But hey! We work in a sector where every crisis is also an opportunity (poor translation ahoy),  so perhaps this is an opportunity to redesign the UN, to eliminate the problems it suffers from and maybe even make it relevant again. Ask yourself the question, what might the UN look like if you devised it for the world we actually live in? The UN has accreted so many layers that such a restructuring will never happen, since the system will collapse before it reforms in any significant way. If we were playing Fantasy Palais des Nations, however, here’s what I would like the humanitarian elements of the UN to look like:

1. All operational work should be stripped from the agencies. Generally they’re just not that good at it, and would be more effective if they focused on advisory services, policy development, advocacy campaigns, and possibly capacity building. “No operations” should be built into their mandates in order to prevent the mission creep that has crippled them over the years.
2. Funding responsibility should also be stripped. As well as costing money on administrative costs and exchange rate losses, it’s an extra layer of bureaucracy that clogs up the works. The only argument that can be made for the UN controlling funding is that this enables better coordination, but the evidence suggests that anybody making this argument is delusional.
3. Break down each agency into functional units comprised of small clusters of specialist staff. These staff would be distributed around the world through virtual office technology, with only small centralised headquarter offices for basic management of these teams and coordination of activities such as advocacy. Lean and mean is the way to go.
4. These staff would then deploy only in situations where their specialist expertise is required, preventing the clusterf*ck you get when every section of every agency tries to get its foot in the office door in a big disasters. These staff would work within other organisations – civilian and military, government and non-government, donor and recipient – and be project-focused.
5. When not deployed, UN staff would act as critical nodes in a global network of humanitarian actors that would all contribute to policy development on a more equal footing. This would create flexible and iterative processes, instead of the sclerotic nonsense that the IASC has to go through every time it wants to issue a proclamation about how many mickle makes a muckle.
6. Operational work would be done by anybody who was capable, funded through bilateral funding on a country basis, possibly through donor secretariats, especially in conflict areas. Since NGOs and other actors already do most of the heavy lifting, this would be a direct contract scheme, with UN nodes playing an advisory role on grants approval and possibly implementation.
7. WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related posts:

1. The World Bank is monitoring your buzz
2. Third World Farmer
3. William Easterly versus the World (Bank)

The Police have routinely ignored previous court orders, so I hope that this is true. The lawyers seem to think so though. I await some confirmation from colleagues and if so, it’s terrific news.

The perpetrators of this event have caused deep and profound personal damage to a lot of decent people. If I were somehow involved in the abduction and torture of a fantastically eloquent, popular and relentless globally-known campaigner, who then became one of the world’s most prominent prisoners of conscience, and she were released, knowing my identity, with the world’s media baying for information, I’d consider the following:

a) Packing my bags (of money, that is),

b) Booking a ticket to  Hong Kong,

c) Trying to get that dirty amnesty agreement sorted out double-quick time.

Update 3 March 2009:

Seems to be true. From hospital, though looking unwell, Jestina is reporting as saying:

I am free now and I must concentrate on my health … The time will come for me to comment to the media. I am still being attended to by the doctors and I might be in here for some weeks to come.

Related posts:

1. Prominent Zimbabwean activist Jestina Mukoko abducted by secret police
2. Update: Activist Jestina Mukoko in Police custody, show trial to come
3. Jestina Mukoko “near death”

The unfiltered refugee voice is hard to find. There are a host of organisations – not just UNHCR, but many many NGOs – that seek to present the refugee voice to the non-refugee, but that voice is being used to further the agendas of those organisations. That agenda may or may not be closely tied to the agenda of the refugees themselves – but how are you to know, when all you have is the filtered, mediated version of that voice? If you want to hear a more direct version, then the Kakuma Refugee Newsletter shows the way forward.

The Kakuma News Reflector is an independent news magazine produced by Ethiopian, Congolese, Ugandan, Rwandan, Somali, Sudanese and Kenyan journalists operating in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

A print version of the online news magazine is circulated in Kakuma camp and town. We will publish on a monthly basis until funding allows us to increase our publications to twice a month.

This is the best news from the humanitarian sector I’ve heard for a very long time, and something I’d hoped to see since I started working on information management and can strongly support. The project is made possible by a Fulbright Research Grant from the US Institute of International Education, and their email address is via Cornell University, so it’s not entirely unfiltered – but it’s good enough.

I found out about this via the Humanitarian Futures Programme, who heard it in turn from Linda Polman (author of the book We Did Nothing). The HFP blog reports that

The blog and newspaper has been causing some serious kinds of hair pulling within the UNHCR and is an absolutely fantastic example of citizen journalism, empowered by the web, completely changing the game of humanitarian business.

