It’s not.

Suicide bombing and targeting aid workers purposely shred the principle that war is between armed combatants. Rules of war or fighting aren’t an intellectual exercise. Protecting civilians is a vital principle if there is to be a nod to humanity and human rights in a battle zone. Bystanders to war should not become legitimate targets of war. Yet, it is happening more and more as these two stories from Devex indicate. And another looking at why aid work is risky.

What may be most scary about these attacks is that it’s hard to see how to restore the notion of civilians’ right to protection and need to be differentiated from combatants. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s attempt to spread a Responsibility to Protect Civilians always will be limited because it is aimed at heads of state and governments, not at rebels and militias who also commit these atrocities. The easy accessibility of weapons gives the smallest band of thugs the ability to inflict damage that make foes and a larger public take notice. Thugs like the attention, like the destruction — that is victory enough for them. Any ideas on how to stem attacks on civilians?

Nate Henn

Nate Henn, 25, was one of the victims in yesterday’s bombing in Kigali, Rwanda of a rugby field where the World Cup final was being televised on a giant screen. Nate listed himself as a 2007 graduate of the University of Delaware. When I was on the Inquirer’s editorial board writing about Northern Uganda from about 2005 through 2007, a group of students from UD was extremely passionate about and active in efforts to raise US awareness about the war in northern Uganda in which children were targeted and terrorized. A number of them walked in Philadelphia’s portion of the first, national Gulu Walk, in an effort to teach people around the world about that conflict. I suspect Nate was one of those participants, since he was in Uganda working with the NGO, Invisible Children, which seeks to help the kids of northern Uganda who still feel the aftereffects of a war in which they were kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves.

A surge of activism beginning around 2005, helped propel the end of that war in northern Uganda, though the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by international war-crimes suspect Joseph Kony, continues to wreak bloody havoc on children and other bystanders throughout that region of Africa.  While the LRA’s continued existence is troubing, today let us simply herald the role individual activists who coalesce into a larger group, can play in an issue, no matter how big or small or how far away it may be.

One person can make a difference. Nate Henn made a difference. My condolences to his family.

Your computers' bloody contents

The Enough Project has produced this great spoof of the Mac-PC commercials to educate the public about how computers, yes, the ones in our homes and offices, are made with conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Militias do the mining and then use the considerable profits to finance the continued fighting in DRC that has been going on since 1998. It’s a helluva good, worthy public-awareness campaign — let’s even call it a public health campaign, since the violence there has hurt and killed so many. Kudos to Enough for the idea and the creative execution of it.  As, Nickolas Kristof mentioned in his Sunday column on the topic, these minerals also are used in the fabrication of cell phones and digital cameras. Western consumers especially, since we are the ones who consume so much, need to be aware of this and demand that manufacturers of these products use resources that can be verified as coming from clean, legitimate sources, not bloody ones such as Congo’s. For more information on the topic and the campaign visit the Enough Project. Read Steve Job’ response on WIRED’s Gadget Lab blog.

Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN

Sense of security… but the LRA has even infiltrated towns where UN and Congolese forces are based

NIANGARA, 5 May 2010 (IRIN) - They may number as few as 100 men, women and adolescents, but Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) units scattered across the forests of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Orientale Province have sown sufficient terror to make some 318,000 people take flight, abandoning their homes and fields, in many cases to the uncertain sanctuary of urban centres.

Their fear is far from misplaced, for extreme brutality is a tactic in the survival strategy of the northern Ugandan rebel group, which has killed almost 2,000 people in Orientale since December 2007, mostly in the districts of Haut- and Bas-Uele.

Lacking supply lines and widely dispersed since a botched air raid in December 2008, the small groups of LRA fighters operate independently of each other and live off the land; that is to say, off the local population’s produce and livestock. Since this population has no desire to share what little they have with a rebellion in which they have no stake at all, they are made to leave.

