Famine in Somalia and the Failure of Data-Driven Humanitarianism
Andrew Seal and Rob Bailey discuss the limitations of data-driven humanitarian efforts, and the lessons learned from the 2011 Somalia famine.
Andrew Seal and Rob Bailey discuss the limitations of data-driven humanitarian efforts, and the lessons learned from the 2011 Somalia famine.
Researchers often rely on household survey data to investigate health disparities and the incidence and prevalence of illness. These self-reported health measures are often biased due to information asymmetry or differences in reference groups. Using the World Health Organization study on global ageing and adult health, I find that the poor use a different reporting scale from the more affluent, leading to overestimation of their health status.
This is tested by using the relatively novel anchoring vignettes approach and applying the hierarchical ordered probit model. Underestimation by the poor of their ill health could mean that South Africa’s high levels of socioeconomic health inequalities are greater than realized.
In many regions, disaster risk is continuing to increase, mostly because greater numbers of vulnerable people and assets are located in exposed areas. It is vital to start reversing these trends. Over the next 18 months, there will be negotiation and hopefully agreement of three major international policy frameworks, each with a key interest in reducing disaster risk and minimising disaster losses. These are 1) the post-2015 framework on disaster risk reduction(DRR); 2) the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)– a way of prioritising development actions; and 3)an international agreement on climate change – to establish global action on tackling climate change beyond 2020. If well integrated, these frameworks should be able to provide a unique opportunity to deliver a coherent strategy and implementation plan to address the drivers of disaster risk.A key way of linking these frameworks, particularly the SDGs and the post-2015 framework on DRR,lies in establishing common global goals,
Nepal witnessed a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 25th April and a 7.3 quake on 12th May, the worst natural disasters since 1900 in terms of number of dead, population affected and economic losses (A). The earthquakes killed more than 9,000 people and affected at least 8 million. Economic losses are estimated between 3.86 billion US$ and indirect losses and macroeconomic effects to 10 billion US$, half of the GDP of the country (19.3 billion US$ in 2013).
The first quake (25th April) was the most devastating, triggering landslides and avalanches in the mountainous areas, and destroying remote villages. The magnitude of the earthquake is similar to the earthquake that shook the country in 1934, 80 years ago.
In 2015, 346 natural disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database. They claimed 22,773 lives, affected over 98 million others and caused economic damages of US$66.5 billion.
The largest disaster of 2015 in terms of mortality was the earthquake in Nepal from April that resulted in 8,831 deaths.
Complex humanitarian emergencies are characterised by a break-down of health systems. All-cause mortality increases and non-violent excess deaths (predominantly due to infectious diseases) have been shown to outnumber violent deaths even in exceptionally brutal conflicts. However, affected populations are very heterogeneous and refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and resident (non-displaced) populations differ substantially in their access to health services. We aim to show how this translates into health outcomes by quantifying excess all-cause mortality in emergencies by displacement status. As standard data sources on mortality only poorly represent these populations, we use data from CEDAT, a database established by aid agencies to share operational health data collected for planning, monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian aid. We obtained 1759 Crude Death Rate (CDR) estimates from emergency assessments conducted between 1998 and 2012. We define excess mortality as the ratio of CDR in emergency assessments over ‘baseline CDR’ (as reported in the World Development Indicators).
This article provides results from an online survey of humanitarian workers and volunteers that was conducted in May and June 2010. The purpose of the survey was to understand how the humanitarian aid system adopts or incorporates human rights into its post-natural disaster work and metrics. Data collected from Haiti suggest that humanitarians have embraced a rights-based approach but that they do not agree about how this is defined or about what standards and indicators can be considered rights-based. This disagreement may reveal that humanitarians are aware of a mismatch between the rights-based approach to post-disaster humanitarian work and the legal framework of human rights.
Using participation and accountability as examples, this article identifies and examines this mismatch and suggests that the humanitarian aid system should more fully embrace engagement with the human rights framework. To do so, the article concludes,