More Rohingya being moved to Bhashan Char is a win for national sovereignty

Posted on: December 30, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Hydra "privileging forces"

“Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?“ –Sigmund Freud Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) More Rohingya being moved to Bhashan Char is a win for national sovereignty More Rohingya being relocated Less than a month ago I wrote about the move of over 1600 Rohingya refugees being ‘voluntarily’ relocated from Cox’s Bazar to the small island of Bhashan Char. As I write this a second wave of 1,804 Rohingya have been transported to the island by the Bangladeshi navy. I put ‘voluntarily’ in quotations because there is reason to question how these families were chosen for the move.  The UNHCR has not been given access to key details about the move but has urged the Bangladeshi government to not relocate any refugees against their will. Despite statements and pleas…

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Violating the humanitarian space in Ethiopia

Posted on: December 15, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry

“Humanitarian organizations are not free from politics.” -Samual Lemma, humanitarian Violating the humanitarian space in Ethiopia #notatarget   National humanitarians killed The recent violence in Ethiopia has led to the death of four humanitarians, three working with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and one for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). UN staff have been targeted as they attempted to reach those in need of humanitarian assistance in the hotly contested Tigray region. Cell phone and wifi access has been limited since November 4th when these services were cut off by the central government. Ethiopian leadership, based in the capital Addis Ababa, is pushing the narrative that this is an internal matter. The leaders are providing limited cooperation with both UN and INGO organizations. This conflict has generated many IDPs and refugees, and among those impacted are Eritrean refugees in Tigray Regional State.  The UN and the Agency for Refugee and Returnee…

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Questions about the relocation of Rohingya refugees to Bhashan Char Island

Posted on: December 6, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Refugee humanitarians

  See 29 December 2020 update on this post here.   “We aren’t born to float and drown/Nor to be refugees …” -Ro Anamul Hasan, from his poem The Dead Island Humanitarian questions about the relocation of Rohingya to Bhashan Char Island   In their own words This report by Amnesty International, LET US SPEAK FOR OUR RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION OF ROHINGYA REFUGEES IN BANGLADESH provides an excellent and up to date overview of the plight facing the Rohingya. In eight sections using first person accounts from Rohingya, both women and men tell detailed and compelling stories. The section titled “This is worse than prison” gives the accounts of Rohingya who were brought to Bhashan Char in May, 2020 having been turned away by Malaysian authorities after a traumatic months long sea journey. The title of this section (“This is worse than prison”) summarizes the feelings of those already on…

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Posted on: November 25, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry

“Listening is very important and then understanding the messages that come out of that.”  Heba, a humanitarian workers from Jordan International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women The United Nations has designated November 25th as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In this age of COVID-19, the UN calls gender based violence (GBV) the “Shadow Pandemic”. Though gender based violence is as old as humanity, change can happen through actions -big and small- at both the personal and organizational level. I have talked with humanitarians in various places around the world and each has observed this distressing pattern. As the coronavirus pandemic worsens, so does GBV. Zooming in to Kurdistan I was honored to contribute today to a Zoom conference jointly organized by the Kurdish Regional Government, the Ministry of Culture, and the Youth Department of Gender Equity. Along with one of my students, Megan…

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Bringing two worlds together

Posted on: October 27, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Refugee humanitarians

Update 11-26-20 Pan Thar’s “Life tale of a Rohingyan Soul” was recently featured on Litlight.   “I communicate and work with many Rohingya poets and poetesses who are writing poetry for various platforms. Our writing makes us not only feel glad but also to be proud of our activism for our community. Our pens are our guns. Our words are our bullets. Our ink is our activism.” -Pan Thar, Rohingya poet Bringing two worlds together Par Thar, Rohingya poet In the past 18 months I have been in contact with many young Rohingya men and women now living in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.  Most are victims of genocidal persecution from the Myanmar government and military, fleeing along with over 700,000 other Rohingya to Bangladesh in August of 2017. I have written many posts about what I have called ‘refugee humanitarians‘ and have kept up with…

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An example of humanitarian support from a small NGO

