In Pakistan, monsoon rains coupled with outbursts from glacial lakes — caused when natural dams of ice or rock in northern mountain ranges suddenly fail — have so far claimed 219 lives and affected about 1.5 million people in more than 4,000 villages. Allahyaar, a 45-year-old farmer from Chak Dumra village, barely had time to grab his family’s meagre savings. “Our village experienced flooding in previous years but every year the water level rises higher than before,” he said. An IFRC emergency appeal helped the Pakistan Red Crescent Society address the immediate needs of 5,700 families.
It’s the stuff of science fiction: machines that make decisions about who and when to kill. Referred to as “autonomous weapons”, they’re already in use to some degree. But as more sophisticated systems are being developed we wanted to an expert in the field about whether such systems comply with international humanitarian law and what it means for humanity to give machines the power over human life and death.
In this episode, we talk with humanitarian communicator Kathy Mueller who produced our first magazine podcast series, The Wildfire Diaries, about massive wildfires in Northern Canada in 2017. We talk about that series, her many international missions, and the big changes in humanitarian communications since she began with the Canadian Red Cross almost 20 years ago.
In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling to inform and inspire. “Storytelling is a fundamental aspect of human communication,” says our guest Prodip, a volunteer and multi-media storyteller for the Bangladesh Red Crescent. “It inspires us to be a hero of our own community.” We also speak with one such community hero, Dalal al-Taji, a longtime volunteer and advocate for inclusion of people with disabilities in emergencies response. “In disasters. persons with disabilities sometimes get forgotten.”
In places where conflict or crisis means basic services are scarce, the use of data is saving lives. But protecting people’s physical well-being, experts say, is also about protecting their digital profile in cyberspace.
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