HUMANITARIAN COMMUNICATION

Why care about faraway others?  Post cold war scenario  Huge rise in capacity  Media and immediacy – but selective  What difference does it make?

Explosion in Humanitarian imperative  ‘something must be done’ – urgency  and we can now intervene But what is the effect

Types of disaster?  ‘natural’ vs so-called ‘man-made’  What is the difference? – is the significance in the location of the suffering?  Some emergencies matter more?  Droughts in USA/ tsunami in Pacific

Advocacy and aid  In the media age, ‘emergency assistance and distress relief’ makes news in a way that ‘development’ doesn’t…  ‘Emergency assistance’ constituted… …less than 3% of total bilateral aid until 1990 …8% by 1993 …11.3% by 1999 (source:Overseas Development Institute) Humanitarian multi $bn Industry – Dubai annual fair

NGO – ORIGINS  RED CROSS -Battle of Solferino founded 1863   OXFAM - Greek famine 1943  Save the Children – post WW I  MSF – Biafra / War on Want – Bangladesh

Media worthiness affects allocation of resources Huge disparity in allocation $10 per victim in Congo wars and $1000 per victim in Tsunami – due to media Some crises are invisible and others are given major media coverage – Chinese famine/ Congo war – Kosovo African poverty – ‘tsunami every day’ in terms of deaths but not a media story – no SUDDEN emergency

Tsunami 2004

Tsunami death toll Dead/MissingNumber of Stories – Indonesia167, Sri Lanka35, Thailand8, Source: UN Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Source: Analysis of Lexis Nexis Stories

Niger famine 2005  49.stm 49.stm

The Niger Crisis 2005  May 16 th – UN launch $16m appeal for Niger  July 14 th – Only $3.6m raised so far  July 19 th – BBC reports on Niger  July 27 th - $17m raised in and outside UN

Disasters Emergency Committee – huge growth in scope – APPEALS 

conclusions  The pattern of ‘new humanitarianism’ can reduce conflicts to a good vs evil story – often much more complicated – eg Iraq/Darfur/Rwanda  Military intervention becomes justified under the sweeping term of ‘human rights’  This has severe implications for humanitarian organisations, involving self-definition, levels of donation, patterns of allocation, and the newsworthiness of particular regions

Humanitarianism O dearism – replacing politics  pvok pvok  What are the implications?