1. HUMANITARIAN COMMUNICATION

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

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

4. 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

5. 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

6. NGO – ORIGINS  RED CROSS -Battle of Solferino 1859- founded 1863  http://www.icrc.org/eng/index.jsp http://www.icrc.org/eng/index.jsp  OXFAM - Greek famine 1943  Save the Children – post WW I  MSF – Biafra / War on Want – Bangladesh

7. 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

8. Tsunami 2004

9. Tsunami death toll Dead/MissingNumber of Stories 19.12.04 – 16.01.05 Indonesia167,000343 Sri Lanka35,000729 Thailand8,200771 Source: UN Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Source: Analysis of Lexis Nexis Stories

10. Niger famine 2005  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/46961 49.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/46961 49.stm

11. 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

12. Disasters Emergency Committee – huge growth in scope – APPEALS  http://www.dec.org.uk/ http://www.dec.org.uk/

13. 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

14. Humanitarianism O dearism – replacing politics  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxH pvok http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxH pvok  What are the implications?