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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social work > Aid & relief programmes
This book collects and examines information on federal policies
that would be implemented in the event that terrorist attacks occur
again. It then asks about each of these policies: Based on
experiences gained thus far, should Congress consider changes in
federal consequence management policies to address the effects of
possible future attacks? The book explores two types of
issues-selected administrative issues pertinent to delivery of
assistance, and selected policy issues about the assistance
provided. The 12 section in the book follow a common format: an
issue statement, background information, and analysis (including
information specific to terrorist attacks) and policy options.
From award-winning ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman, and written using exclusive interviews and information comes the definitive account of the dramatic story that gripped the world: the miracle rescue of twelve boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave miles underground for nearly three
weeks-a pulse-pounding page-turner by a reporter who was there every step of their journey out.
After a practice in June 2018, a Thai soccer coach took a dozen of his young players to explore a famous but flood-prone cave. It was one of the boys' birthday, but neither he nor the dozen resurfaced. Worried parents and rescuers flocked to the mouth of a cave that seemed to have swallowed the boys without a trace. Ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, the boys were all members of the Wild Boars soccer team. When water unexpectedly inundated the cave, blocking their escape, they retreated deeper inside, taking shelter in a side cavern. While the world feared them dead, the thirteen young souls survived by licking the condensation off the cave's walls, meditating, and huddling together for warmth. In this thrilling account, ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman recounts this amazing story in depth and from every angle, exploring their time in the cave, the failed plans and human mistakes that nearly doomed them, and the daring mission that ultimately saved them.
Gutman introduces the elite team of volunteer divers who risked death to execute a plan so risky that its American planners admitted, "for us, success would have meant getting just one boy out alive." He takes you inside the meetings where life and death decisions were grimly made and describes how these heroes pulled off an improbable rescue under immense pressure, with the boys' desperate parents and the entire world watching. One of the largest rescues in history was in doubt until the very last moment. Matt Gutman covered the story intensively, went deep inside the caves himself, and interviewed dozens of rescuers, experts and eye-witnessed around the world.
The result is this pulse-pounding page-turner that vividly recreates this extraordinary event in all its intensity-and documents the ingenuity and sacrifice it took to succeed.
Horrified, saddened, and angered: That was the American people's
reaction to the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech
shootings, and the 2008 financial crisis. In Consuming Catastrophe,
Timothy Recuber presents a unique and provocative look at how these
four very different disasters took a similar path through public
consciousness. He explores the myriad ways we engage with and
negotiate our feelings about disasters and tragedies-from
omnipresent media broadcasts to relief fund efforts and promises to
"Never Forget." Recuber explains how a specific and "real" kind of
emotional connection to the victims becomes a crucial element in
the creation, use, and consumption of mass mediation of disasters.
He links this to the concept of "empathetic hedonism," or the
desire to understand or feel the suffering of others. The
ineffability of disasters makes them a spectacular and emotional
force in contemporary American culture. Consuming Catastrophe
provides a lively analysis of the themes and meanings of tragedy
and the emotions it engenders in the representation, mediation and
consumption of disasters.
Current foreign aid programs are failing because they are based
upon flawed assumptions about how countries develop. They attempt
to achieve development without first achieving good governance and
security, which are essential prerequisites for sustainable
development. In focusing on the poorer members of society, they
neglect the elites upon whose leadership the quality of governance
and security depends. By downplaying the relevance of cultural
factors to development, they avoid altering cultural
characteristics that account for most of the weaknesses of elites
in poor nations. Drawing on a wealth of examples from around the
world, the author shows that foreign aid can be made much more
effective by focusing it on human capital development. Training,
education, and other forms of assistance can confer both skills and
cultural attributes on current and future leaders, especially those
responsible for security and governance.
