#share humanity

On World Humanitarian Day, let’s #ShareHumanity by making it easier for humanitarian orgs to protect kids all over the world from pneumonia. Lower the price of your pneumonia vaccines, Pfizer and GSK! 

This World Humanitarian Day, our staff is sharing stories about why they joined Amnesty International.

"I grew up listening to my brother-in-law’s stories about how, in the early 80’s, he was arrested and thrown in jail for running an underground newspaper critical of the Marcos regime. He was a prisoner of conscience.

It was during one of his darkest days when a prison guard, whom my brother-in-law had befriended, secretly slipped a couple of letters into his cell from an Amnesty group in Germany. Their simple yet powerful message, “You are not forgotten.” After about a year and a half, my brother-in-law was released. And he credits the letters from Amnesty International members for lifting his spirits and giving him the push he needed never to give up.

I never forgot his stories and it became my dream to work for Amnesty International. I’ve been living the dream for almost 17 years now as a staff member in the DC office, and I am still in awe of the work we do saving lives."

More than a year has passed since the adoption by UN member states of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year plan for reducing disaster losses from manmade and natural hazards.

During that period, almost 100 million people have lost their homes, their livelihoods, been displaced or suffered injury or loss because of a wide range of natural hazards during the hottest year on record.

Alongside the rising needs driven by climate change and one of the strongest El Niño events in 50 years, the humanitarian assistance system is under increasing strain from conflicts, which have cost countless lives and driven millions from their homes, triggering the largest forced displacement of people since the end of the second world war.

As the World Humanitarian Summit loomed in May this year, the world was also freshly alerted to the threat of epidemics, the spread of the Zika virus creating another public health emergency of international concern.

This unprecedented storm of humanitarian need has given rise to much debate about more equitable burden-sharing. But what the Sendai Framework reminds us is that we need to be much more focused on reducing the humanitarian burden in the first place.

Disaster risk reduction is a philosophy for our times: it means disaster response reduction. The inaugural World Humanitarian Summit, in Istanbul in May, was a recognition that we need to get smarter at how we cooperate to address humanitarian challenges while reaffirming human dignity. An essential part of this is improving how we manage disaster risk.

The adoption of the Sendai Framework, at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Japan, marked the beginning of a momentous year in which agreement was reached on the 2030 development agenda.

Disaster risk management is not only a critical part of eradicating poverty, the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is also a core element of all the goals, including reducing the toll of hunger and malnutrition (through climate-smart farming for example, or ensuring that children do not die at their desks during an earthquake).

The school or hospital that ends up being the most costly is the one that fails in a disaster. Building resilient infrastructure is another key SDG where the link with disaster risk reduction is blindingly clear.

Sustainable development cannot be achieved unless we roll back the tide of economic loss suffered by developing countries that find themselves at the mercy of biological and natural hazards, often driven by climate change.

We have to build on the many successes in recent times when it comes to saving lives, especially in weather-related disasters. Last year, early warnings and effective evacuations resulted in one of the lowest recorded death tolls from storms worldwide. Despite 90 major storms having formed, mainly in the Pacific, for the first time in many years, fewer than 1,000 storm deaths were recorded by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. Deaths from floods were also down on the 10-year average.

Unfortunately, it is less clear what the long-term impact on mortality and health will be from last year’s rise in the number of major droughts globally, up to 32 from 15 a decade ago, and which affected more than 50 million people. And these numbers have only increased in 2016 with food insecurity spreading across Africa in particular.

Progress has to be made in substantially reducing economic losses, particularly in least developed countries where there is entrenched poverty, increased exposure and low capacity to manage weather forecasting and early warning systems.

The world needs to embrace the Sendai Framework. More than anything this means a change in emphasis from managing disasters to managing the risks that are driving those disasters.

We need more local and national disaster risk management plans in place to avoid the creation of new risk by promoting compliance with building codes, proper land use, environmental protection and poverty reduction.

The World Humanitarian Summit brought together leaders to generate concrete commitments to making these changes a reality. There is no time to lose. We must put Sendai and disaster risk reduction at the centre of the debate.

When asked how much she lifts, UAE weightlifter Amna Al Haddad responded: “I lift a nation.”

Social media is dynamic across many industries and facets of life. But, for this post i wanted to focus on its presence in a part of the world that is experiencing something that most if not all of the people on this blog can empathize with. The idea is to delve into how social media plays a role in conflict stricken parts of the world. In this case, Syria. 

Social media is majorly in play in two separate aspects of this horrific conflict. 

1. On the ground in Damascus 

- Civilians have taken to Twitter and Facebook to live post about areas that are being affected by bombings and violence at any given moment, in order to give innocent people the chance to evacuate or avoid these areas. Some of the more tech forward middle class Syrians that have access to the technology have developed websites that map the violence in real time. 

2. On the escape route

Refugees are using social media to help other refugees find a way out of their war torn country. There are Facebook groups with the sole purpose of offering services to get out of Syria without having to contact a trafficker. Some of these groups like “smuggling into the EU” have as many as 25,000 members working as a community to help each other escape the current situation in their home country. Some other escapees have chronicles their journey through instagram: showing a comprehensive view into the route that they took in order to get from Damascus to Germany. 

This is the power that social media can have to affect a terrible situation in a positive way. Connectivity worldwide is at an all time high and this in this particular instance the people of Syria’s ability to connect with those in the countries that are willing to offer them refuge is likely saving an enormous amount of lives.