Monday to Wednesday of this week was the Millenniumm Development Goals Summit in New York. Country representatives gathered at the UN Headquarters to discuss the progress of the MDGs ten years after they were conceived and with five years to go before they should be realised. For me, I'm not sure what I'll do now the Smmit is over- just about everything I've been doing so far in my internship has been in preparation for the Summt, research for an advocacy brief, selecting photos for a presentation, ringing all the printing companies in New York to find out who could print us 75 lovely copies of our advocacy brief, like, NOW. I very much enjoyed most of what I've been doing, though have not yet had any account of how the education event actually went.
According to who you talk to, MDG 2, achieving universal primary education, has either;
a) fallen off the radar and no-one cares about it any more even though it's so important,
or,
b) been central to the debate of all the MDGs because it's so important.
Education did not get as much coverage as health, it seems to me, but I can't agree that it has fallen off the radar.
Kevin Watkins , who edits the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published a piece in the Guardian demanding that we keep the promise made to the world's children, and international dignitaries such as Queen Rania of Jordan, and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown have continued to champion the cause of education.
For next week, I'm not sure what I'll be doing- beginning preparations for the MDG Summit in 2015, perhaps?
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Sunday, 19 September 2010
If it's cultural, it's not human rights violation.
'Cultural sensitivity' is a concept much touted (though rarely defined) in our line of business. The idea that humanitarian workers should respect the culture in which they work, and, if that culture is not their own, that they should make an effort to understand it, is one generally agreed on. But I find a certain amount of doublethink, and occasional excursions into extreme idiocy based on fuzzy and misguided efforts at cultural sensitivity.
First of all, I find my fuzzy opponents referring to culture as if it were a static thing, and homogenous within national, religious or other delineations, instead of the constantly evolving and complicated thing it is. 'Muslim culture', 'African culture', and, a pet hatred of mine as a term' Western culture' are described as though each could invoke an identical set of values and customs. Thus, a humanitarian colleague of mine with an extreme case of the fuzzies, pondered on whether it was ethical to design education programmes targetting in girls in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, since, she said:
"They don't go to school, and they're happy like that. It's not their culture to go to school"
When I pointed out that education was the right of every child according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she countered that the Convention was ' a Western concept' and only subsided when I informed her that Afghanistan was a signatory to this 'Western' Convention. Of course, there are so many things wrong with her initial statement that I could have argued from so many different angles; such as the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that women and girls are 'happy' to be deprived of education in Afghanistan, or the validity of cultural traditions which exclude half of the population from basic services. Or whether culture really should trump human rights, even if they are a 'Western' concept.
As I said, this colleague was an extreme case -she also came up with the classic line, during a discussion on bribery;
"If it's culture, it's not corruption"
I feel that a well-meaning but uninformed rush to be culturally sensitive can lead us into the same basic errors as those committed by bigoted or prejudiced people, therefore rendering such attempts perfectly counter-productive. To be elaborately 'sensitive' to a national or religious culture while assuming homogeneity and accord among all the people of that country or faith to me smacks of the same kind of ignorance as racism, with better intentions.
First of all, I find my fuzzy opponents referring to culture as if it were a static thing, and homogenous within national, religious or other delineations, instead of the constantly evolving and complicated thing it is. 'Muslim culture', 'African culture', and, a pet hatred of mine as a term' Western culture' are described as though each could invoke an identical set of values and customs. Thus, a humanitarian colleague of mine with an extreme case of the fuzzies, pondered on whether it was ethical to design education programmes targetting in girls in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, since, she said:
"They don't go to school, and they're happy like that. It's not their culture to go to school"
When I pointed out that education was the right of every child according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she countered that the Convention was ' a Western concept' and only subsided when I informed her that Afghanistan was a signatory to this 'Western' Convention. Of course, there are so many things wrong with her initial statement that I could have argued from so many different angles; such as the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that women and girls are 'happy' to be deprived of education in Afghanistan, or the validity of cultural traditions which exclude half of the population from basic services. Or whether culture really should trump human rights, even if they are a 'Western' concept.
As I said, this colleague was an extreme case -she also came up with the classic line, during a discussion on bribery;
"If it's culture, it's not corruption"
I feel that a well-meaning but uninformed rush to be culturally sensitive can lead us into the same basic errors as those committed by bigoted or prejudiced people, therefore rendering such attempts perfectly counter-productive. To be elaborately 'sensitive' to a national or religious culture while assuming homogeneity and accord among all the people of that country or faith to me smacks of the same kind of ignorance as racism, with better intentions.
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Humanitarian Workers and Securtity
In the throes of an essay on international humanitarian law and the protection of humanitarian workers, I came across a very interesting paper. Attacks on humanitarian workers have increased substantially in recent years, with the latest horrific example of the ten people working with International Assistance Mission murdered in Badakhshan, in Afghanistan. These murders were claimed by the Taliban, and then denounced as ‘a crime’ by a senior figure in the Taliban.
The security of humanitarian workers is something I think a lot about, pour cause, and this paper, based on analysis and not only theorising, exploded some assumptions.
Figures for humanitarian workers who have been killed have risen in recent years. World Humanitarian Day, below, is held on the anniversary of the Canal hotel bombing , which happened seven years ago, and killed 22 people in the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq.