Posted on: July 27, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry

  An example of humanitarian support from a small NGO Prologue This essay is a continuation of my ruminations about the humanitarian imperative, the edges of the humanitarian ecosystem, bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, and basic human nature. It is mostly about a small act motivated by humanitarian concern and involving what I consider to be an array of everyday heroes. Michael Kojo Orleans Michael Orleans is a young tour company operator in Cape Coast Ghana. I met Michael 21 years ago in 1999 on a university organized faculty tour of Ghana.  We had an immediate connection, and continued regular communication over the years; we have developed a close mentor-mentee relationship.  Each of us has always felt strongly about our civic duties, and we have worked together on almost a dozen community outreach events in the last 15 years, all in response to Michael’s knowledge of and…

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The humanitarian imperative as seen in the flow of remittances

Posted on: July 15, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Local aid and development workers in the US

  Remittances as part of the humanitarian ecosystem Critically important for every 1 in 7 people on Earth A very high percentage of refugees and immigrants now living in the minority world (aka ‘Global North’) regularly send money back ‘home’ to family and friends they left behind. These funds, typically in small amounts and sent every month, are mostly used for health care, living expenses, school fees, and other necessities.  The term for this transfer of funds is ‘remittances’. I make a point of defining this term because in conversations with both my students and with even generally well informed friends and colleagues I have found that they know little to nothing about the fact that remittances exist and, more importantly, how critical they are to the alleviation of poverty in the developing world. Here are a few relevant data points about remittances. According to the World Bank in 2019…

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A Code of Ethics for Privileged Anti-Othering Persons: the humanitarian imperative and Hydra revisited

Posted on: June 29, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Hydra "privileging forces"

A Code of Ethics for Privileged Anti-Othering Persons: the humanitarian imperative and Hydra revisited   “Humanitarianism started off as a powerful discourse; now it is a discourse of power, both at the international and at the community level.” (p. 190) –Antonio Donini “Humanitarianism, Perceptions, and Power” In the Eyes of Others (Abu Sada, editor; 2012)   Overview Below I expand on previous posts related to the humanitarian imperative, the ‘privileging forces’ Hydra, and the  quest for global social justice. Studying and engaging with humanitarians all over the world has provided me with a broad base of insights, and I especially thank those from the majority world (aka Global South) who have so patiently offered me their thoughts, feelings, and opinions. The recent reemergence of a surprisingly inclusive #BlackLivesMatter movement both here in the US and around the world has many talking frankly about systemic racism and toxic white nationalism, and…

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Changing behavior and attitude

Posted on: May 30, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry

Changing behavior and attitude A voice from Ghana I talked recently with Nicholas Nyantakyi, an anesthetist. He was kind enough to take time away from his medical duties at the venerable Metropolitan Hospital in Cape Coast, Ghana to share details with me about the COVID-19 pandemic. As of today, his hospital has 17 COVID-19 patients and he seemed clear they have not yet reached a crest in the number of cases. Metro has no ventilators, is low on both oxygen and PPE, and has a staff that is strong, but feeling stressed. Ghana, with a population of just over 31 million now has over 7300 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 34 deaths. The Cape Coast Metropolitan area has about 170,000 people, and there is only tentative data on the number of COVID-19 positive cases. We talked about how many people in Cape Coast, very much like countless others in the…

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Views on the COVID-19 pandemic from the majority world

Posted on: May 18, 2020 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: General posts on the humanitarian aid industry, Refugee humanitarians

Updated 22 May 2020 “Until we build a world for all of us, it’s almost like humanitarian efforts are just putting a band-aid over life-threatening wounds.” -Michael Koppinger Views on the COVID-19 pandemic from the majority world The majority world First, a comment on naming. It is not the “Third World” or the “developing world” or even, as I have used in the past, the “Global South.”  It is the majority world, the part of the world that has the most people. This term “…defines the community in terms of what it is, rather than what it lacks”, and are were encouraged to use it by the person believed to be the creator of the term, Bangladeshi photojournalist and activist Shahidul Alam. Here in the minority word With the specter of what happened just over 100 years ago with the Spanish flu, massive and deadly second and third waves, government leaders in…

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