Why is it causing serious kinds of hair pulling? It should be clear from headlines such as UNHCR Processing Delays Refugee’s Study Abroad and questions like “Why does UNHCR maintain an incentive policy that does not provide refugees with equal pay for equal work?”

First, it’s accountability in practice, a direct threat to business as usual for aid organisations. Second, it’s unmediated – exactly the sort of refugee voice that UNHCR won’t present at Davos. Third, it demonstrates how information empowers people – something that we’ve been talking about for ages but failed to put into practice. Extending information rights to beneficiaries – in this case, the residents of Kakuma Refugee Camp – is no longer optional, and this are just the beginnings of the next stage of growth for the aid industry.

Related posts:

1. From out of the mouths of refugees
2. At least Google Earth is good for fundraising
3. Voice Over Sudan Protocol

an experience unlike any other on the agenda: an opportunity to step into the world of conflict and experience life as a refugee.

It’s no big secret – times are tough in UN-land right now thanks to the financial crisis, and those bigwigs have got some mighty big pockets to go with their big wigs. Unfortunately the invitation was sent to William Easterley, scourge of the aid industry¹, who posted it on his new (and recommended) blog, adding:

Did the words “insensitive,” “dehumanizing,” or “disrespectful” (not to mention “ludicrous”) ever come up in discussing the plans for “Refugee Run”? I hope such bad taste does not reflect some inability in UNHCR to see refugees as real people with their own dignity and rights.

I wouldn’t like to say whether it reflects such an inability in UNHCR cough cough. However UNHCR clearly thought it might reflect badly on UNHCR in some way, because they made sure that in their press release there was an Actual Refugee on hand to give it the stamp of approval:

The exhibit received a seal of approval from a genuine refugee, Raphael Mwandu from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “The things you see in this simulation are the same as those in the camps,” he said, adding that it would help let people “know what is going on in our world so that they can meet together and find solutions.

The Refugee Run has its defenders, though, and they’re more convincing than the original invitation. In the comments on Easterley’s blog, one of Raphael’s friends explained that

As a friend and colleague of Raphael Mwandu, I can tell you that he works for the (non-UN) Hong Kong organisation that presented the event, and has helped run the Refugee Run for many hundreds of people over the past few years. He was not invited by the UNHCR but came as part of the staff from Hong Kong.

Now that’s fair enough, and I don’t wish to denigrate Raphael’s experiences, or the organisation that has set up the Refugee Run – but wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe him in the press release as one of the organisers of the event, rather than a “genuine refugee”? It’s the equivalent of having a quote saying “Virgin Airlines is the best airline I’ve ever been on” from a Mr R. Branson – it might be true, but it’s not honest.

Related posts:

1. Somali refugees (and others) enter Google Earth
2. Ugandan Displaced join Somali Refugees in Google Earth
3. At least Google Earth is good for fundraising

I mentioned the .kmz file that Stefan at Ogle Earth has been putting together, which includes the UNOSAT layer. Stefan also lamented the fact that – while they provide frequent updates and quality outputs – UNOSAT products are only provided in PDF format.

And yet, the result, always, is a PDF map, which is great for printing out but not any good for any other kind of use. In some cases, the PDFs are locked against everything but printing, which means taking screenshots in order to rasterize them for placement in Google Earth… Given the global scope of these maps, their timeliness and usefulness, wouldn’t it be great if these were automatically published as KML to the Global Awareness default layer in Google Earth? People wouldn’t even need to go look for maps when they zoom in on a region hit by an emergency.

Well, I’ll agree with Stefan up to a point. PDF files are useful for nothing except printing – but most of UNOSAT’s potential users only want to print them , and playing around with the data is the last thing on their minds. However the good news is that it looks like they’re already starting – the damage assesssment data is also available as a geodatabase file and as a .kmz file. Einar has been circulating these versions to people working on the response, but has reservations on two grounds.

1. The first is regarding the added value of releasing the data more widely – what is it, exactly? My response is that to fulfill their mission as effectively as possible, UNOSAT should be producing multiple formats and distributing across various distribution channels – and a side effect of this will be an increase the possibility of useful and interesting applications emerging. We can’t predict what they might be – and they might not even appear – but the whole neogeography field is based around innovation – it just needs the data to enable it.
2. The second concern is more difficult to address – the question of whether the data will be misinterpreted or misused. This data will never be 100% accurate, which can lead to criticism of the agency publishing it if people don’t understand that. There’s also a slim chance that the data might be abused – for example, to misrepresent the situation on the ground – although the chances of this seem very small. My response to these problems is that people are free to criticise on the basis of the PDF file already, and releasing the data is unlikely to increase the type or frequency of criticism. We faced this all the time in the Humanitarian Information Centres – people would come in waving a printout and saying “Your maps are wrong!”, to which charge we would patiently explain that all maps are wrong, and would they like to help us improve?

