The World Humanitarian Day honours aid workers

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

The Humanitarian Day 2011 “People Helping People” celebrates the work of all those who risk their lives to help others and it is also a way to remember those who are still in pain or struggling to live, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, told in a special event with the Secretary General Friday.

She explained that this year’s celebration goes beyond the previous Humanitarian Days to focus on aid workers and their stories. “We celebrate the work of thousands of aid workers”, Amos said

The Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, supported Amos’ speech saying the World Humanitarian Day is dedicated to those who chose to save someone else’s life in spite of differences in gender, religion or race. He underlined the efforts of many aid workers in countries that are living under conflict like Afghanistan, Haiti, Japan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

“Wherever there are people in need, there are people who help them – men and women coming together to ease suffering and bring hope”, the Secretary-General said.

Regarding Somalia and the general situation in the Horn of Africa, both Ban and Amos remembered that humanitarian efforts have not been enough to deal with the situation and that more than 1 billion dollars are still needed to face the drought and famine that has affected more than 12 million people.

“We need to keep the attention focused on the Horn of Africa”, Amos stressed.

She also announced that the United Nations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) started a global campaign about the situation on the Horn of Africa and that a special mini summit about the topic will be held at the UN General Assembly on September 24th.

The UN General Assembly proclaimed the World Humanitarian Day on 19 August 2008 to commemorate the killing of 22 UN staff members in 2003, after the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq. More than 150 people were also wounded on the attack.

Citizens Chart Crime Using Online Maps

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

NEW YORK, Aug 19, 2011 (IPS) - "I was walking down the street, talking on my cell phone, when a guy on a motorbike came by and grabbed the phone out of my hand. I ran after him but I couldn't catch him. He had probably been following me."

This message, from a person who had his cell phone stolen in the southern Brazilian city of São Paulo, was posted on WikiCrimes, a web site where citizens who have lost confidence in the effectiveness of police action can report crimes directly.

WikiCrimes in Brazil, and similar initiatives in Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, provide interactive maps that people can use to anonymously report crimes, describe what happened and pinpoint the location. In this way, crime mapping identifies danger zones - crime hotspots - within a region with generally high crime rates, to enhance people's awareness, preparedness and safety.

According to a report on Citizen Security and Human Rights, by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in early 2010 Latin America was the region with the highest average murder rate in the world, 25.6 per 100,000 population. Young people aged 15-29 were the most frequent victims, with a murder rate of 68.9 per 100,000 people in this age group.

The crime maps seek to supplement the paucity of official crime reports at police stations, and to guide implementation of policies to fight crime, Vasco Furtado, a systems engineer who created WikiCrimes, told IPS.

"It's very common nowadays to hear about someone who has been mugged, but who is not going to report it to the police because they are convinced nothing would be done. Surveys of victims of crime in Brazilian cities show that under-reporting in the most densely populated areas may be as high as 60 percent for some offences," he said.

WikiCrimes receives crime reports from around the world, although most originate in Brazil.

In Venezuela, crime data maps can be accessed at the VicTEAMS and QuieroPaz sites.

VicTEAMS was created in 2009 in reaction to the thousands of hold-ups, kidnappings and murders committed in Venezuela, and especially in the capital, Caracas, considered the second most dangerous city in Latin America after Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, according to a study by the Mexican Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSP-JP).

An online Crime Map of Mexico City was created by the newspaper El Universal, and a Buenos Aires province "map of insecurity" was funded by Argentine businessman and centre-right lawmaker Francisco de Narváez.

Crime map sites have also been set up in Chile and Panama. The Chilean crime map distinguishes between official crime reports and online reports from citizens, and Mi Panamá Transparente (My Transparent Panama), created by a group of journalists and non-governmental organisations, widens the focus to include swindles and corruption.

The crime problem in Venezuela is exacerbated by the lack of official statistics, said Ángel Méndez, a consultant at Tendencias Digitales, a firm that carries out market research in the field of information technology.

"Venezuela is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, and unfortunately there are no official statistics to monitor the violence. Body counts from the morgues are published in the media every Monday, but there is no crime database available," Méndez told IPS.

Citizens as agents of change

According to VicTEAMS, online maps are a useful tool towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of targets adopted in 2000 by the international community to drastically reduce poverty, hunger, inequality, illness, mortality and environmental degradation across the globe by 2015.

The team responsible for crafting the web site attended an international workshop on "Engaging Citizens in Development Management and Public Governance for the Achievement of the MDGs", organised by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the government of the Spanish region of Catalonia in the regional capital, Barcelona, in June 2010.

The meeting produced the Barcelona Declaration on "The Critical Role of Public Service in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals", stating that "citizens' engagement has to be considered to accelerate the progress towards reaching the MDGs," and governments should work alongside citizens to address social problems proactively.

Wider access to the internet in Latin American countries has been crucial to the rise of online tools like crime maps. Governments and NGOs in the region are promoting free or low-cost access to information and communication technologies for low-income sectors of the population.

