Special News--December 2022
Hurting Humans--Helping Humans
Updates from the Humanitarian SectorThings to know--Resources to use
Department of Chiquimula, Guatemala. "Romuanda (62), makes a carpet at home with her grandchildren. Chronic undernutrition and stunting affect nearly half of all children under 5 in Guatemala. But help is not always available - residents of Chiquimula said: "We don't get support too often out here." " Image from the cover of the GHO 2023 (OCHA/Vincent Tremeau).
Non hay tan buen tesoro como el bien facer,
nin tan precioso oro, nin tan dulce placer.
***Doing good is the greatest treasure,
better than gold, better than pleasure.*
Sem Tob, Proverbios Morales,14th century, Spain---------
Overview
In this Update we turn our attention to the growing numbers of fellow humans who are in great need of humanitarian assistance, currently estimated to be 339 million people. This staggering statistic of "hurting humans" is more than the population of the United States of America (331 million)!
Calamities and conflicts, and their various underlying influences such as climate shifts, health epidemics, social inequities, poverty, and the endemic practice of corruption and selfish consumption, continue to sadly take their toll on people-planet wellbeing. In many cases the ongoing humanitarian quagmire--locally through globally--involves a vicious cycle of humans hurting humans. Yet fortunately it also involves a virtuous cycle of humans helping humans.
Part One--The GHO 2023
Specifically we feature the Global Humanitarian Overview 2023 (GHO 2023), just launched on 1 December (Michèle attended the live launch at the UN in Geneva and Kelly virtually attended a sequential launch in Riyadh). The report is divided into three areas: Global Trends, Response Plans, and Delivering Better. This highly respected report is published annually by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in collaboration with humanitarian partners across the world.
We share some key figures and messages from the GHO 2023 below with hopes that it will spur you on to read more! Our suggestion is that you set some time aside to look through the short and highly readable GHO 2023 Introduction "At a Glance" which includes summaries, infographics, and pictures.
OCHA describes the GHO as "the world’s most comprehensive, authoritative and evidence-based assessment of humanitarian need. It provides a global snapshot of the current and future trends in humanitarian action for large-scale resource mobilization efforts, and explores opportunities to more effectively deliver humanitarian assistance." (Global Humanitarian Overview 2023, page 2)
Part Two--Resources from Five Humanitarian Organizations
We also include variety of new and ongoing resources from five other respected organizations in the humanitarian sector:
1. The newly launched Child and Family Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Resource Collection by the MHPSS Network and the MHPSS Collaborative.
2. The newly launched Summaries for Key Operational Guidance by the Interagency Standing Committee (IASC).
3. The newly launched Humanitarian Accountability Report 2022: Accountability is Non-Negotiable along with the growing number of resources for organizational health and staff wellbeing by the Core Humanitarian Standard Alliance (CHS Alliance).
4. The online reports and analyses by The New Humanitarian, especially its Weekly Roundup of news and stories.
Applications--Making It Personal
--Review the list of organizations and resources described below.
--Probe further into a few of the items that interest you the most. The GHO 2023 Abridged Report is a great place to go deeper.
--Share this Update with your colleagues, organization(s), and networks. Discuss it together and consider practical applications--for both your work and life!
Going further--see these Global Integration Updates:
Arming the World–Promoting Positive Peace (September 2022)
Climate-Conflict-Corruption: Safeguarding People/Planet (July 2021)
Stories from the Sectors: Desperate Journeys and More (March 2020)
Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michèle
MCAresources@gmail.com
Featured Resources
Hurting Humans--Helping Humans
Updates from the Humanitarian Sector
Things to know--Resources to use
Interactive map from a GHO 2023 webpage showing the needs for humanitarian assistance and protection (339 million people) and the number of people targeted by inter-agency-efforts (239 million people). See the report for more details.
Tórnase sin tardar la mar mansa muy brava;
el mundo hoy despreciar al que ayer honraba.
Por ende el grande estado al hombre que ha saber,
face venir cuitado y tristezas haber.
***
Just as placid seas can quickly turn fierce in a storm
so honor today can become tomorrow’s scorn.
Therefore remember our exalted state
can suddenly turn to sadness by fate.*
Sem Tob, Proverbios Morales,14th century, Spain
---------
Part One
GHO 2023
DIre News and Resolute Action
Global Humanitarian Overview 2023 (GHO 2023), OCHA "The Global Humanitarian Overview is the world’s most comprehensive, authoritative and evidence-based assessment of humanitarian needs. It aims to fight hunger, killer diseases, gender-based violence and displacement, through plans that prioritize those who need help the most." (GHO website, 2022). Here are some of the main highlights organized into the three main sections of the report: Global Trends, Response Plans, and Delivering Better.
