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Monday, November 28, 2016
Week in African Studies November 28 - December 2, 2016. Opening of the application for Summer Study Abroad in Tanzania
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Haiti Hurricane Matthew - 26 November 2016 OCHA Situation Report No. 25
Kindly click here to view OCHA: Hurricane Matthew Situation
Report No. 25 as of 25 November 2016, as well as a 3W - Who does What, Where?
infographic.
Situation Report Main Points
Situation Report Main Points
- Early data indicate that 90 per
cent of the targeted population in 16 communes of the Grand’Anse and Sud
departments received cholera vaccination between 8 and 18 November.
- The Early Recovery sector has
reported 6,500 people have benefited from the “cash-for-work” program
related to the cleaning of debris in Grand’Anse and Sud.
- Humanitarian partners are
mobilizing their resources to provide assistance as tensions rise in
Jérémie, where an estimated 3,000 displaced persons could be forcibly
evicted from a main school next week.
- Landslides on 22 November in
Grand’Anse blocked road access to Les Irois, Anse d’Hainault and Dame
Marie, preventing medical mobile clinics to access the areas.
OCHA
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Webinar: The challenges of localised aid in conflict. 11/29/2016
The challenges of localised aid in
conflict
Organisation:
Location:
Date: 29 November 2016
Time: 15:00 – 16:30 GMT
The idea that local actors should be at the forefront of humanitarian response in their own country is increasingly widely accepted.
One message, which resounded loud and clear at the first World Humanitarian Summit, was the need for greater localisation of aid.
However, the current localisation agenda gives little consideration to the different humanitarian contexts and their different operational challenges. Can local actors deliver impartial emergency assistance on a meaningful scale in armed conflicts, if they find themselves caught up in the political and military game of the warring parties?
Our expert panel of observers and practitioners from international and local organisations discuss and debate the nuances of the situation on the ground.
Informed by new research from Médecins Sans Frontières which highlights operational challenges to locally led responses in conflict and highly politicised environments, this discussion asks:
Contributing chair
Wendy Fenton @WendyFenton1 - Coordinator, Humanitarian Practice Network
Speakers
Ed Schenkenberg @ed_heregva - Executive Director, Humanitarian Exchange and Research Centre
Luz Saavedra @alnap - Former Research Fellow, ALNAP
Zaidoun Alzoabi @UOSSM - Chief Executive Officer, Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (via video link)
Charlie Rowley @oxfamgb - Humanitarian Capacity Development Advisor, Global Humanitarian Team, Oxfam
Teresa Sancristoval @MSF - Emergency Desk Manager, Médecins Sans Frontières
Organisation:
Location:
Date: 29 November 2016
Time: 15:00 – 16:30 GMT
The idea that local actors should be at the forefront of humanitarian response in their own country is increasingly widely accepted.
One message, which resounded loud and clear at the first World Humanitarian Summit, was the need for greater localisation of aid.
However, the current localisation agenda gives little consideration to the different humanitarian contexts and their different operational challenges. Can local actors deliver impartial emergency assistance on a meaningful scale in armed conflicts, if they find themselves caught up in the political and military game of the warring parties?
Our expert panel of observers and practitioners from international and local organisations discuss and debate the nuances of the situation on the ground.
Informed by new research from Médecins Sans Frontières which highlights operational challenges to locally led responses in conflict and highly politicised environments, this discussion asks:
- What are the practical implications of locally-led responses in acute conflicts?
- What are the key issues to overcome?
- How can we ensure that locally-led responses conform with key humanitarian principles?
Contributing chair
Wendy Fenton @WendyFenton1 - Coordinator, Humanitarian Practice Network
Speakers
Ed Schenkenberg @ed_heregva - Executive Director, Humanitarian Exchange and Research Centre
Luz Saavedra @alnap - Former Research Fellow, ALNAP
Zaidoun Alzoabi @UOSSM - Chief Executive Officer, Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (via video link)
Charlie Rowley @oxfamgb - Humanitarian Capacity Development Advisor, Global Humanitarian Team, Oxfam
Teresa Sancristoval @MSF - Emergency Desk Manager, Médecins Sans Frontières
Webinar: Food Security. Cash in the City: Addressing food security needs in urban crises. 12/08/2016
Cash in the City: Addressing food security
needs in urban crises
Organisation: ALNAP
Location:
Date: 08 December 2016
Time: 2 to 3:30pm (GMT)
The humanitarian world has made a significant shift towards using cash to help vulnerable people meet their needs, including food security. Despite a growing evidence base, much of our collective experience is in rural areas. How can cash-based approaches meet food security needs in urban crises? Is cash different in an urban context? What are the challenges and lessons learned?
The latest edition in ALNAP’s urban webinar series will explore the shift towards humanitarian cash programming.
Presentations from CRS and NRC will explore urban cash-based programming in Nigeria and Iran. The webinar is co-presented by the Global Food Security Cluster’s Food Security and Livelihoods in Urban Settings working group, and discussions will draw in global perspectives from colleagues in WFP and the American Red Cross.
Speakers:
• Marianna Kuttothara, American Red Cross Society, will open the webinar with reflections on years of cash programming in rural and urban emergencies.
• Giulia Frontini, Catholic Relief Services Nigeria, will share experiences of providing electronic food vouchers/cash in both rural and urban areas of NorthEast Nigeria, to support displaced people fleeing Boko Haram violence. Giulia will focus on targeting, selection of vendors/markets, community participation and security.