For the last twenty years, Dr Hawa Abdi and her daughters have run
a refugee camp on their family farm not far from Mogadishu which
has grown to shelter 90,000 displaced Somalis: men, women, and
children in urgent need of medical attention. As Islamist militia
groups have been battling for control of the country creating one
of the most dire human rights crises in the world, Dr. Abdi's camp
is a beacon of hope for the Somalis, most of whom have no proper
access to health care. She was recently held hostage by a militant
groups who threatened her life and told her that because she's a
woman she has no right to run the camp. She refused to leave. This
is not just the story of a woman doctor in a war torn Islamic
country risking her life daily to minister to thousands of
desperate people, it's also an inspiring story of a divorced woman
and her two daughters, bound together on a mission to rehabilitate
a country.
This study of Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders
(MSF) casts new light on the organization's founding principles,
distinctive culture, and inner struggles to realize more fully its
"without borders" transnational vision. Pioneering medical
sociologist Renee C. Fox spent nearly twenty years conducting
extensive ethnographic research within MSF, a private international
medical humanitarian organization that was created in 1971 and
awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1999. With unprecedented
access, Fox attended MSF meetings and observed doctors and other
workers in the field. She interviewed MSF members and participants
and analyzed the content of such documents as communications
between MSF staff members within the offices of its various
headquarters, communications between headquarters and the field,
and transcripts of internal group discussions and meetings. Fox
weaves these threads of information into a rich tapestry of the MSF
experience that reveals the dual perspectives of an insider and an
observer. The book begins with moving, detailed accounts from the
blogs of women and men working for MSF in the field. From there,
Fox chronicles the organization's early history and development,
paying special attention to its struggles during the first decades
of its existence to clarify and implement its principles. The core
of the book is centered on her observations in the field of MSF's
efforts to combat a rampant epidemic of HIV/AIDS in postapartheid
South Africa and the organization's response to two challenges in
postsocialist Russia: an enormous surge in homelessness on the
streets of Moscow and a massive epidemic of tuberculosis in the
penal colonies of Siberia. Fox's accounts of these crises exemplify
MSF's struggles to provide for thousands of people in need when
both the populations and the aid workers are in danger. Enriched by
vivid photographs of MSF operations and by ironic, self-critical
cartoons drawn by a member of the Communications Department of MSF
France, Doctors Without Borders highlights the bold mission of the
renowned international humanitarian organization even as it
demonstrates the intrinsic dilemmas of humanitarian action.
'A profound memoir' Daily Telegraph 'As revealing as the writing of
Oliver Sacks' Mark Cousins Outside the Asylum is Lynne Jones's
personal and highly acclaimed exploration of humanitarian
psychiatry and the changing world of international relief. Her
memoir graphically describes her experiences in war zones and
disasters around the world, from the Balkans and
'mission-accomplished' Iraq, to tsunami-affected Indonesia,
post-earthquake Haiti and 'the Jungle' in Calais.
Bread from Stones, a highly anticipated book from historian Keith
David Watenpaugh, breaks new ground in analyzing the theory and
practice of modern humanitarianism. Genocide and mass violence,
human trafficking, and the forced displacement of millions in the
early twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean form the background
for this exploration of humanitarianism's role in the history of
human rights. Watenpaugh's unique and provocative examination of
humanitarian thought and action from a non-Western perspective goes
beyond canonical descriptions of relief work and development
projects. Employing a wide range of source materials literary and
artistic responses to violence, memoirs, and first-person accounts
from victims, perpetrators, relief workers, and diplomats
Watenpaugh argues that the international answer to the inhumanity
of World War I in the Middle East laid the foundation for modern
humanitarianism and the specific ways humanitarian groups and
international organizations help victims of war, care for
trafficked children, and aid refugees. Bread from Stones is
required reading for those interested in humanitarianism and its
ideological, institutional, and legal origins, as well as the
evolution of the movement following the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire and the advent of late colonialism in the Middle East.