1. Global Trends
Some highlights from the Introduction--At a Glance
"After 20 years, forced displacement shows no sign of slowing. More than 1 per cent of the world’s population — or 103 million people — are displaced...
Violent conflict continues to take a heavy toll on civilians, especially when explosives are used in populated areas. Children remain especially vulnerable, and the number of attacks on schools and hospitals has increased. Violence against aid workers is increasing, and 98 per cent of those killed were working in their own country.
The largest global food crisis in modern history is unfolding, driven by conflict, climate shocks and the looming threat of global recession. Hundreds of millions of people are at risk of worsening hunger. Acute food insecurity is escalating, and by the end of 2022, at least 222 million people across 53 countries are expected to face acute food insecurity and need urgent assistance. Starvation is a very real risk for 45 million people in 37 countries.
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises worldwide, with climate-related disasters driving increased levels of risks and vulnerability. The past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record and 2022 is estimated to be among the hottest...
The global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is no longer achievable, with 90 million more people experiencing this challenging reality than previously projected. Available jobs remain at below pre-pandemic levels, and rising inflation is expected to reach 10 per cent in emerging markets and developing economies...
Global education is in crisis due to the pandemic’s ongoing impacts. Schoolchildren in middle-income countries endured significantly longer school closures than those in high-income countries. The digital divide persists: Of the 1.6 billion students out of school, 1.3 billion had no Internet connection at home or a device to learn on — a situation that is even more acute for those students living in humanitarian crises."
2. Response Plans
Some highlights from the Introduction-Global Achievements
"Global Achievements" for 2022. See the report for more details.
"Reaching more people with quality aid. In 2022, the UN and partner organizations aimed to assist 216 million people through 35 country plans and 8 regional plans. This equated to an 18 per cent increase in the original number of people targeted for assistance at the beginning of 2022, largely driven by the combined effect of climate change, the war in Ukraine, economic shocks and growing food insecurity. Of all people targeted by plans at country level, 157 million of those people (79 per cent) benefited from at least one form of aid during the year.
Humanitarians invested in understanding the needs of affected communities, listening to their priorities and feedback to adapt their response: 14.9 million people used feedback mechanisms to share their concerns, make complaints and ask questions. And when financial assistance was expressed as the most pressing need, humanitarians adapted, for example by providing multipurpose cash assistance to 4.2 million Ukrainians...
Faced with rising hunger across the globe, humanitarians took action to fight food insecurity, preserve lives and livelihoods, and limit the adoption of negative coping mechanisms...
Faced with a continuing and complex health crisis, humanitarian partners worked on all fronts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, ensure the maintenance of essential health services, and respond to new cholera and Ebola outbreaks. Emergency health assistance reached 40.3 million people in the first half of 2022...
Multisectoral humanitarian assistance. In 2022, humanitarians provided food, health care, dignified shelter, basic non-food items (NFIs), and safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Assistance was designed and adapted across different sectors to reach the increasing number of people forced to flee their homes and becoming displaced in host communities or camps. The Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) Cluster and partners provided 9 million displaced people with assistance. Rural communities living in hard-to-reach areas were also prioritized. For example, in Afghanistan’s Badghis Province, 195,000 people accessed clean water..."
3. Delivering Better
Some highlights for the Introduction—At a Glance
Larkana District, Pakistan. A boy uses a large cooking pan to ferry people from a flooded community in Larkana District, Sindh Province. OCHA/Pierre Peron
"The Central Emergency Response Fund and the Country-Based Pooled Funds continue to demonstrate their unique ability to expand and contract, anticipating a crisis and adapting as it evolves to ensure that life-saving assistance reaches people in need. As of November 2022, the funds have allocated $1.7 billion to assist people most in need.
Humanitarian negotiations are the backbone of access, and they help reach populations in need, despite increasingly difficult operating environments...
Early action is helping to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA)...
The critical role played by local and national actors is reflected in increasing levels of leadership and participation in humanitarian response. Local and national actors are included in at least 80 per cent of all Humanitarian Country Teams, and they help with programming and funding decisions. Local women-led organizations are increasingly engaged in the design of humanitarian programme cycles and planning, particularly in Ethiopia, Iraq, Myanmar, Palestine, Syria and Yemen.