“The violence of its attacks and the suffering it causes are intended to frighten villagers into not giving its pursuers the information they need to wage a counter-insurgency campaign and to frighten civilians away so they can move with less chance of being spotted,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent report on the LRA.

Such calculatedly brutal logic is hard to explain to the victims of violence.

“What can you tell a woman who’s had her lips and ears cut off for nothing?” UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said after visiting the Haute-Uele town of Niangara, the geographical centre of Africa, during a tour of DRC’s most troubled areas.

First, though, I need to comment on the press release below that I got last week. It laments that kids in an orphanage in Haiti weren’t allowed out of the country. I know nothing about this group, never heard of it. But the attitude that permeates this press release is that children are commodities to be moved around at the will of unrelated adults who think they know best. And when they’re poor children, especially poor children of color, why, it’s even more reason for foreigners to move them away from their homeland. What arrogance. What cavalier dismissal of these kids’ homeland, no matter how poor or ailing it is, and the attachments they hold to it, not to mention to whatever relatives they still may have in Haiti. It’s a good bet that some of these “orphans” still have living parents. I do feel for the prospective adoptive parents, but the kids should be the most important consideration, not any adults. So cheers for the Haitian government in slowing down these kids departure. In crises like the one Haitians are going through now, it’s way too easy to take advantage of kids. This story from Reuters confirms that such exploitation is, indeed, happening in Haiti.

The press release from the group, For His Glory Adoption Outreach, is pasted after descriptions taken verbatim from organizations’ Web sites of what some child-focused groups are doing in Haiti.

UNICEF

Photo from UNICEF

Assistance to unaccompanied children, who have lost or became separated from their families, is a focus of UNICEF’s Haitian humanitarian operations, in the wake of the deadly earthquake which struck on 12 January.

While it continues daily delivery of critical life-saving supplies such as water, nutrition, shelter and medicine (so far, UNICEF supplies for 250,000 children have arrived and are being distributed), UNICEF and partners like Save the Children have also begun registering unaccompanied children found in the streets of  Port au Prince. A programme will then begin to trace the families of these children, if they exist.

“Safe Spaces” for unaccompanied children including infants are now set up in the capital. These locations allow UNICEF and its partners to assist and protect children who have nowhere else to go, until their families are found or alternative arrangements are made.

Save the Children

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 30, 2010) — Seventeen days after the catastrophic 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, Save the Children is distributing food rations to 200,000 children and families in partnership with the World Food Program.

Latest Field Report Highlights

• 144,158 beneficiaries have been reached to date. including medical supplies for about 85,000 in Leogane, Jacmel and Port-au-Prince.
• Our mobile clinic in Leogane continues seeing patients, roughly 100 per day. 70 health workers were trained in Leogane and another mobile clinic was established in Jacmel.
• 16 Child Friendly Spaces were established in Jacmel and Port-au-Prince, providiing activities for over 10,400 children for the past 10 days.

Orphans Blocked From Departing Haiti

Undefined Haitian exit procedures halts departure of humanitarian
paroled orphans

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (MMD Newswire) January 26, 2010 --
Seventy-nine of the 106 children from Maison des Enfants de Dieu
(Children of the House of God) orphanage, who were granted
humanitarian parole, arrived in Florida on Saturday, January 23rd.
The Haitian Government has blocked the remaining 27 children,
including the adopted son of the For His Glory (FHG) Adoption
Outreach President, Kim Harmon, from departing Port-au-Prince. In
a surprise announcement, Haitian Prime Minister Bellerive stated
that all future cases of humanitarian parole would have to complete
an exit process with his office. He has not yet defined this exit
process so no action can be taken to bring the remaining children to
their adoptive parents in the United States.

The Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage staff announced that
they soon would be accepting 30 children orphaned since the
January 12th earthquake. Over the past week, the orphanage has
received numerous requests to take newly orphaned children. In
one instance alone, it was asked to accept 70 orphans. The
orphanage and FHG remain firmly committed to the children and the
people of Haiti. Pat Flowers, an FHG board member who has been
in Haiti this past week consulting with the orphanage staff, agreed,
"we must act responsibly in accepting new orphans to ensure that
we will have sufficient supplies and facilities to care for these
children." Pat explained that not only is each child, who is united with

adoptive parents, helped, but much-needed space is opened up at
the orphanage to help other children. He added, "The need in
Port-au-Prince is great."

Kim Harmon reiterated the need to quickly complete the departure
process of the remaining 27 children, who have been granted
humanitarian parole. She stated "These children have adoptive
families waiting to care for them in the United States. The faster we
resolve the departure issue, the quicker we will be able to reach out
to those unfortunate children in Port-au-Prince who now have no
one." FHG urges adoptive parents, supporters and all those
concerned about the welfare of the orphans in Haiti to contact their
Congressmen, Senators, Governors and the White House to urge
the Secretary of State to quickly resolve this issue with Prime Minister Bellerive.

Aid Frustration: ‘We’re racing against the clock’: Thousands waiting for food, water, medical care

By Marisol Bello and Donna Leinwand
PETIONVILLE, Haiti — Haitian physician Reginald Lubin wanted to help earthquake victims at a hospital in this suburb of Port-au-Prince on Sunday, but medical supplies and equipment were scarce.

“What would I say to the patient?” Lubin lamented. “Look at them and say, ‘You are hurt?’ “

“The government is decapitated,” Lubin said. “People come here to help, and they do not know what to do or where to go. This is terrible.”

The worldwide effort to rescue battered Haiti entered its second week today with thousands of frustrated Haitians saying they are still waiting for food, water and medical care and are worried about violence.

As the United States and other nations stepped up their efforts Sunday to get aid to millions of people in need, some aid groups said the effort was in disarray.

“I’m satisfied that we’re doing everything we can,” said Army Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, who heads the military effort and was at an outpost with the 82nd Airborne. “Is there frustration? Absolutely. We see it. We feel it. We understand it. … We need to do more, and we’re going to do more.”

In one example of the logjam occurring in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders said one of its cargo planes carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing Saturday at Port-au-Prince and diverted to the Dominican Republic, causing a 24-hour delay. A second plane landed Sunday.

Aircraft have been barred from landing if they can’t take off with the fuel they have on board, said George Hood of the Salvation Army.

“You have to fly in with enough fuel to get out,” he said. His group has 1 million meals waiting in Miami to be shipped once transit can be arranged.

Throughout the country, injured victims still await the arrival of doctors and medical supplies. Doctors Without Borders teams are working in five Port-au-Prince hospitals, but only two are fully functional. A third “operating theater” has been created for minor surgeries only.

Those lucky enough to escape injury face the rising threat of disease and death while awaiting food, water and medicine. Sunday, a makeshift camp in Petionville with 450 displaced people received its first aid since the earthquake: packets of crackers and bottles of water.

Clemente Dirre, 29, a mechanic, said aid has yet to reach his neighborhood. “People are dying. They are thirsty. They are hungry.”

In Dirre’s neighborhood and others, people asked the same question: When would aid arrive? Handwritten signs hung at the entrance to tent camps announced the obvious: “We need help.”

“The kids are barefoot. They are poor. They don’t have anyone to direct the aid people their way,” he said. “The problems are from the top.”

Obama administration officials in charge of the relief effort defended the decisions, noting the airport is the only major hub in Haiti.

“It’s a challenging, challenging situation,” U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Rajiv Shah said. “We’re aware that we’re racing against the clock.”

U.S. forces arrived over the weekend with more than 600,000 humanitarian rations. Keen said paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne delivered more than 70,000 bottles of water and 130,000 rations Saturday, a pace that should accelerate each day. More supplies are arriving at the airport than can be delivered because of transportation issues.

“As we move other equipment in here, we’ll be able to get more ground transportation to increase our tentacles out into the countryside,” Keen said.