A Brazilian government programme called Computers for Inclusion, and the Infocentres that provide access and computer literacy courses in Venezuela, are typical of such initiatives.

Crime maps and the problem of data accuracy

The interactive capability of crime maps and other online tools can hinder their effectiveness, due to incomplete or inaccurate crime reporting.

"At WikiCrimes we are concerned about false reporting. It is up to users to provide the system with information that boosts its credibility. Links can be added to videos, newspapers, photos or any other document that supports the informant's credibility," Furtado said.

On interactive crime maps, the incidents reported depend on the goodwill of citizens, but cooperation with government agencies can be decisive.

"The authorities do not view WikiCrimes as their ally, because it challenges the status quo. They are afraid of being pressured by society," said Furtado.

Academics like Iria Puyosa, an expert on social networking and social capital, say "the problem of violent crime in Latin America will not be solved by online maps," which are useful to a limited extent, for fighting invisibility and the absence of information, she told IPS.

The impact of social networks

The connections between the worldwide web and other innovative technology, like cell phones, favour online crime reporting. According to information from Tendencias Digitales, 27 percent of internet access is dialled up by mobile phone in countries like Venezuela, and a large proportion of citizens use smart phones to report crimes or traffic conditions, via Twitter.

In fact, Latin America is the world's second region for users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a proportion of the population, after North America, according to SocialTimes, an information source on social media.

The July 2011 Web 2.0 Ranking produced by Tendencias Digitales named Chile, Brazil and Venezuela as the top three Latin American countries for social media use.

"We are more inclined to sharing and paying attention to what people are saying. For instance, Facebook penetration, measured as a percentage of the population, is 26 percent in Latin America compared to 20 percent worldwide. Performing the same calculation for Twitter, we find its penetration in Venezuela is eight percent, compared to three percent for Latin America and the rest of the world," said Méndez, quoting figures from the study.

Twitter accounts like @SINviolenciaMX (violence-free Mexico) foster the development of a user network where people can both post and receive information about crime zones or traffic jams.

However, Puyosa stressed that messages from smart phones or social networks cannot be regarded as "real" crime reports.

"Effective denunciation of a crime, with the aim of evoking a law enforcement response, must be made formally to the police. Victims may vent their feelings of frustration via Twitter or Facebook, but these are not effective channels for reporting crime," she said.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104830

"Governments Must Listen to the People, Not the Polluters"

José Domingo Guariglia interviews DANIEL MITTLER, Political Director of Greenpeace International


Photo :Martin Horak

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8, 2011 (IPS) - The historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked one of the world's seminal international conferences on the environment, creating or reinforcing a slew of U.N. treaties and protocols on climate change, biodiversity, desertification and forests.

Still, nearly 20 years later, as the United Nations prepares for a follow-up Rio Plus 20 conference in Brazil next June, the Earth Summit's successes and failures are coming under increased scrutiny.

In an interview with IPS, the political director of Greenpeace International, Daniel Mittler, said that since the Rio summit, governments have clearly failed to make any advances on sustainable development governance.

"They have created powerful new laws to protect the interests of business, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but they have failed to provide the poor and the environment with the kind of institutional support they need," he said.

"The green economy is starting to happen. However, we know that the transition is not fast enough," Mittler added.

The upcoming Rio Plus 20 conference in Brazil is expected to promote actions to guarantee that economic activities will not further harm the environment and a new institutional framework that will allow sustainability in a long term.

In the run-up to the conference, representatives of civil society will meet in Bonn Sep. 3-5 at a U.N. Conference for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), that will discuss the topic "Sustainable Societies; Responsive Citizens".

"NGOs need to hold governments and business to account, and they need to provide ideas for solutions, and also organise public support for delivering concrete steps forward for people and the environment," Mittler said.

Greenpeace will participate in this NGO conference to make sure that "governments and businesses are ready to respond to the needs of the poor and the planet rather than dirty industries and their lobbyists," Mittler said.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: The Rio Conference was held in 1992. Ten years later there was another conference in Johannesburg. Why is it important to have a new conference on sustainable development?

A: Conferences themselves are never important. Results are. Big conferences have often failed in recent years. Rio Plus 10 (Johannesburg), for example, adopted what we termed a "Plan of Inaction". That said, global conferences are key hooks for global debates and opportunities to highlight current failures and current and future opportunities. Development since Rio has been everything but sustainable.

If returning to Rio is to make any sense, governments will have to get serious about implementing the many promises of Rio they have broken, business will have to seize the opportunity fair and clean development provides, and dirty lobbyists will have to be exposed for holding us back.

For Greenpeace, Rio Plus 20 will only be important if it delivers real advances for people and the planet.

Q: You have worked with Greenpeace International and Friends of the Earth. What has been the contribution of the NGOs to environmental meetings?

A: NGOs need to hold governments and business to account, need to provide ideas for solutions, and need to organise public support for delivering concrete steps forward for people and the environment.