• Anthony Dutemple, Norwegian Refugee Council Iran, will draw on his experiences with cash responses across the MENA region, and speak in particular about a new cash programme for Afghan refugees in Iran. His presentation will look at distribution modalities and integrating protection outcomes
• A fourth speaker, TBD, from World Food Programme will join the discussion/Q&A, reflecting on WFP's global urban experiences with cash for food security.
Audience members will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion before, during and after the webinar by posing questions for speakers, sharing their own experiences, responding to polls and continuing the discussion in the Urban Response Community of Practice.
Interested? Sign up for this webinar!
Organisation: ALNAP
Location:
Date: 08 December 2016
Time: 2 to 3:30pm (GMT)
The humanitarian world has made a significant shift towards using cash to help vulnerable people meet their needs, including food security. Despite a growing evidence base, much of our collective experience is in rural areas. How can cash-based approaches meet food security needs in urban crises? Is cash different in an urban context? What are the challenges and lessons learned?
The latest edition in ALNAP’s urban webinar series will explore the shift towards humanitarian cash programming.
Presentations from CRS and NRC will explore urban cash-based programming in Nigeria and Iran. The webinar is co-presented by the Global Food Security Cluster’s Food Security and Livelihoods in Urban Settings working group, and discussions will draw in global perspectives from colleagues in WFP and the American Red Cross.
Speakers:
• Marianna Kuttothara, American Red Cross Society, will open the webinar with reflections on years of cash programming in rural and urban emergencies.
• Giulia Frontini, Catholic Relief Services Nigeria, will share experiences of providing electronic food vouchers/cash in both rural and urban areas of NorthEast Nigeria, to support displaced people fleeing Boko Haram violence. Giulia will focus on targeting, selection of vendors/markets, community participation and security.
• Anthony Dutemple, Norwegian Refugee Council Iran, will draw on his experiences with cash responses across the MENA region, and speak in particular about a new cash programme for Afghan refugees in Iran. His presentation will look at distribution modalities and integrating protection outcomes
• A fourth speaker, TBD, from World Food Programme will join the discussion/Q&A, reflecting on WFP's global urban experiences with cash for food security.
Audience members will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion before, during and after the webinar by posing questions for speakers, sharing their own experiences, responding to polls and continuing the discussion in the Urban Response Community of Practice.
Interested? Sign up for this webinar!
A Blueprint for Social. Learn more about Boston's unprecedented approach to addressing social inequity and the city's resilience challenges.
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Monday, November 21, 2016
Systems Approach to community capacity building and resilience.
To
address issues both here in the U.S., and in our international community within
the diaspora a clear understanding of how to address issues within our
communities must be understood by each of us as emergency management
professionals.
The Next Flint Water Crisis
https://psmag.com/the-next-flint-water-crisis-6436aa92b053#.tpoiqrmcc
A new study suggests a number of minority American neighborhoods are at risk of having unhealthier water than their white counterparts.
By Francie Diep
Walk through an unincorporated stretch of Wake County outside Raleigh, North Carolina, and it might look just as dense and developed as the town proper. But there’s an important, invisible difference: Folks there may not have access to the city’s municipal water system. Instead, their homes draw from private wells and septic tanks.
While not all unincorporated Wake County communities lack piped water, those that have a larger black population are more likely to depend on wells and septic tanks, according to a 2014 study. “They were excluded probably for historical reasons, during the Jim Crow era,” says University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill environmental researcher Jackie MacDonald Gibson, the leader of the 2014 study.
Now, MacDonald Gibson has a new study that demonstrates the toll that history has had on residents’ health. The kitchen tap water in majority-black Wake County communities that depend on wells is more than 50 times more likely to contain coliform bacteria — and more than 700 times more likely to contain E. coli — than the municipal water that’s available to majority-white neighborhoods just next door.
Flint’s Horrifying Water Crisis Is Bigger Than Just Flint
Flint’s story isn’t just about incompetence and bureaucratic failure; it’s a tragedy of austerity as well.psmag.com
Flint’s story isn’t just about incompetence and bureaucratic failure; it’s a tragedy of austerity as well.psmag.com
The presence of coliform bacteria and E. coli indicates that the water has been contaminated with sewage, which can make people seriously ill. If these neighborhoods had municipal water, MacDonald Gibson and her colleague Frank Stillo estimate that the number of annual emergency room visits for gastrointestinal illnesses in these areas would drop by more than one-fifth.
But leaders both in the city and in unincorporated neighborhoods have been reluctant to extend water service, citing costs, according to a surveypublished last year. “I think there’s a lack of awareness of the water quality problem in these wells,” MacDonald Gibson says. The effective result is that Wake County’s black residents bear a disproportionate burden of gastrointestinal disease there.
This may not be a problem only in North Carolina. Studies have shown that other majority-white Southern towns have refused to annex surrounding, majority-black neighborhoods and to extend municipal services to them. The practice is so common that it has a name: underbounding. Researchers have also documented towns underbounding Hispanic neighborhoods in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande and California’s Central Valley.
The Bureaucratic Malfeasance That Created Flint and Sebring’s Water Crises
What good is a federal agency if it doesn’t help the people it’s supposed to serve?psmag.com
What good is a federal agency if it doesn’t help the people it’s supposed to serve?psmag.com
Poor communities of color in the United States have often had to deal with more pollution than their richer, whiter counterparts. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, taught us that one way such environmental injustice happens is when officials make poor decisions and ignore residents’ complaints. Wake County shows that underbounding, whether new or historical, might be another way.
Though it’s common knowledge among environmental researchers that well water is often riskier than municipal water, most politicians and community members are not familiar with the dangers. With this new data in hand, perhaps city officials will finally have the information they need to justify the expense of expanding their municipal water system.