To some extent Open Street Map have already started to deal with these issues using their existing community mechanisms, but UNOSAT is different – it’s a formal organisation in a large bureaucracy without the mandate or means to deal with public enquiries like this. Perhaps the best approach would be a tag-team of UNOSAT and OSM – sharing data as widely as possible, with UNOSAT the corporate source and OSM the buffer to address these issues as they arise?

1. Although under-utilized on the ground – that’s the next obstacle we have to overcome, guys!

Related posts:

1. Mapless in Gaza
2. UNOSAT makes the best pirate maps
3. Cyclone Nargis, you know?

Related posts:

1. Lebanon Virtual Humanitarian Information Centre
2. Irony in humanitarian information
3. 5 Years of Information Management for Humanitarian Operations

• A Sahana instance is being set up for the use of anybody who needs it, with the support of INSTEDD and possible uptake by NetHope members.
• Direct Relief International have done up a KMZ file of health facilities in-country, based on the WHO 2002 Global Health Atlas.
• OCHA are prepping a HIC to support the existing Myanmar Information Management Unit, who have already put out some W3 maps. UPDATE: MapAction have also deployed in support of OCHA and have maps available on their website.
• UNOSAT have also got their sat on with a KMZ file of the cyclone path and the usual satellite mapping.
• Ditto ITHACA, who have released a series of satellite maps showing the impact of Nargis.
• ReliefWeb’s info stream on Cyclone Nargis is of course like drinking water from a hose, with their map filter probably most useful.
• The WorldWideHelp blog roars into action with all the news that’s fit to blog.
• A couple of the mailing list discussions that I’m on are talking about ways in which we might leverage cellphone and/or satellite phone communications if they become available, particularly for tracking relief and relief personnel.
• Digital Globe and Geo-Eye have hopped the NASA satellite for an updating KML layer on the cyclone.
• Microsoft apparently have a team on standby to deploy the refugee tracking software that was developed for Kosovo (no reference yet). Microsoft are focused on supporting the HIC, and are ready to respond to other requests from the humanitarian community.
• Telecoms sans Frontieres are also on standby out of Bangkok, waiting for access to free up.
• Also Infoworld points out that – with regards to early warning – IT didn’t fail Myanmar, people did.

I’m nowhere near being deployed for this one (particularly as the government apparently is still refusing entry to foreign aid workers), but all of this makes me feel that we’re headed in the right direction. However until the government lets agencies start doing their jobs with less restrictions on movement and communications, we’re not going to see the benefits – another example of how the technology can be rendered much less useful when the political environment isn’t supportive. I leave you with the words of Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of ASEAN in his speech last Thursday:

In spite of the technology that we have, in spite of the power that we have, in spite of the network that we have, we still lose lives needlessly… So it is more than just the power of technology, it is more than just the transformation of society through technology, it is certainly a shift in paradigm here in the minds of our people and particularly our leaders. Because if you don’t have that shift, millions and billions of dollars worth of technology cannot deliver effective, timely relief to people when they need it most, because we have reservations about opening up our borders for cooperation, because we have hesitation about cooperating with the outside world, because we have mistrust of the outside world.

Related posts:

1. InSTEDD publishes!
2. Scrappy Maps for Cyclone Sidr
3. Everybody wants a piece of Darfur – Wired Edition

You should probably read it in any case.

Related posts:

1. Humanitarian Information Centres recognised at the UN 21 awards
2. 5 Years of Information Management for Humanitarian Operations
3. ECB4 Report Launch: Information and Technology Requirements

Quite a lot. ReliefWeb is the single most information portal for the humanitarian community, so it’s worth paying attention to how that community uses online services, what sorts of information it values, and so on. It’s also interesting because ReliefWeb went through a huge overhaul a couple of years ago, described in Sebastian Naidoo’s valuable article from the Information Management Journal, “Redesigning the ReliefWeb” – a redesign which I think was more interesting for the process (described by Sebastian) than the final result – but unfortunately there isn’t really any available baseline comparison to judge whether that investment has been worthwhile.

I’d love to promise you that this is going to be really exciting, but it isn’t. All I can give you is an impressionistic take on the stats…

A large proportion of users are coming back at least once a week, if not more often. This is an impressive result which demonstrates how critical ReliefWeb is for the sector. It’s also a tremendous opportunity for ReliefWeb to create a real community around the site, which is something that hasn’t really been explored properly yet. This question is particularly important because the achievement needs to be qualified – the main reason why people visit ReliefWeb is “Job Searching”. This isn’t a surprise to anybody who knows ReliefWeb – the Vacancies section has always been the most popular section of the site – but it remains problematic. How can ReliefWeb use the popularity of the vacancies to direct users towards more interesting and/or useful parts of the site.

