Disaster Relief Post Waiting to Happen
By In my Notice and Comment thread joejoejoe requested a pre-hiatus blog post on disaster relief:
Can you talk about the some of the current trends in disaster response? Is there a conflict between the the practical requirements of humanitarian response and the need for state authorities to project control?
If I understand his second question correctly, the general answer in my view is yes, but I’m not going to be able to deliver a proper commentary on this in the next couple of days. So instead, regarding the first, let me point to some of the smartest blogs I know of on the general topic of humanitarian relief.
First, check out ConflictHealth by Christopher Albon – a source I’ve valued on human security and disaster relief. A lot of the coverage is focused on conflict zones rather than natural disaster relief, but he covers both, emphasizing the importance of security to disaster relief in particular.
Second, read The First Tranche, AidData‘s blog written by Mike Tierney and his colleagues. You may find this post on foreign aid allocations interesting, and also these two posts that are tagged with “disaster relief” – I especially like the second because it deals with developing countries as providers of relief.
Third, the Humanitarian Practice Network is a great resource for professionals and students of this burgeoning industry. Here is their equivalent of a blog, with regular posts by various members of the community. They tend to be NGO-humanitarian-relief-worker oriented rather than donor state oriented, but this has the effect of giving you a good sense of practical dilemmas faced by those on the front lines of this work.
Finally, I was saddened to realize when I went to link that AidWatch is going off the air. However the blog will remain on the site, and it’s chock full of links to humanitarian and development blogs and other resources. (There’s also a fascinating info-graphic there on the relationship between religion and income level in the US and some of you may find interesting.)