on Protecting Nature organised by the Italian organisation GreenAccord.

Read Dr Rajendra Pachuri’s speech at GreenAccord 2003 meeting.

Pachauri was his characteristic modest when reacting to the news of the Nobel Prize. ”I was not expecting any awards for my efforts. I feel privileged to share it with Al Gore. I am only a symbolic recipient but it is the organisation which has been awarded,” he said.

He added: ”With this award to the committee, the issue of climate change will come to the fore. It places a larger responsibility on me and I will ensure that more will be done.”

In a phone call soon after the announcement, he reportedly told Al Gore: “This is Pachy. I am so delighted and so privileged to have the IPCC share with you. I will be your follower and you will be my leader.”

The IPCC set up in 1988 comprises 3,000 atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, ice specialists, economists and other experts and is the world’s top scientific authority on global warming and its impact.

Wikipedia on the IPCC and its track record

Wikipedia on Rajendra K Pachuri

The irony of the Climate Nobel: With love from oil-rich Norway…

The announcement from Oslo on 12 October held few surprises: the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 has been awarded to climate champion Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC, headed by Indian scientist Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

The selection committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament acting on the will of the late Alfred Nobel, said it wanted to bring into sharper focus the “increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states” posed by climate change.

Mr Gore, 59, was praised as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted”, through his lectures, films and books.

The UN-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), established in 1988, is tasked with providing policymakers with neutral summaries of the latest expertise on climate change. The organisation involves hundreds of scientists working to collate and evaluate the work of thousands more.

In recent years, the usually secretive and conservative Nobel Peace Committee has been increasingly in tune with the changing realities of our world. Recent prizes to environmental activist Wangari Mathaai and microcredit champion Muhammad Yunus indicate that their traditional definition of peace and security – confined for nearly a century to peace-makers and humanitarian agencies – is being widened.

But the irony of the climate Nobel won’t be lost on the long-time champions of climate change action. Here we have oil-rich Norway, sometimes called the Kuwait of Europe, presenting the world’s best known award to an individual and organisation calling for the planet to kick its addiction to oil (and coal, too).

Notwithstanding all that, we join everyone in saluting Al Gore, Pachauri and everyone associated with the IPCC for their years of hard work in bringing climate change to the fore.

The real hard work is only just beginning.

Watch Al Gore press conference following the Nobel announcement:

Read blog post on Oct 21: Al and Pachy Show: Climate Change gains public momentum

Geography lesson that saved many lives: The story of Tilly Smith and Asian Tsunami of 2004

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. The theme this year is “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School”.

This year’s campaign, spearheaded by UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction aims “to inform and mobilize Governments, communities and individuals to ensure that disaster risk reduction is fully integrated into school curricula in high risk countries and that school buildings are built or retrofitted to withstand natural hazards.”

Buried beneath this development jargon that UN agencies are so fond of is something very important: sensitising the next generation about living with hazards can help make our societies better able to cope with disasters when they do happen.

And you never know when an informed and alert school kid could save the day — and many lives.

A good example came from Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami arrived without any public warning on 26 December 2004.

ISDR BBC

Tilly Smith, an eleven-year-old British schoolgirl, was on holiday on Maikhao Beach in Thailand with her family when the tsunami hit. Just a few weeks earlier, she had studied tsunamis in school — and immediately recognized the signs of the receding sea as a sign of an impending disaster. She warned her parents, which led to all the hotel guests being rapidly moved from the beach.

This simple, timely action by a single schoolgirl saved the life of dozens of people. Tilly’s story highlights the critical importance of basic education in preventing the tragic impacts of natural disasters.

Watch her story on YouTube:

This 5 min video, produced by UN/ISDR in 2005, is available in English, French and Spanish. Watch the English version on their website, which is now hidden under all that bureaucratic babble:
Higher resolution WMV file – more suited for broadband Internet connections
Lower resolution WMV file – will play better on narrowband Internet connections

According to the Wikipedia, Tilly’s family have declined requests to be interviewed by commercial and national broadcasters, but Tilly has appeared at the United Nations in November 2005, meeting Bill Clinton the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief, and at the first year anniversary in Phuket, as part of the campaign to highlight the importance of education.

In December 2005, Tilly was named “Child of the Year” by the French magazine Mon Quotidien. On the First Anniversary of the Official Tsunami Commemorations at Khao Lak, Thailand on December 26, 2005, she was given the honour of closing the ceremony with a speech to thousands of spectators which read in part:

National Geographic online: Tsunami Family saved by school girl’s geography lesson

BBC Online: Award for tsunami warning pupil

Playing games on disasters: we do and we understand!

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. So we’re going to talk about playing games on disasters.

Yes, that’s right: games. Disasters are serious phenomena, but there’s no reason why disaster awareness and preparedness have to be all dull and dreary.

There’s a old Chinese saying: “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.” Disaster preparedness and training are now moving more into the realm of understanding by doing — simulations or drills for community evacuation, and games that allow players to prevent or manage a disaster.