U.S. officials also began distributing 250,000 liters of water to 52 distribution sites over the weekend. On Sunday, six water purification units arrived from Dubai, for a total of 10 since the earthquake hit.

Some relief agency officials say the first days of a disaster are always tough, particularly when aid workers have been affected by the disaster.

“Everybody here went through the earthquake,” said David Toycen, president of World Vision Canada, which has Haitian staffers who lost relatives and homes. “They are traumatized at some level. I’m reluctant to be overly critical.”

Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, said Haiti’s density presents the opposite problem posed by the 2004 tsunami, spread among 14 countries. Unlike Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there are no nearby airports, hospitals or stores to use.

“None of that exists in Haiti,” Stern said. “I think they’re doing the absolute best they can with what they have to work with.”

Veterans of relief efforts and experts on the process say there’s a disconnect between an operation’s effectiveness and what people see on TV.

“You can’t mobilize that fast,” said Andrew Natsios, who headed the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2004 when the Indian Ocean tsunami killed nearly 230,000 people. “That does not mean the relief effort is not working. It simply means it takes time to put everything in place.”

Shah, the USAID administrator, told USA TODAY during a visit Saturday that he shares people’s frustrations, but he defended the response so far.

“We went ahead and identified what is needed and are working with the president of Haiti and with the United Nations to provide it,” Shah said.

Some private relief groups sympathize with U.S. officials and say everything possible is being done to reach victims. The problem, said Joy Portella of Mercy Corps, is that “no one can get in or out or move around” because of logistical problems.

“It’s hard to reach people,” said Henrietta Fore, USAID administrator in 2007-09. “The transportation is an enormous limitation.”

Jack Harrald, a Virginia Tech professor and expert in disaster management, said the problems begin with Haiti’s geography. “First of all, it’s an island,” he said. “It’s not like we can drive a bunch of 18-wheelers down there.”

With the main port decimated by the earthquake and the main airport slowly returning to life, all relief materials are “going through a very small pipeline,” Harrald said.

That would be the airport, which is operating without a tower and terminal that have been condemned. It has one runway. Despite that, U.S. military forces have supervised more than 600 takeoffs and landings in five days, said Col. Buck Elton, who arrived Wednesday to take charge of the airport. “As soon as one aircraft departs, we have another one arrive,” he said.

Roads are slowing aid down as well. Along Haiti’s eastern border with the Dominican Republic, only two roads are passable, said Ben Hemingway, director of international operations for the International Medical Corps. A bottleneck is forming as refugees stream toward the border. Dominican authorities, fearing an influx of refugees, have clamped down on border crossings.

“All of these things are slowing down their ability to process large convoys,” Hemingway said.

‘Going to get more difficult’

Government officials past and present agree on one thing: The problems will only mount. With the Haitian government severely hampered, a central question must be answered: Who’s in charge?

The Obama administration refuses to step forward, insisting it is helping Haiti and the United Nations, along with other international partners. But there’s little question it is playing the dominant role.

The United States has “very appropriately taken the lead internationally,” said Tom Ridge, the nation’s first secretary of Homeland Security. “There’s no country better positioned to help orchestrate it or lead it than the United States.”

With Port-au-Prince prisoners on the loose and residents desperate for food and water, safety is becoming an ever-present concern.

Just outside the Port-au-Prince cemetery’s gates Sunday, a young man shot three times lay dying on the sidewalk. Residents said he and three others had been shot by police for stealing. Three of the men died.

“They lined up all four and shot them. This one took three shots,” said Clifford Cadet, 15, who watched from across the street.

Lubin, the doctor in Petionville, said people are attacking others on streets and in parks that have become temporary homes.

“People are getting mad and worried,” he said. “Things are going to get out of hand. … It’s starting already. You will not give it to them? Fine, then they will come and take it.”

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of residents fled to Houston, Atlanta and other cities for shelter and services. In Haiti, there’s nowhere to go.