It’s very obvious how narrative-driven ReliefWeb users are: the five most valuable types of information are all textual (Situation Reports, Country Background Information, Analysis and Evaluation, News and Assessments). Most of these resources, in my opinion, offer a very low return on investment for the reader – they’re lots of work to plough through, with very little substantive content for most of them. So what about non-narrative information? Maps are sixth in line, most valuable to 9.2% of respondents, and Financial Reports and Appeals are most valuable to a miserable 2.9% of respondents. That’s not a bad % for maps, but are people getting maps from other sources – UNOSAT, MapAction, HICs? It would be useful to know exactly what maps they’re downloading – this would be a very useful stat for ReliefWeb to release.

There are some interesting open questions tucked away at the end of the survey (what technical features would you like, what is the main weakness of the site) but they haven’t been crunched into anything useful. The pop-up box just gives me a long, long, long list of responses, many of which are gibberish. I used to speak gibber, but my language skills are rusty – it may take me some time to get anything useful out of them. A quick glance at the responses demonstrates a sad truth of surveys – never, ever ask an open question, because you’ll only get a useful answer about 30% of the time.

ReliefWeb’s position as the single most important online resource for the humanitarian community isn’t going to be challenged any time soon – but it will be challenged. While it is an effective portal site – breakdowns by country / disaster / theme – I’m not convinced that ReliefWeb is really using its position to shape the way the sector uses online tools, to represent the sector to the outside world, to provide critical operational information in a wide range of formats.

The only way that will change (particularly since ReliefWeb suffers from being trapped inside OCHA) is if enough people lobby OCHA to enable ReliefWeb to be more responsive both to the needs of users – but also to the changing technology available to us. In many ways ReliefWeb reflects the problems facing the UN as a whole, in danger of being overtaken by faster and more flexible organisations. This user survey is a good starting point for ReliefWeb – and it’s especially impressive that they’ve made the entire results of the survey available if you want to see for yourself.

Related posts:

1. ReliefWeb Webinar
2. PreventionWeb launches
3. InSTEDD publishes!

Unveiling a new UNHCR layer in Google Earth before invited guests at UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters, Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone hailed the project as means to educate people worldwide on the plight of refugees and on the humanitarians who help them.

“Google Earth is a very powerful way for UNHCR to show the vital work that it is doing in some of the world’s most remote and difficult displacement situations,” said Johnstone. “By showing our work in its geographical context, we can really highlight the challenges we face on the ground and how we tackle them.”

I download the UNHCR KML file, fire up my creaky old version of Google Earth and have a look. The first thing I notice is that every time I click on a link for more information, it tells me how much it costs to buy school or farm equipment, and gives me a link to UNHCR fundraising so I can cough up right there.

So Google Earth – one of the most powerful yet accessible technology tools ever created, at the vanguard of a geospatial data revolution – is reduced to lining the pockets of UNHCR – an agency, incidentally, that recently came bottom of Ranking of Donor Agencies on Best Practices in Aid (Where Does The Money Go? [pdf], Easterly and Putze 2008). I don’t think that this is the best way to reach out to the public if you’re serious about educating them about refugee issues.

Now that I’ve got that rage off my chest, what’s positive about the UNHCR Google Earth layer? Well, it’s a start, and there are some interesting features; if you click on the layer for accessibility, it presents you with a visualisation of the catchment areas of water points in a refugee camp.

This is useful because it starts to give people an idea of one of the key issues for refugee management and the complexity of running a refugee camp. However it doesn’t really go much further than that – there’s no explanation of why those catchment areas are important, or how this information could be used. I’d also be surprised to hear that UNHCR staff working in the field are using this sort of tool to plan camp construction and management, but I’d love to hear from any UNHCR staff if I’m wrong… but that’s exactly the sort of thing we should be doing.

It does give a sense of the global span of refugee issues, and by focusing on three different locations it does present a range of different environments. However it’s still peddling the message that refugees are fundamentally people who need help, and that international organisations are the only ones that can help them. There’s nothing (that I saw) about the primary responsibility of governments to address the needs of refugees, or about the fact the primary source of support for most refugees is the refugees themselves.

If you’re interested in finding out how great UNHCR is, it’s a fantastic resource. If you’re interested in getting a deeper understanding of refugee issues, you probably want to look somewhere else. I realise that I’m starting to sound really bitter in these sorts of posts, but please understand – that’s because I think we should be doing better. Much, much better.

Related posts:

1. Somali refugees (and others) enter Google Earth
2. Ugandan Displaced join Somali Refugees in Google Earth
3. Google Earth catches Avian Flu