I was unprepared for what I saw at the Dadaab camp in Kenya. Totally unprepared for the utter sense of panic in the people I met there. These were the newcomers, people who could not fit into the largest refugee …
Yesterday, I played a "disaster game". It was part of an event organised by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), which has brought together development practitioners, students with unbelievable energy, and lawyers and economists that – like me – …
When we are confronted by the image of a child trapped in the rubble of an earthquake, or of a family clinging to the roof of a flooded home, we don’t so much commit to help, as feel committed to …
What’s this then? A whole day dedicated to humanitarian workers? Don’t they get enough air time as the face of disasters, recounting tales of untold suffering on our TVs? Well, no, actually. The sad fact is that regardless of how …
The statistics coming from Haiti now are like telephone numbers, numbing our sense of scale. Two million people needing food; up to 800,000 people living in transitional shelter; up to 4000 temporary classrooms needed; some 240,000 pregnant and lactating women …
Amongst the snowstorm of information clogging the humanitarian wires (Alertnet, Reliefweb, etc) one little nugget, buried at the back of a WHO report caught my eye. ‘The airport is intermittently open and closed. In addition, supplies arriving into the country …
I had a feeling of déjà-vu this morning, as I drove to work in Jerusalem where I have been posted since August. The BBC reception is patchy here, but I could still make out the words: ‘Large-scale disaster… collapsed buildings…. …
It’s been 2 months since I was last in Zimbabwe. A lot has changed since then. The financial crisis here in the UK has started to have a real impact in some people’s lives– hardly a day goes by without …
I was thinking again about that local official in Paoua. He has another constraint – he can’t even get to see the area he administers. It's quite in contrast with my own role - I am traveling right across this …
A few rapidly snatched possessions, some sketchy shelters made from branches and grass and barefoot children being herded out of sight by fearful parents. You have seen it before on TV: another population fleeing from a vicious low-level war. But …
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