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Named by The Guardian as “a podcast to make you smarter,” Global Dispatches is a podcast for people who crave a deeper understanding of international news.
Rethinking Humanitarianism is a new podcast for anyone with an interest in the future of humanitarianism, from donors to NGO executives, frontline responders to policy wonks — basically if you've got an eye on the aid sector, this podcast is for you.
The podcast is co-hosted by Heba Aly, director of the independent newsroom The New Humanitarian, and Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the non-profit think tank the Center for Global Development. Today's episode features the debut of "Rethinking Humanitarianism"
It's the late summer, and an unexplained influenza virus is killing international travelers. Researchers quickly identify the virus as a genetically engineered flu-strain. Intelligence agencies find irrefutable evidence that the virus was created in a secret bioweapons laboratory in a middle income country. It was accidentally released. By the end 50 million people are killed by this pathogen.
This was the scenario presented to a group of experts at the Munich Security Conference in February who participated in what is known as a "tabletop exercise" to understand how key international players might respond to a situation like this--and identify ways that such a scenario might be prevented from unfolding in the first place.
My guest today, Jaime Yassif, helped to design and implement this table top exercise. She is a senior fellow at NTI for Global Biological policy and programs. And in our conversation we discuss what this fictional scenario reveals about very real gaps in international policies to prevent a catastrophic biological weapons event.
Today's episode was taped live in front a virtual audience as part of a series of a series of episodes examining the relationship between climate and security, produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world's largest global agricultural innovation network.
The episode today, which is the eighth and final in our series, examines the relationship between climate security and inequality in Indonesia. The episode kicks off with Grazia Pacillo, senior economist CGIAR Climate Security, explaining the results of a report about the impact of climate variability on inequality in Indonesia. I then moderate a discussion with a diverse array of panelists who dive deeper into the ways in which climate variability impacts economic and social inequality in Indonesia and what can be done about it.
In early October a video began to circulate on social media in Nigeria depicting a gruesome act of police brutality. The perpetrators of the police violence were from a notorious police unit called the Special Robbery Squad, or SARS.
As this video went viral, Nigerians voiced their own stories of being victimized by this police unit. The hashtag #ENDSARS was born.
But the story does not end there.
Olorunrinu Oduala, helped to transform this hashtag into a massive youth-led protest movement against police brutality in Nigeria. What started as a hashtag has become a concrete set of demands for police reform and accountability, around which millions of young people in Nigeria have mobilized.
Today's episode was taped live in front a virtual audience as part of a series of a series of episodes examining the relationship between climate and security, produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world's largest global agricultural innovation network.
The episode today, which is the seventh in our series, examines the relationship between climate security and inequality in Vietnam. The episode kicks off with Grazia Pacillo, senior economist CGIAR Climate Security, explaining the results of a report about the impact of climate variability on inequality in Vietnam. I then moderate a discussion with a diverse array of panelists who dive deeper into the ways in which climate variability impacts economic and social inequality in Vietnam and what can be done about it.
In the short history of modern humanitarianism, great crises have often inspired reform in how the international community approaches emergency situations.
Jessica Alexander wrote a sweeping review of how big crises over the last thirty years have compelled the humanitarian aid sector to change how it operates. Her article culminates with a discussion of how the current COVID crisis is forcing a new kind of reckoning in the aid sector.
Jessica Alexander is a longtime humanitarian worker and editor of The New Humanitarian's Rethinking Humanitarian Series, which is where her article appears. She is also the author of Chasing Chaos: My Decade in and Out of Humanitarian Aid
We kick off our conversation discussing how the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide in the mid 1990s gave rise to a more formalized humanitarian aid sector. We then discuss how big crises like the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake forced changes to how international humanitarian relief operates, before having a conversation about how COVID might force some fundamental changes in the aid sector.
Today's episode was taped live in front a virtual audience as part of a series of a series of episodes examining the relationship between climate and security, produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world's largest global agricultural innovation network.
The episode today, which is the sixth in our series, examines how to achieve climate security through strengthening partnerships across sectors, disciplines and geographies.
Panelists:
Robert Malley, President & CEO, International Crisis Group Claudia Sadoff, Executive Management Team Convener and Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact, CGIAR Hans Olav Ibrekk, Policy Director - Section for Energy, Climate and Food Security, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Franck Bousquet, Senior Director, Fragility Conflict and Violence Group at the World Bank
Cote d'Ivoire president Alassane Ouattara is seeking a constitutionally dubious third term in office in elections scheduled for October 31. Opposition supporters have taken to the streets, and several people have been killed in clashes. Cote d'Ivoire has a history of election-related violence and a chaotic situation in the run-up to these elections suggests that the country may erupt in violent conflict.
Mohammad Diatta, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, explains the high-risk political crisis unfolding in the Ivory Coast
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region in the south caucuses that is claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Since 1994, the sides have been locked in stalemate, with periodic fighting. Now, the worst fighting in decades has erupted. In a matter of days, this has become a major international crisis with big geopolitical implications.
Olesya Vartanyan is a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, working in the South Caucuses. I caught up with her from Tblisi, Georgia. We kick off discussing the history of conflict in this region, before she gives her analysis of why such intense conflict is erupting right now. We also discuss the broader regional and geopolitical implications of this fighting.
In rural Ethiopia women are more likely than men to collect firewood and cook over stoves that emit harmful smoke. Meanwhile, men are more likely than women to control how household income is spent. Accordingly, men are less likely than women to purchase improved cooking stoves that emit fewer pollutants while cooking.
This is the case in rural Ethiopia and also across rural communities throughout much of the developing world.
Dr. Sied Hassan, sought to dig deeper into this phenomenon. He designed an inventive field experiment to uncover the willingness of men versus the willingness of women to pay for an improved cookstove. Dr. Sied Hassan is a research fellow at Ethiopian Policy Studies institute, a think tank in Ethiopia. He discusses his experiment and the very big policy implications of his findings. We also discuss a related experiment in which he tested various methods to increase the willingness of rural households to pay for solar lighting.
Today's episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.
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