While many humanitarians blame the increasing militarisation of aid and the blurring of boundaries between armed forces and humanitarian agencies; the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan are an example of this, there is no actual evidence to suggest that terrorists, criminals and murderers distinguish between agencies that cooperate with the military and those who comply strictly with a policy of neutrality. The motivation of those who carry out these attacks is not clear to those working in the humanitarian sector. Though we may theorise that cooperation with foreign military powers makes targets of civilian workers, we don't know it through empirical evidence. We may deplore such cooperation for other reasons , such as the clear contradiction of humanitarian mandate ( I certainly do), but we can't prove that such organisational intricacies are important to those who murder humanitarian workers.
The security of humanitarian workers is something I think a lot about, pour cause, and this paper, based on analysis and not only theorising, exploded some assumptions.
Figures for humanitarian workers who have been killed have risen in recent years. World Humanitarian Day, below, is held on the anniversary of the Canal hotel bombing , which happened seven years ago, and killed 22 people in the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq.
While many humanitarians blame the increasing militarisation of aid and the blurring of boundaries between armed forces and humanitarian agencies; the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan are an example of this, there is no actual evidence to suggest that terrorists, criminals and murderers distinguish between agencies that cooperate with the military and those who comply strictly with a policy of neutrality. The motivation of those who carry out these attacks is not clear to those working in the humanitarian sector. Though we may theorise that cooperation with foreign military powers makes targets of civilian workers, we don't know it through empirical evidence. We may deplore such cooperation for other reasons , such as the clear contradiction of humanitarian mandate ( I certainly do), but we can't prove that such organisational intricacies are important to those who murder humanitarian workers.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Andrew Grene
Andrew's twin brother Gregory set up the Andrew Grene Foundation in his memory, together with their friend Tim Perutz; a secular charity providing educational assistance to the people of Haiti. Andrew loved Haiti and believed in the country.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
World Humanitarian Day
This Thursday, the 19th of August, was World Humanitarian Day. This day is a celebration of the work of humanitarian aid workers, and a day to raise public awareness of the work they do. On this day last year, I was in the Dublin office of Scheme, where I was volunteering, and this year I was in the international office of Help the Kids. It has been an intense year.
I love this video.
I love this video.
A right and a basic need
In case you were wondering what education in emergencies is, and why it's important.
Many people that I've come across, including humanitarians, who should know better, don't consider education to be a basic need. I concede it's not as immediate as water, shelter, health and food- but it is a basic need.
And a lot of people also see education as a development issue which has no place in humanitarian relief work.
This attitude of 'children need education, but not until things have calmed down' makes me crazy. Every child, everywhere, has the right to an education, and if you're going to wait till you judge the development phase to have started, in some countries you're going to be waiting a long time.
Many people that I've come across, including humanitarians, who should know better, don't consider education to be a basic need. I concede it's not as immediate as water, shelter, health and food- but it is a basic need.
,And a lot of people also see education as a development issue which has no place in humanitarian relief work.
This attitude of 'children need education, but not until things have calmed down' makes me crazy. Every child, everywhere, has the right to an education, and if you're going to wait till you judge the development phase to have started, in some countries you're going to be waiting a long time.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
The Interview
Just a week ago, I arrived in London, from my native Ireland, to start my internship at Save the Children.
I was thrilled to get the internship with Save; it's an organisation I would be happy to work for, and it is one of the leading agencies in the area of education in emergencies, and my role is pretty perfect for what I'm writing on, giving me access to people and information that can really help with my thesis.
When I was offered the internship, I was quite surprised as I had thought the interview had gone dismally badly. It was a phone interview with two people, and I prepared by having my soundbites about How Passionate I Am about Education in Emergencies ready, and was prepared to explain my experience of working on education projects in developing countries, and other fearless exploits. But the role is actually in communications, so their questions tended more toward the 'What experience do you have of website management?' variety. For some reason, I was quite thrown by their not unreasonable questions, and my memory of the interview is of myself mumbling,
"Umm... uh.. yeah, uh.. the internet, yeah.. I use the internet, um, I send, like, emails...' and sounding like a complete technological incompentant. Now, I cannot claim to a technolgy expert but I live in the modern world, and I am not a moron, so I can usually come to grips with technologies that I need to use. So I felt I had not aquitted myself well in the interview. My impressions about the interview were acutally entirely wrong, as one of my interviewers subsequently gave me a call-back and checked that I was clear that this internship wouldn't be managing an education programme, and would I be content with doing humble database management and the like?
I was thrilled to get the internship with Save; it's an organisation I would be happy to work for, and it is one of the leading agencies in the area of education in emergencies, and my role is pretty perfect for what I'm writing on, giving me access to people and information that can really help with my thesis.
When I was offered the internship, I was quite surprised as I had thought the interview had gone dismally badly. It was a phone interview with two people, and I prepared by having my soundbites about How Passionate I Am about Education in Emergencies ready, and was prepared to explain my experience of working on education projects in developing countries, and other fearless exploits. But the role is actually in communications, so their questions tended more toward the 'What experience do you have of website management?' variety. For some reason, I was quite thrown by their not unreasonable questions, and my memory of the interview is of myself mumbling,
"Umm... uh.. yeah, uh.. the internet, yeah.. I use the internet, um, I send, like, emails...' and sounding like a complete technological incompentant. Now, I cannot claim to a technolgy expert but I live in the modern world, and I am not a moron, so I can usually come to grips with technologies that I need to use. So I felt I had not aquitted myself well in the interview. My impressions about the interview were acutally entirely wrong, as one of my interviewers subsequently gave me a call-back and checked that I was clear that this internship wouldn't be managing an education programme, and would I be content with doing humble database management and the like?
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