I first played such a game in January 2007 when, while in Honolulu for a conference, I took the day off and flew to Hilo where the Pacific Tsunami Museum is located. The volunteer-run museum, based in what is known as the tsunami capital of the world, engages local people and foreign visitors (including curious US mainlanders) on the science, history and sociology of tsunamis.

A basic game there allows a visitor to be play the role of Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) , a US government institute that monitors seismic activity and has a mandate to issue alerts, watches or warnings to all countries in and around the Pacific Ocean. The game allows players to choose one of three locations where an earthquake happens — Alaska, Chile or Japan — and also decide on its magnitude from 6.0 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

In the real PTWC, five geophycisists are on duty round the clock. If the magnitude exceeds 7.5, the epicentre is located. If it’s in an area likely to cause a tsunami, a tsunami watch is sent to nearby coasts and a tsunami watch is set for areas with a travel time more than three hours away. Messages are sent to the tide observers for reports on the first wave, and telemetered water level gauges are checked. It’s by quickly assessing the seismic, sea level and historical data that scientists at PTWC decide if a warning is needed for areas already placed under a tsunami watch.

Since the system was set up in 1947, it has never missed warning of a damaging tsunami, but there have been a number of very expensive evacuations that turned out to be unnecessary. “These precautions are needed to ensure public safety, but scientists are working to minimise unnecessary warnings without ever missing a hazardous event,” the Tsunami Museum panel explained.

It’s revealing to play the role of a scientist who must quickly marshal lots of information and decide on whether or not to issue a warning. The cost of inaction can be high — but a false alarm doesn’t come cheap either.

I played the game three times, and each time erred on the side of caution — costing the hapless Hawaiian tax payers lots of money.

In real life, those who have their finger on the alert/warning button have to take many considerations into account. Repeated false alarms can erode public confidence in early warning systems. But suppressing a warning on a real breaking disaster — such as what happened in Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami broke in December 2004 — can be truly devastating.

I don’t envy those who have to make this decision as part of their daily work. But after playing the game, I appreciate their challenges a great deal better.

Read my SciDev.Net essay (Dec 2005) The Long Last Mile on challenges in communicating early warnings on disasters

Stop that Traffick: ‘The Girl Next Door’ becomes ‘Trade’ the Movie

When 13-year-old Adriana (played by Paulina Gaitan) is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Mexico City, her 17-year-old brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), sets off on a desperate mission to save her. Trapped by an underground network of international thugs who earn millions exploiting their human cargo, Adriana’s only friend throughout her ordeal is Veronica (Alicja Bachleda), a young Polish woman captured by the same criminal gang. As Jorge dodges overwhelming obstacles to track the girl’s abductors, he meets Ray (Kevin Kline), a Texas cop whose own family loss leads him to become an ally.

From the barrios of Mexico City and the treacherous Rio Grande border, to a secret internet sex slave auction and a tense confrontation at a stash house in suburban New Jersey, Ray and Jorge forge a close bond as they frantically pursue Adriana’s kidnappers before she is sold and disappears into a brutal underworld from which few victims ever return.

This is the synopsis of Trade, a feature film that opens across the United States on 28 September 2007.

Inspired by Peter Landesman’s chilling NY Times Magazine story on the U.S. sex trade, “The Girls Next Door,” (published in January 2004), TRADE is a thrilling story of courage and a devastating expose of one of the world’s most heinous crimes. The American debut of Marco Kreuzpaintner, one of Germany’s leading young directors, TRADE is produced by Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller from a screenplay by Academy Award(R) nominee Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries).

Watch the trailer for Trade the movie

Explaining the social context to this dramatised story, the movie’s website says:
“The practice of slavery in the US is something most people think ended with the 13th Amendment in 1865, but in recent years it has returned in an even more virulent form. Fueled by the collapse of the Soviet Union and other eastern European countries, new technologies like the internet, and sieve-like borders, the traffic in human beings has become an epidemic of colossal dimensions. The State Department estimates that as many as 800,000 people are trafficked over international frontiers each year, largely for sexual exploitation. Eighty percent are female and over fifty percent are minors. Many people in this country push this atrocity out of their minds, believing that it only occurs in faraway countries like Thailand, Cambodia, the Ukraine and Bosnia. The truth is that the United States has become a large-scale importer of sex slaves. Free the Slaves, America’s largest anti-slavery organization estimates that at least 10,000 people a year are smuggled or duped into this country by sex traffickers.”

The film’s makers, Roadside Attractions, says it will donate 5 per cent of the opening week box-office gross divided among four organisations participating in the release of the film; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Equality Now, International Justice Mission (IJM), and David Batstone’s Not For Sale Campaign.

On 19 September 2007, they held a benefit premiere at the United Nations headquarters in New York that included supper in the UN Delegates dining room. This marked the first film premiere event ever to take place at the United Nations, with the crusty UN officials mingling with film stars and artistes.

Read about the film-makers

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