The conflict in Yemen claimed the lives of four more Movement workers in recent months. In late September, two Yemen Red Crescent Society volunteers, Qaed Faisal, 28, and Omar Fareh, 31, were killed along with other civilians during an airstrike in southern Yemen. “It is another tragic event for all of us in the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement,” said Fuad Al-Makhazy, secretary general of the Yemen Red Crescent Society. “Since March, we have lost a total eight staff and volunteers in Yemen.”
The volunteers’ deaths came only three weeks after two staff members of the ICRC were shot and killed in Yemen as they travelled in a convoy between the cities of Saada and Sana’a. They worked as a field officer and as a driver. Both were from Yemen. “The ICRC condemns in the strongest possible terms what appears to have been the deliberate targeting of our staff,” said the head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, Antoine Grand.
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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