Archives for March 2020

How a Large Global Humanitarian Organization is Responding to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Credit: CARE Philippines

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, international non-governmental organizations were stretched thin responding to crises in Yemen, Syria, Bangladesh, and South Sudan and natural disasters around the world. With the coronavirus pandemic layered on top of these existing emergencies, how are humanitarian relief organizations responding, preparing and adapting? I put this question to Susannah Friedman, Humanitarian Policy Director for CARE, which is one of the larger global humanitarian organizations, with a staff of over 6,000 in more than 100 countries.  In this conversation she explains how the coronavirus is impacting CAREs work, and how CARE is adapting to it. This in includes an extended conversation about the unique affect this outbreak is having on women and girls in vulnerable situations.

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Huge Swarms of Desert Locusts Are Causing a Crisis in East Africa

: ©FAO/Sven Torfinn. Editorial use only. Copyright FAO
Desert Locust Swarm ©FAO/Sven Torfinn. Editorial use only. Copyright FAO

Desert locusts are eating their way through east Africa and leaving a huge food security crisis in their wake. Desert locusts are migratory pests. One swarm one square kilometer in size could eat as much food in a day as 35,000 people. And in many places in East Africa, the swarms today are far larger than that. Ethiopia and Somalia are experiencing their worst desert locust situation in 25 years. Kenya is experiencing its worst locust crisis in 70 years.

Keith Cressman is the senior desert locust forecasting officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He explains why we are seeing this historic upsurge in desert locusts in East Africa, their impact on the lives and livelihoods of people in this region, and what can be done to control the swarms and mitigate their impact. 

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Do War Crimes Tribunals Actually Deter War Crimes?

Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY

Since the World War Two era Nuremberg Tribunals of former Nazi officers, human rights advocates have argued that one key value of war crimes tribunals is its potential ability to deter crimes against humanity and war crimes. A new study in the academic journal International Security tests this question with fresh analysis from the Balkans wars in the 1990s. Political Scientist Dr. Jacqueline McAllister of Kenyon College examines the circumstances in which the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was able — or not — to deter and prevent war crimes during the Yugoslav wars.

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The Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Effect on Low Income Countries and Global Development

The COVID19 pandemic will have major implications for international development. This includes in countries where organizations like the World Bank and other global development institutions have made major investments in the past decade. Amanda Glassman, senior fellow and executive vice president of the Center for Global Development explains the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic to low income countries, and what organizations like the World Bank can do to help mitigate this crisis.

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The Coronavirus and the United Nations

The coronavirus, COVID19, epidemic is impacting institutions around the world, including the United Nations. In this episode, Voice of America UN Correspondent Margaret Besheer explains how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the life and work of the United Nations, including the Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, and more.

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The US-Taliban Deal, Explained

On February 29th, the United States and the Taliban entered into an agreement that would see the complete pullout of US troops from Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban would renounce international terrorist groups, like al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and prevent them from plotting foreign attacks from Afghan soil. 

It is worth emphasizing that it was negotiated directly between the United States and the Taliban. The Afghan government, which the United States is ostensibly in Afghanistan to support, was deliberately excluded. 

Despite how this has been characterized in some quarters of the media, “This is very much not a peace deal,” says my guest, Michael Kugelman. He is the senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Kugelman communicated to me that this was a point he wanted to emphasize. In the days after the deal, the Taliban launched several attacks in Afganistan. In fact, a few hours before we spoke, there was a major attack at a political rally in Kabul. 

In this conversation, we discuss what is included in this deal, what is not included, and what this agreement means for the future of Afghanistan. 

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A Peace Deal Has Ended South Sudan’s Civil War

After years of conflict that killed over 400,000 people and displaced millions, a peace deal was signed to formally end South Sudan’s civil war. On the line to discuss what this peace deal entails and analyze whether or not it can hold is Jok Madut Jok, a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a senior analyst with the Sudd Institute, which is a public policy center based in Juba, South Sudan.

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China Needs Soy. Brazil Farms It. The Amazon Rainforest Gets Destroyed

Brazil is the world’s second largest producer of soybeans, after the United States. China is — by far — the world’s largest consumer of soy, which is mostly used as feed for pigs. With the trade war between the USA and China, Beijing has turned to Brazil as its key supplier of soy. This demand is fueling the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, where forest is being cleared to make way for farmland.

On the line to discuss the relationship between China, Brazil, soybeans and climate change, is Melissa Chan. She is a freelance journalist who covers China’s global footprint. She co-authored a story in The Atlantic with Heriberto Araujo about this issue.

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When Coronavirus Hits Refugee Camps

Minors make up at least 60 per cent of the Rohingya refugees who have crossed the border to Bangladesh. Highly traumatized, they are arriving malnourished and injured after walking for days. Photo: UNICEF/Brown

As I record this, the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak is poised to become a global pandemic. Each day brings reports of new cases in new locations around the world. 

So far, COVID-19 has mostly impacted countries with decently functioning health care systems. However, a great worry that has been repeatedly expressed by experts, and from the World Health Organization, is what happens should we see clusters of cases where there is no good health system. This includes poorer countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and also, populations in the midst of some humanitarian crisis. 

To help us understand the potential impact of this coronavirus outbreak on vulnerable populations around the world is Dr. Paul B. Spiegel. He is the director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also works as a professor. 

As it happens, Paul B. Spiegel was in the midst of a project to model scenarios around COVID-19 and the Rohingya refugee population in a region of Bangladesh called Cox’s Bazar. We spend a good bit of time discussing that particular humanitarian crisis, while also discussing the broader implications of COVID-19 spreading to places that are already in the midst of a crisis.

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A transcript of this episode is available here.