|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social work > Aid & relief programmes
How to Become an International Disaster Volunteer discusses the
immense value an experienced water systems engineer, trauma
surgeon, or communications specialist could bring to a disaster
stricken community, while also explaining how their professional
educations do not prepare them for the logistical, psychological,
and physical demands of traveling to, and functioning in, an
international catastrophe with little water or electricity, limited
sleep and food, a chaotic working environment, and with team
members from diverse backgrounds and with different personalities.
This book provides a step-by-step guide for the entire process,
including self-evaluating tactics, fitness measurements for
volunteering, how to research disaster relief organizations, how to
gain appropriate training and applicable experiences, the best
practices during deployments, and the personal recovery process
upon returning home. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the
progression, but also includes case studies of disasters, profiles
of relief organizations, and checklists for each stage.
Disaster management is a vibrant and growing field, driven by
government spending in the wake of terrorist attacks and
environmental debacles, as well as private-sector hiring of risk
managers and emergency planners. An ever-increasing number of
practicing professionals needs a reference that can provide a solid
foundation in ALL major phases of supervision - mitigation,
preparedness, response, communications, and recovery. As climate
change leads to further costly catastrophes and as countries around
the world continue to struggle with terrorism, the demand for
solutions will only grow. This revised edition of Coppola's revered
resource meets said demand head-on with more focused, current,
thoughtfully analyzed, and effective approaches to disaster relief.
From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 US Presidential
Election describes voting in the 2020 election, from the
presidential nomination to new voting laws post-election. Election
officials and voters navigated the challenging pandemic to hold the
highest turnout election since 1900. President Donald Trump's
refusal to acknowledge the pandemic's severity coupled with
frequent vote fraud accusations affected how states provided safe
voting, how voters cast ballots, how lawyers fought legal battles,
and ultimately led to an unsuccessful insurrection.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality crisis which affected
Eastern Europe and the republics of the former USSR at the time of
the transition to a market economy was arguably the major peacetime
health crisis of recent decades. Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis
in Eastern Europe and the Old USSR discusses the importance of that
crisis, surprisingly underplayed in the scientific literature, and
presents evidence suggesting a potential role of the Chernobyl
disaster among the causes contributing to it.
Every year nine million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis,
every day over 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, and every
thirty seconds malaria kills a child. For most of the world,
critical medications that treat these deadly diseases are scarce,
costly, and growing obsolete, as access to first-line drugs remains
out of reach and resistance rates rise. Rather than focusing
research and development on creating affordable medicines for these
deadly global diseases, pharmaceutical companies instead invest in
commercially lucrative products for more affluent customers. Nicole
Hassoun argues that everyone has a human right to health and to
access to essential medicines, and she proposes the Global Health
Impact (global-health-impact.org/new) system as a means to
guarantee those rights. Her proposal directly addresses the
pharmaceutical industry's role: it rates pharmaceutical companies
based on their medicines' impact on improving global health,
rewarding highly-rated medicines with a Global Health Impact label.
Global Health Impact has three parts. The first makes the case for
a human right to health and specifically access to essential
medicines. Hassoun defends the argument against recent criticism of
these proposed rights. The second section develops the Global
Health Impact proposal in detail. The final section explores the
proposal's potential applications and effects, considering the
empirical evidence that supports it and comparing it to similar
ethical labels. Through a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach
to creating new labeling, investment, and licensing strategies,
Global Health Impact demands an unwavering commitment to global
justice and corporate responsibility.
The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient
delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international
practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state
government that bears a particular responsibility for its
population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus
while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths.
Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and
neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need?
Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the
"neutrality trap" snaps shut. This book discusses the political and
moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex
crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The
author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace
talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and
UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the
wider implications for the development of international
humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key
questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international
organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian
government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also
morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas
where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so
difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly
needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is
both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons
learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where
politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.
Japan's March 11, 2011 triple horror of earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown is its worst catastrophe since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Recovery remains an ongoing ordeal. Japan's Responses to
the March 2011 Disaster: Our Inescapable In-between uncovers the
pivotal role of longstanding cultural worldviews and their impact
on responses to this gut-wrenching disaster. Through unpacking the
pivotal notion in Japanese ethics of aidagara, or "in-betweenness,"
it offers testament to a deep-rooted sense of community. Accounts
from survivors, victims' families, key city officials, and
volunteers reveal a remarkable fiber of moral grit and resilience
that sustains Japan's common struggle to rally and carve a future
with promise and hope. Calamities snatch us out of the mundane and
throw us into the intensity of the moment. They challenge our moral
fiber. Trauma, individual and collective, is the uninvited litmus
test of character, personal and social. Ultimately, whether a
society rightfully recovers from disaster has to do with its degree
of connectedness, the embodied physical, interpersonal,
face-to-face engagement we have with each other. As these stories
bring to light, along with Michael Brannigan's extensive research,
personal encounters with survivors, and experience as a volunteer
in Japan's stricken areas, our degree of connectedness determines
how we in the long run weather the storm, whether the storm is
natural, technological, or human. Ultimately, it illustrates that
how we respond to and recover after the storm hinges upon how we
are with each other before the storm.
As "natural" disasters increase in frequency and scale, the cost of
humanitarian assistance elbows development budgets aside.
Catastrophes force aid agencies to look for immediate relief for
the victims of apparently no-fault natural disasters. But how far
is it possible to view such disasters as natural? This text argues
that we allow ourselves to ignore the political dimensions of
humanitarian aid and disaster relief, which operate as part of a
far wider global battle for resources and markets. It highlights
the links between disaster, aid, development and relief, placing
case studies in the context of the globalization of the economy,
the "free" market ideology of the industrialized nations, the
rapacity of financial short-termism and the rise of new forms of
colonialism.;The book examines seven recent and, in some cases,
continuing major disasters, and analyzes the political agendas that
can be said to be common to all these disasters. It then puts
forward a political framework for humanitarian aid, reviewing the
possible consequences, the political issues to be addressed and
possible ways forward.
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, outsiders will have two versions
of the Katrina experience. One version will be the images they
recall from news coverage of the aftermath. The other will be the
intimate portrayal of the determination of New Orleans residents to
rebuild and recover their lives. HBO's Treme offers outsiders an
inside look into why New Orleanians refused to abandon a place that
many questioned should not be rebuilt after the levees failed. This
critically acclaimed series expanded the boundaries of television
making in its format, plot, casting, use of music, and
realism-in-fictionalized-TV. However, Treme is not just a story for
the outside gaze on New Orleans. It was a very local, collaborative
experience where the show's creators sought to enlist the city in a
commemorative project. Treme allowed many in the city who worked as
principals, extras, and who tuned in as avid viewers to heal from
the devastation of the disaster as they experimented with art,
imitating life, imitating art. This book examines the impact of
HBOs Treme not just as television making, but in the sense in which
television provides a window to our worlds. The book pulls together
scholarship in media, communications, gender, area studies,
political economy, critical studies, African American studies and
music to explain why Treme was not just about television.
Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an
unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that
damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma
on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the
devastation were quickly reported-and misreported-by media outlets,
and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of
socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage
and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of
the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels,
plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections
of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the
lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative
outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie's observation that, "Man
is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells
itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is." This
book accepts the urge behind Rushdie's formula: humans tell stories
in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it.
Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to
construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic
event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the
ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie's rich claim. This
collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects
of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely
catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such
an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The
body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical
opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our
stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and
identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative
genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and
understand the human condition, but so are the organizing
principles that communicate the stories. That is,
Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways
that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and
develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical
processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina
texts.
|
|