Announcement

Salam!

Forgive me, but for today, rather than a blog post, I have an announcement to make. I will be giving a talk in Cairo on 6th October. I will be talking about the role of civil society organisations in building communities, one of my favourite topics of discussion.

The event is kindly sponsored by Alashanek Ya Balady for Sustainable Development (http://www.ayb-sd.org/) and Namaa (www.namaa.info).

Anyone can attend, so please come and let me meet you. Please share this announcement with your friends in Cairo, or who are going to be in Cairo on 6th October (Thursday).

If you have a Facebook account, please sign up to this event or share it with the people you know:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=280336681978620

Thank you very much!

Dr. Hany

Untitled...

This blog hasn't got a title. I decided not to name it, because, in my opinion, we have been failing consistently.  You are entitled to ask: why? Let me tell you.

The past 6 months’ events in North Africa and Somalia showed one serious mistake committed by the international community. This gross mistake is the fact that we didn’t empower and build local community based organisations or community services in areas where we have been working for the past decades.

Could we be to blame as humanitarian actors or do we also blame the local system functioning in these countries? I was revisiting the access problem for Somalia and asked myself a question- whose security is more important, the security of the million of beneficiaries who are the real owners of money we spend, or us as humanitarian actors? Therein lays the problem.

How should we prioritise? Who should be on top of the pecking order? The expat staff? The local staff? The people in need? I leave you to answer that question.

Our failure to address these issues makes us guilty before generations to come.

It is not enough to talk about famine, conflict or needs - we should act. I hope that our humanitarian action for Somalia will not stop at just observing famine and managing drought.

I am writing this just as I am about to enter the meeting The Humanitarian Forum and OIC are holding in Nairobi. 

Who wants to be responsible? The Blame Game Part 2

Continuing our quiz show, can you imagine what the contestant would answer? I believe the person in the hot seat would look left, would look right and then answer something like: “Nobody is responsible. It just happens!”

I can just imagine the expression of the face of the show host and the gasps from the audience, as it would have been the first time somebody gives an answer that isn’t among the given ones.  While I commend thinking outside the box, I can’t commend lack of responsibility. The contestant doesn’t deserve to win.

After all, the environment is about independence. It is the most independent creation of God. When it loses its independence, it loses its characteristic components and beings.

Who to blame? It could be the people who are over consuming, overspending and over utilising the resources of the environment.  It could be the people who are depriving the millions of poor and vulnerable from a safe environment to save their lives.

I was hoping to see a great industrial revolution tied to greater ethical values. Unfortunately, the power of wealth, authority and control is stronger. Ethical values have been replaced by market shares. If you want to revisit environmental issues we should revisit our issues of ethical and moral values.

If we don t save our environment, we’ll be like those who are ignorantly answering questions on a quiz show. If we won’t save our environment, we won t save our future and the lives of our future generations.

We need to stop playing the blame game and try to save humanity.

Who wants to be responsible? The quiz show Part 1

New quiz shows appear all the time on TV, but I have yet to see one on the environment. I can imagine a grinning host asking a hopeful contestant:

“The environment is slowly dying. Please tell me which one of these is responsible:

A.    Animals and Plants
B.    Oceans and Forests
C.    Virus and Bacteria
D.    People

You have 3 minutes to answer.”

I can also imagine the flustered contestant wondering what they should answer to win the competition. If they would call me to ask me for their help, this is what I would tell them:

You have to ask yourself first:  what is the environment? The environment is our surroundings, it’s where we ought to feel safe, comfortable and at pace with ourselves. The environment is our society and our future. It is our sheer life. This is why no one has the right to destroy it. We are interconnected, as we all live inside it. If one area of it is ruined, the rest will follow.

 The ignorance of human beings (in the 21st century) will let them think that there is no impact or the impact is negligible. The more knowledgeable will count the extermination of the billions of lives of other beings sharing the environment with us. 

Let us think: who is responsible? The multi-national companies? The lady selling sweets in a back street in Delhi or Karachi? The tea-maker in Marrakech? The poor farmer in Zimbabwe? The taxi driver in Mexico City? Or maybe the camel shepherd in Afghanistan?

Why blame the blame the weak, poor and vulnerable?

Red Carpet for Red Talk Part 2

It is time to start discussing value-based rather than faith-based. We must leave our comfort zone and open the door to new members who might change our philosophy of thought.

For example, let us discuss the principles of humanitarian work. Some may say they are faith-based. Some may ask how to include others. The debate needs to be opened. Are the existing principles good? In my opinion, they are, however what they miss is human initiative. This human initiative should come in the form of active discussions. For example, should the number of principles be reduced or should we add some more? If we reduced or added, what would it be like?

Society is developing around us at the speed of light, yet it seems to me we are trying to keep up with it at the speed of a bicycle. Humanitarianism is not a one sided coin- it is a multi-faceted process of value based deliverable products to serve the community.

Let us walk together on the red carpet to make a difference!

Red Carpet for Red Talk Part 1

I was recently in Geneva and had a really memorable day. I met with the Secretary General of IFRC, the Director General of ICRC and the CEO of British Red Cross.  We had food for thought, before I went over the red carpet to give the Red Talk on the IFRC podium.

I recall my first meeting with the head of ICRC. I remember talking to him about the importance of perceptions. If we look at the ICRC logo, I asked him, what do we see? He answered back: “A cross”. I replied: “It’s a plus sign, because the work you do for humanity is an added value”.

These are good memories, but it is time to come back to the present and my Red Talk. Being August, many people tend to be on their annual leave and Muslims are fasting as well. I was expecting very few people to be present. To my surprise, the auditorium was full and there were also people around the globe listening to the online stream.

I asked: what is universal humanitarianism? Are we or aren’t we all partners in water and vegetation- whether we are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish etc? When it comes to serving people in need- does it stem from Christianity, Buddhism etc or does it reflect all religions?

If somebody stood up and said you are not a good man when you sleep with your stomach full when your next door neighbour is hungry, does that reflect on a particular religion?

I cannot help but ask: is faith a dividing factor or a uniting factor? The answer is that, unfortunately, faith is used sometimes to mark a community. We should rather use values as the uniting factor. We all have common values.

To be continued...

Smile! You’re on camera!

When I recently came back in the office after having visited Somalia, a colleague asked me: “What is it like? Is it really that bad as the pictures show it to be?” I was really puzzled by her question, so she asked me something else: “What drives you to travel and work for the needy: your heart, your mind or the scenes you see on TV?”

I gave her a simple answer: all three. We have to work on the mind and heart in order to let them believe in humanity and possibilities before the minds and hearts see devastating scenes of famine and drought. In my opinion, if any of us would feel even a tenth of what we see on TV or in newspapers- that level of desperation and hunger and loss of dignity- we would never sit down until we have saved all the people in need.

The heart is the one driving the mind, however the mind is directing our heart where to go. Where people feel the image and not just watch the image, that’s when help is on its way.

Let us take a moment and feel the images, rather than just watching them. Thank you.