Efforts for greater accountability to the people affected by crises have gained momentum, ensuring community engagement and accessible systems for feedback into operations..."
These young Afghan girls and their families were displaced by violence--like millions of other people globally. They sought refuge in the Tajikan site for Internally Displaced Peoples, near to Kandahar City. Image: Cover of the Global Humanitarian Overview 2022, OCHA/Charlotte Cans (November 2019)
Part Two
Five Humanitarian Organizations
New and Ongoing Resources
Organizations 1 and 2. Child and Family Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Resource Collection, MHPSS Network and the MHPSS Collaborative. This extensive set of materials for humanitarian and development settings (including the Ukraine crisis) is well organized online and easy to access. Here are three examples:
--The Ukraine Parenting Response: Helping Children and Parents Cope leaflet gives 14 sets of practical tips that parents and caregivers can use to support themselves and their children during crisis. The leaflet covers tips on self-care for the parent or caregiver, different ways of supporting children to cope with stress, anger and loss, as well as advice and practical tips for ensuring their safety and protection.
--“The Psychological First Aid Training Manual for Child Practitioners is for training people working with children on how to provide Psychological First Aid (PFA). The training aims to build skills for providing physical and emotional comfort by modelling calmness and teaches participants active listening that can be used to encourage children in distress to voice their concerns and needs. It provides information on connecting children in distress to practical assistance through referral networks and information on positive coping strategies. The training also includes a one day training for humanitarian workers on stress management.” Note also the sequel Psychological Frist Aid for Children II: Dealing with Traumatic Responses in Children.
--"The Supporting and Responding to Forcibly Displaced Children Training Module for Child Helpline Counsellors aims to enhance child helpline counsellors’ knowledge and support for children on the move, specifically those who have been forcibly displaced. By taking this module, child helpline counsellors will be able to follow a child’s journey from pre-flight, during flight and after flight while learning about the key concepts and issues associated with each phase of the flight. Case studies and self-reflection exercises are also found throughout the training module along with a final assessment to help child helpline counsellors evaluate their knowledge and contemplate on the key concepts, case stories and programmes they previously studied.”
Organization 3. Humanitarian Accountability Report 2022: Accountability is Non-Negotiable, Core Humanitarian Standard Alliance (CHS Alliance). "[This report] draws on seven years of accountability data analysis, system-wide studies and expert thought. The report is an evidence-based overview of the current state of accountability in the aid system, providing a critical opportunity to see the trends, patterns, weaknesses and strengths. It aims to answer the question – is accountability to people affected by crisis really a non-negotiable for the aid system?
The report finds that:
--Overall, the aid system is falling short when it comes to meeting core accountability commitments to people affected by crisis.
--A pattern appears: a system that does not listen to or adapt for people facing crises.
--Aid organisations which monitor and measure how they work against a universal accountability standard over time do change how they work and become more accountable to those they serve. They make the biggest gains in the hardest to tackle areas.
--Unless leadership of aid organisations ensures that accountability to those they serve is non-negotiable, already vulnerable people risk being exploited, abused or ignored and precious resources are used ineffectively.” (quote from CHS Alliance website)
See also the growing number of resources by the CHS Alliance for organizational health and staff wellbeing. Here are three examples:
--Working Well? Aid Worker Well-Being and How to Improve It. “[This report is an initial project of] the Initiative to Cultivate Caring, Compassionate Aid Organisations...The initiative[ looks] at the intersections between mental health, people management and organisational culture using the lens of care and compassion. The concepts of care and compassion were chosen to frame the initiative as they seem to resonate with most people working in the sector, both as a motivating factor in choosing this type of work and also as the characteristics of the kind of organisation which they would like to work in.”
--Human Resources (HR) Toolkit for Small and Medium Nonprofit Actors “This 36-page toolkit provides resources to inform and support the enhancement of a formalized and systematized framework for people management practices in nonprofit, humanitarian and development organizations.”
--Staff Survey Toolkit. This toolkit is designed for organisations and departments undertaking employee surveys. The toolkit contains guidelines outlining the process to follow step-by-step, whether you decide to run it in-house or out-source it, as well as a template to adapt and use. Undertaking an employee survey provides organisations with feedback, as well as insights into the levels of employee engagement that exist. This toolkit has also been aligned to the Nine Commitments of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) on Quality and Accountability and can therefore be used to assess how well the CHS has been implemented and embedded by an organisation.”
