· September, 2011

Stories about Humanitarian Response from September, 2011

Pakistan: Update On Flood Relief

  29 September 2011

Teeth Maestro posts updates of some ongoing flood relief projects of SARelief in Pakistan. You can track the relief activities by following the hashtag #pkrelief on Twitter.

Bangladesh: Does Anyone Care About The Urban Poor?

  26 September 2011

Unheard Voice breaks a news that authorities had started evicting the new settlements including the Jaago Foundation school for the underprivileged along the Gulshan lake in Dhaka city. When challenged they could not show any prior notice or proper authorization. The blogger questions: “does anyone really care about the urban...

India: To Be Poor In India

  26 September 2011

Project Why exposes that there is a serious flaw in determining who is poor in India and who will get social welfare benefit from the government. The blogger asks: “what are we trying to do: show the world that we are not poor?”

Book Review: ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea’

  26 September 2011

Change in Longitude blog posted a thorough review of the book ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea’ by Barbara Demick. The book’s title comes from a song that North Korean school children recite, “We have nothing to envy in the world” in spite of chronic malnutrition and famine...

North Korea: Google Earth Reveals Death Camps in Detail

  23 September 2011

Kyle Wagner from Gizmodo site wrote a post on one of the most detailed images of the North Korean concentration camps taken by Google Earth. It is estimated that over 200,000 North Korean citizens are imprisoned in the camps under unimaginably harsh conditions.

Pakistan: Neglected Millions of Sindh Floods

  21 September 2011

After the devastating 2010 floods in Pakistan the government took no practical steps to tackle the possibility of future floods. The consequence of this gross negligence is that floods are yet again causing havoc. The eye of the storm this year is Sindh where flood waters have razed numerous villages and displaced millions.

Colombia: Controversy Over New Methodology to Calculate Poverty

  20 September 2011

Nazih Richani in Cuadernos Colombianos –a NACLA blog– has written two posts (1, 2) on Colombia's new methodology to calculate poverty: “The newly adopted Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) factors in health, housing, living standards, and government subsidies, alongside income. The problem is, regardless of the ‘methodological rigor,’ there are many doubts...

CIVICUS: Reflections on the Power of Civil Society

  17 September 2011

For three days several civil society representatives met in Montreal for the CIVICUS World Assembly. The subjects were diverse: from civil movements, social equality, and the effects of new technologies, to climate justice. Here are some blog posts that covered the assembly.

Russia: Connecting Neighbors, Saving Lives

  12 September 2011

The creators of a website that enabled Russians to help each other during wildfires in 2010 have now redesigned the site to enable citizens to assist each other in new ways - including mapping willing blood donors in locations across the country.

North Korea, Country in a Long Coma

  5 September 2011

Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution blog wrote about how the dictatorship in North Korea has survived decades despite mass starvation and economic failure. The author, quoting parts from the book Nothing to Envy, commented that the North Korean iron curtain which has been much more impenetrable than that of Eastern...