The dilemmas of African development continue to haunt both
African and western institutions and governments. Here Christopher
Rowan offers an original interpretation of the evolving concept of
partnership as it operates within the current relationship between
the European Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group.
Framing his discussion in terms of the human right to water, Rowan
presents detailed case studies of water aid from the EU to Lesotho
and Mozambique, and explores the persisting inequities in the
discourse and processes of development. With a close analysis of
the interaction between non-governmental organizations, local
elites, states and international actors, this book is a timely and
insightful addition to perspectives on relations between the global
North and South.
'This book is valuable for and beyond the international development
industry. It deftly leads a non-specialist through the maze of
ideas and arguments plaguing the concept of civil society, and
critically examines how and what happens, when the international
aid system tries to turn confusing and complex political theory
into effective development policy and practice fitting the
individual preconditions and historical trajectories of the worlds
varied nations. The comparative evidence, analysis and
recommendations on offer are essential reading for anyone
attempting to understand or ''build'' someone else's - as well as
their own - civil society, especially when justifying the use of
tax payers' money to do so.' ALAN FOWLER, CO-FOUNDER, INTRAC 'This
book will be really useful to numerous readers, 011 a subject
becoming ever more topical in the world of development and beyond.
It puts order into the deeply confused debate about civil society,
describes what the aid donors are doing to pursue their new goals,
offers four penetrating case studies, and concludes with sensible
suggestions for future policy. The authors have made a practical
and lucid assessment of the huge civil society literature; they
have also contributed valuably to it, and deserve to he listened
to.' PROFESSOR ROBERT CASSEN, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Northern
governments and NGOs are increasingly convinced that civil society
will enable people in developing countries to escape the poverty
trap. Civil Society and the Aid Industry, the product of extensive
research by the prestigious North-South Institute in Canada, makes
a critical appraisal of this new emphasis in the aid industry. It
explores the roles of Northern governmental, multilateral and
non-governmental agencies in supporting civil society, presenting
in-depth case studies of projects in Peru, Kenya, Sri Lanka and
Hungary, and gives detailed policy recommendations intended to
improve the effectiveness and appropriateness of future projects.
Originally published in 1998
Urban development after disaster, the fading of black political
clout, and the onset of gentrification Like no other American city,
New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina offers powerful insight into
issues of political economy in urban development and, in
particular, how a city's character changes after a disaster that
spurs economic and political transition. In New Orleans, the
hurricane upset an existing stalemate among rival factions of
economic and political elites, and its aftermath facilitated the
rise of a globally oriented faction of local capital. In Renew
Orleans? Aaron Schneider shows how some city leaders were able to
access fragmented local institutions and capture areas of public
policy vital to their development agenda. Through interviews and
surveys with workers and advocates in construction, restaurants,
shipyards, and hotel and casino cleaning, Schneider contrasts
sectors prioritized during post-Katrina recovery with neglected
sectors. The result is a fine-grained view of the way labor markets
are structured to the advantage of elites, emphasizing how dual
development produces wealth for the few while distributing poverty
and exclusion to the many on the basis of race, gender, and
ethnicity. Schneider shows the way exploitation operates both in
the workplace and the community, tracing working-class resistance
that joins struggles for dignity at home and work. In the process,
working classes and popular sectors put forth their own alternative
forms of development.
The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is
one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid
organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have
looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out
against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews
trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to
salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war
world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian
flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time. Torn between
defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the
early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the
world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in
the crossfire of conflict. Yet they did so while interfering with
Allied de-nazification efforts in Germany and elsewhere, and coming
to the defence of former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. Not least,
they provided the tools for many of Hitler's former henchmen,
notorious figures such as Joseph Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, to
slip out of Europe and escape prosecution - behaviour which did
little to silence those critics in the Allied powers who
unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the
'good neutrality' of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership
in international humanitarian initiatives. However, in spite of all
this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant
from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global
order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs
against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role
in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing
story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the
shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a
new identity in the post-1945 world.
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