Image above: Some of the items currently covered by The New Humanitarian (image from website)
Organization 4. Weekly Roundup of news and stories and its many other online reports and analyses, The New Humanitarian. You can sign up for the free Weekly Roundup and/or daily updates HERE. Here are three recent examples of summary news articles from the website:
--A Humanitarian Lens on COP27 Loss and Damage, Debt Relief, and Climate Justice. “On the summit’s opening day, 6 November, countries agreed to make loss and damage financing a core agenda item to be discussed over the next two weeks. Simply having the topic on the slate at all is an early win for frontline communities and vulnerable countries: Wealthy nations have long pushed back on attempts to discuss funding for climate damages at the yearly summits. The high-level negotiations come amid new signals that the climate emergency is spiralling, with clear humanitarian consequences from unprecedented floods in Pakistan to repeat droughts in the Horn of Africa.” (check the website for updates-analyses of COP27)
--The Challenge of Demobilsing Rebels in DR Congo. “The Democratic Republic of Congo has been encouraged to accelerate the rollout of a new programme to demobilise rebel fighters amid surging conflict with armed groups, including the M23, which has seized yet more territory in eastern parts of the country. But there are limited funds for the programme – which is yet to begin activities more than a year into its creation – and local analysts and combatants are sceptical it will succeed given the failure of three prior demobilisation schemes to ease violence.”
--Surge in USe of Rape Against Women and Rivals by Haiti Gangs. “...With a growing family and unsteady work selling bottled sodas and food staples, the couple could only afford to rent in Cité Soleil, a seaside shantytown where armed groups have turned streets into battlegrounds. The gang violence became so intense in July of this year that Madeline and Baptiste made the agonising choice to send their six children away to a shelter, for safety. Days later, the pair awoke in the middle of the night to find the neighbourhood in flames. Grabbing what belongings they could, they fled toward Carrefour Lanmò, or “Crossroads of Death” – an intersection frequented by armed groups. They made it through, Madeline recalled, but an armed gang stopped them afterwards and dragged them onto a sidestreet..."
Image above: Some of the categories for IASC guidance and tools (image from website)
Organization 5. Summaries for Key Operational IASC Guidance, Interagency Standing Committee (IASC). "Given the huge amount of expertise, time, and collaboration that has contributed to the body of IASC tools and guidance, the IASC secretariat launched a review to improve the usability of IASC products for time-pressed colleagues, within the IASC and beyond. Following this review, we are pleased to announce the launch of IASC product summaries for 21 Key Operational IASC Guidance, with more to follow over the coming weeks. These summaries should take no more than 2.5 minutes to read and print- and mobile-friendly versions are available on the IASC website. We cannot thank enough those colleagues from across the IASC community who have contributed to this process." (email form the IASC Secretariat, 10 November 2022)
Here are three related examples from IASC:
--The Summary of IASC Good Practices: Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment and Abuse of Aid Workers overviews "actions undertaken by IASC members to protect from and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and sexual harassment and abuse (SHA)...This summary aims to promote good practice and learning within the IASC and identify opportunities for collaboration, where possible, responding to calls for the IASC to “share and promote best practices on preventing, investigating, and responding to sexual harassment and assault ”.”
--The Saving Lives Together: A Framework for Improving Security Arrangements Among IGOs, NGOs and UN in the Field "was created in recognition of the fact that the organisations of the United Nations Security Management System (UNSMS), International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and Intergovernmental Organisations (IOs) face similar security challenges when operating in volatile environments. SLT was established to provide a framework to improve collaboration on common security concerns and enhance the safe delivery of humanitarian and development assistance.”
--The Policy on Protection in Humanitarian Action “defines the centrality of protection in humanitarian action...[and] also underlines the need to implement this commitment in all aspects of humanitarian action and across the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC)...with due consideration for mandates and expertise and in line with humanitarian principles.”
*Translations of Sem Tob's two "moral proverbs" cited above are by Kelly O'Donnell
Member Care Associates
MCAresources@gmail.com
Member Care Associates Inc. (MCA) is a non-profit, Christian organization working internationally from Geneva and the USA. MCA's involvement in Global Integration focuses on the wellbeing and effectiveness of personnel and their organizations across sectors (e.g., mission, humanitarian, peace, health, and development sectors) as well as global mental health and integrity/anti-corruption, all with a view towards collaboratively supporting sustainable development for all people and the planet. Our services include consultation, training, research, resource development, and publications.
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