From Istanbul to Aden (Yemen Part 1)

I had a very uplifting experience in Yemen. We went there in order to implement in a practical way our new theme of partnership called “HOPE” (humanitarian operational partnership engagement). We started our adventure with an 8 hour mountainous car journey from Sana’a to Aden, which made some of us drowsy. This was the first step of building operational partnerships. This state made everybody cross the barriers put up by everyone else. It was wonderful to hear everybody talk freely about the strengths, dreams and activities of their organisation.

The second milestone was our field visit to the local organisations and we worked together as a group to identify a local problem and design a local programme.

The third milestone happened when there wasn’t a consultant from a boardroom to lecture the local CBOs/CSOs, but every group was deeply engaged in discussing the project frame design, life cycle, funding and outcomes.

I felt very uplifted because of the spirit of discussions, the depth of knowledge and the diversity of opinions presented by the participants. As an example, from the 18 women present, half were wearing the niqab (head and face cover) and had strong and educated views. This teaches us not to judge people on what they look, but listen to them instead and engage them in a pertinent discussion.

I can see that within the next years we will have new international humanitarian leadership emerging from Yemen. Let us give them our FAT (funding, advocacy, training) to achieve not just HOPE for Yemen, but hope for us all.

All inclusive ARCH

Extremism is shunned by everyone and we all try to keep away from this practice. What is extremism? It happens when we try to force everyone to accept or follow our ideas. It creates separation and isolation, which in turn lead to suspicion and hatred.

Europe is enjoying a great diversity of ARCH (art, religion, culture and history), and other different cultures should be added to the European mosaic.

Financial and economical crises should not point us in the direction of thinking irrationally towards people who were and are still serving our society and participating in the greater development of our civilisation.

The “r” in ARCH doesn’t reflect just religions, but also recognition, respect and reward. We should respect everybody’s personal beliefs and recognise their individual input in the development of the humanity in general, and Europe in particular.

We are at the beginning of the 21st century and the highly technological Western civilisation should celebrate our universal ARCH to bring humanity together on the basis of inclusivity, not division by extremism.

Militarising humanitarianism or humanising the military?

Sometimes, the military is used for humanitarian activities. I would like to assess the impact and outcome of such partnership on humanitarian field workers and beneficiaries.

The operations in certain countries are hindered by local susceptibility and bad press for the military and security firms. When soldiers or people hired by security firms walk amongst the beneficiaries in civilian clothes, they can draw negative attention to other humanitarian workers. This in turn leads to narrowing the space in which relief workers can operate and undermines impartiality.

We have to be honest with ourselves when it comes to serving the people in need: are we impartial in our attitude and transparent in our activities? If the answer is yes, then we will reap what we sow. If the answer is no, we must work harder towards transparency in humanitarian work.

The Traffic Light Theory

What is the relationship between traffic lights and humanitarianism? The common traffic light which has been developed in the last century has only three light colours: green for permission, orange for caution and red for danger.

However, I have similar ideas that are relevant to the humanitarian work: “The Traffic Light Theory”. My traffic light has five components: white, green, orange, red and black.  You will ask “why the need for five, instead of three?” My answer would be that the diversity and the flow of humanitarian needs and activities in different parts of the world make it impossible to just stick to three.

The white will reflect our success in achieving a strong direct relationship with the beneficiaries through our programmes.

The green light enables us to promote capacity building and advocacy training for local organisations to turn them into international humanitarian actors.

When we have an orange light, we only relate to international NGOs and communities. The danger of being in the orange box is that, even though it can take you to the green box, it can also direct an organisation to operate in the red box, because it might lose focus on the individual needs of the community.

The red light consists of exclusively fund driven and government directed work. In this box, the organisations are only looking for funding for their operations and losing their impartiality when it comes to the local community.

The black light happens when humanitarian actors overuse the military in our relief work. In my opinion, the black box is a no-go area as it can challenge the humanitarian principle of impartiality and neutrality never the less transparency in our humanitarian work particularly in conflict struck areas.

We all must aim to operate when the white and green lights are on and empower local organisations at grass root level, in order to reach the ones we truly serve: the neediest.

The rights of the right/ The rights of the wrong Part 2

We always talk about right and wrong, allow and disallow, yes and no. Our life is full of antonyms. Let us reflect on the value of other people’s existence who share our society. Are we able to judge others only according to our approach or can we judge them by their approach as well?

When humanitarian workers try to design a project or programme in different areas, they might face the local communities rights, which workers might see as wrong and vice-versa. The right and wrong must be reached via agreement between different partners, communities, cultures and faiths.

We can’t change wrong by wrong, we can change what’s wrong by listening to the needs of the local community then, via dialogue, show them what we think is right for them.

The Top-Bottom approach is not a solution; on the contrary, it can start problems. People have to understand others’ psychologies, cultures, values and faiths in order to pass objective judgement. There are many alternative ways to reach a solution, while restricting the path to that solution can only cause trouble in the long run.

The right can be reached by many ways; there is only one way for the wrong.

Human rights or Being right/ Part 1

The Human Rights are part of a universal agreement between governments and the basic principles declare that human beings have a right to exist on this planet. Human rights are God given. We ought to be more inclusive when it comes to giving rights to others.

Human rights change from one country to the next, from one century to another, affecting the universally declared basic principles. In my opinion, the only one who can keep the balance of being right is the source of justice in this world, God.

The difference between Beings’ right and Being right is that the latter happens when you don’t do wrong, whereas the former happens when you don’t wrong other beings and allow them to exist.

Let us be frank in admitting our shortcomings, as we don’t as yet understand the reality of the right to live of other beings, from different cultures and faiths.

Values, cultures and faiths

Can we live without them? Human nature leads us to believe strongly that we are able to draw our values which can shape our culture and, in turn, form part of our faith. Human nature can also lead us to follow a faith, to belong to a culture or believe in a God. We can believe in a God or become gods ourselves.

When we get involved in humanitarian work, we face some problems, hindering our progress to develop local communities. Even if we don’t believe in God, we should realise that other communities have different beliefs in God, different culture and values that we ought to respect.

Life is about values, cultures and faiths. We can’t live without them, even if we claim it.