The discussions about Rio Plus 20 are in many ways only just the beginning. NGOs must engage with them with honesty and stand up against those trying to "greenwash" business as usual and call it "green economy".

NGOs must also resist just doing the kind of campaigns they did 10 and 20 years ago, simply because we have done it before. We must analyse the current situation and choose targeted inputs in those areas that are most likely to see real change.

Q: What are Greenpeace International's suggestions for the Rio Plus 20?

A: We have many. Rio Plus 20 must support an energy revolution based on renewable energy and energy efficiency and providing access to energy for all.

Governments and businesses must commit to zero deforestation by 2020. Developed countries and corporations must end policies and funding that drive deforestation.

Rio Plus 20 must make the transition to a green economy fair and equitable and commit to a decent jobs agenda. It must strengthen the governance system that delivers an "environment for development" by upgrading the U.N. Environment Programme to specialised agency status.

Greenpeace calls for a new implementing agreement under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) for the conservation of marine biodiversity and sustainable management of human activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Q: Will Greenpeace be at the conference "Sustainable Societies – Responsive Citizens" that will take place in Bonn?

A: We will be participating and I am looking forward to speaking on one of the panels. Our action plan is what I have just outlined. These action points are the key test cases, whether Rio Plus 20 will move us towards sustainable societies - and whether governments and businesses are ready to respond to the needs of the poor and the planet rather than dirty industries and their lobbyists.

Q. What comes after the Rio Plus 20 Conference?

A: The next big test for the global community will be 2015, when governments will likely have missed many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in many countries.

A global commitment to an economy based on renewables and efficiency, to zero deforestation and the adoption of a legal instrument to protect the high seas - all that could be next, if governments listen to the people rather than polluting corporations.

Clean industries must help us ensure governments stop standing in their way and get serious about the transition to a fair and clean global economy. What's next also depends on all of us. I invite all to go to www.greenpeace.org to join us to hold governments and businesses to account - and to deliver real solutions with all who are willing to do so.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56776

UN declares famine in three new regions of Somalia

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 (IPS)- The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, confirmed that the state of famine in the country was extended to three more areas: the Afgoye Corridor, the capital Mogadishu and Middle Shabelle, the spokesperson of the UN Secretary General, Martin Nesirky, told reporters Wednesday.

Bowden said the measure reflects the UN’s concern for the drastic situation in southern Somalia. He also invited the international community to scale up the aid actions in the country and the whole Horn of Africa region.

With the new announcements, the number of areas that are suffering from famine in Somalia increased to five. In the capital, Mogadishu, famine has been declared due to the huge influx of refugees that have arrived in the last two months.

On 20 July, the United Nations declared famine in Bakool and Lower Shabelle, approximately 400 Km from Mogadishu, after weeks of an intense drought that created the worst emergency in the region in 60 years. The crisis has affected 12,4 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, told reporters Monday that more than 1.4 billion dollars are still needed to face the drought and that famine could spread to five or six more regions. She also encouraged the cooperation from foundations and private companies.

“This will not be a short crisis”, said Valerie Amos at an Emergency Ministerial Meeting held in Rome, Italy, this week. She appointed that the emergency could last for three or four months, at least.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that just 1 billion dollars have been received so far from donors all over the world. Approximately 1,300 Somali refugees arrive to Kenya and several hundred flee to Ethiopia every day.

Humanitarian efforts in Somalia have also been affected in part by the operations of al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda supporting group that banned foreign aid in the country since 2009 and in this case only granted limited access.

UN Requests 1.4 Billion Dollars More to Save Horn of Africa

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 1, 2011 (IPS) - More than 1.4 billion dollars are still needed to battle the drought that has hit the Horn of Africa, and in particular Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, UN Under-Secretary- General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, told reporters Monday

The drought and the lack of food in the Horn of Africa are affecting approximately 12.4 million people, and according to Amos, the famine that was declared in two regions of Somalia could spread to five or six areas if massive aid does not arrive in the next weeks.

She said what is happening in the Horn of Africa should be a "wake up call" and that the drought did not take anybody "by surprise". She also said that cooperation from foundations and private companies will be welcome.

In Somalia, the United Nations has encountered many obstacles providing aid to populations in need primarily due to the presence of armed groups. She said that number of affected people is increasing everyday and the strategy consists in delivering aid to Mogadishu directly.

Particularly, the most urgent aid is for Somali refugees who live in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.

In Southern Kordofan, Sudan, there is no access for UN staff and the work of the humanitarian agencies is "extremely limited". "This will not be a short crisis", said Amos at an Emergency Ministerial Meeting in Rome last week. She predicted the emergency could last for three or four months, at least.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) are working directly in the affected areas. The WFP has already airlifted food into zones of Somalia where access was limited.

The African Union also announced the possibility of a summit meeting of world leaders to discuss the situation in Somalia. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that nearly 1 billion dollars have been received so far from donors all over the world to combat the worst drought faced by Africa in 60 years. Approximately 1,300 Somali refugees arrive in Kenya and several hundred flee to Ethiopia every day. (END)