Shirazuddin Siddiqi and Lisa Robinson
by Simon Derry
At the United Nations headquarters in New York last week one of the debating chambers reverberated with a discussion on how media organisations could best support humanitarian actions. The BBC World Service Trust co-hosted this event with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the media development organisation Internews, the International Federation of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
An audience of over 150 interested parties representing media NGOs, development NGOs, UN agencies and the private sector enjoyed a lively discussion about the need for engaging local media to help affected populations at a session chaired by Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary General of OCHA.
The main discussion point was how the information needs of affected populations could best be served. Sir Nicholas Young, Chairman of the British Red Cross laid down the challenge – he asked the rhetorical question of whether our response to the information challenge posed by complex emergencies was good enough. His answer; there is significant room for improvement.
Lisa Robinson from the BBC World Service Trust and co-author of the Trust’s “Left in the Dark” a policy paper on the unmet need for information in humanitarian responses argued that getting information to local audiences was vital if crisis situations were to be checked and ultimately avoided.
Mark Frohardt, Vice President of Internews and with 25 years experience working in the humanitarian field said that mobilising local media in crisis situations to report accurately, fairly and in depth about their communities is vital if lives are to be saved and disasters averted.
AlertNet (part of Thomson Reuters Foundation) has been going for 13 years alerting humanitarians to emergencies and bringing together information from 200 bureaux across the world. Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation said that media needs to be more prepared when crises happen and international organisations like Thomson Reuters should be there as soon as possible to give actionable information to local communities.
Alison Campbell from Internews gave examples of how media had been mobilised in Pakistan after the earthquake and Sri Lanka following the Tsunami. Shirazuddin Siddiqi, Country Director for the BBC World Service Trust in Afghanistan spoke about how educational media in local languages could help affected populations rebuild their lives after disaster or conflict had struck.
There were further contributions from mobile phone providers Nokia and Vodaphone, software giants Microsoft and many NGOs including Oxfam. All agreed that the basic premise for the event – that agencies should all work with international and local media to improve information for affected populations – should be written into strategy and policy documents of all agencies involved in humanitarian response; should be a part of disaster risk reduction planning. When the next disaster happens, which inevitably and unfortunately it will, relief agencies will have communicating with affected populations at the top of their priority list and at the heart of their disaster response.