Former FEMA official Mark Ghilarducci, who responded to an earthquake in Kobe, Japan, in 1995, said military-style tent cities may be needed first.

“This is a very complicated situation because of the fact that Haiti’s so isolated,” he said. “There may be a segment that needs to be moved to another place in the world.”

Faced with all those problems, Kerline Auguste, 16, sees no hope for Haiti. She survived two days under the rubble of her house with her 18-month-old son; her parents and her son’s father perished.

“The only thing I dream about is leaving this country, because I have no hope in the future,” she said. “Even God can’t help us. The situation is too bad.”

Contributing: Jim Michaels and Ken Dilanian in Port-au-Prince; Mimi Hall in Washington; Richard Wolf and Oren Dorell in McLean, Va.

The question in Haiti right now is whether the military is respecting NGOs and cooperating with them. Some NGOs are saying they are having trouble getting equipment in because the US military, which is in charge at the Port-au-Prince airport, is keeping civilian relief planes from landing to make way for military aircraft. Military leaders need not only to acknowledge that NGOs have the most and best experience at providing direct relief to victims, there also should be regular coordination between militaries, NGOs and UN groups working in Haiti.

Haitian President Rene Preval needs to ask the UN to serve as the coordinator and then announce that act on behalf of the struggling government, which essentially was obliterated when the earthquake ruined most of Haiti’s capital of Port-Au-Prince. That would help quell criticisms that no one is in charge of the relief operation, a dangerous gap. Preval’s request for UN leadership would confer a legitimacy on one of the international organization’s agency, perhaps OCHA (Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), taking charge.

One other quick note. The criticism that the US military was favoring departures flying Americans back to the US seems warranted. To me, it’s one of the ways race is a factor in various aspects of this crisis.

“Air drop is dangerous for people on the ground because when people see things falling they will run to where that is, and so it can actually cause more problems than it causes help,” he said.

It is understandable that people look at Haitians’ suffering in the aftermath of last week’s earthquake and ask why more cannot be done faster. Certainly the need is there. and, let’s face it, the fact that Haiti is on the U.S. door step makes it seem all the more possible to get the aid there fast.  But for aid to reach as many people as possible, it needs to be distributed smartly. That means setting up distribution centers, as I hear the U.N. is doing, and having procedures for people to get food and medical care safely. If air drops were done, it would be the strongest and fastest who reached the packages — not the ones who may need them most. As craven as it may seem, some of those who would get the supplies would not pass them around for free, they likely would sell them. This isn’t a knock on Haitians — these illicit, underground markets spring up in every crisis.

UN Photo/Marco Dormino

When I first began managing a Kosovar refugee camp in 1999 for the International Rescue Committee, I took a flight over the area of Macedonia where our camp was located and saw the blue plastic that the UN distributes in all of the neighborhoods around the camp; I saw the plastic, so useful and valuable, for sale in the local market. The unscrupulous refugee residents of the camp stole other supplies, such as shoes and diapers, from fellow camp residents and sold them in the nearby town. We did everything we could to protect the supplies and distribute them fairly to camp residents, but abuses still occurred.

I don’t relate this to impugn anyone, but to emphasize realities in these situations. Most Haitians are decent and are pitching in to help their fellow Haitians. They are the ones who have done most of the rescuing and will do most of the reconstruction work. But people who are rotten before a disaster often continue to be rotten after it. Additionally, deeply impoverished folks get desperate when war or a natural disaster pile on their troubles. Who can blame them, in one respect, for trying to grab what they can get? Most people are NOT selling relief supplies on underground markets, they are using it for their own families and friends. Still, getting relief shouldn’t depend upon knowing someone who is speedy, more resourceful or less scrupulous.

So what is the best way to combat this and deliver supplies as effectively as possible? I know I keep pounding on this, but it’s to set up good procedures and practices for distributing it. That’s why it is important for coolness and reality to prevail among those who are on the ground in Haiti.

Good answer, Gen. Fraser.

UN Photo/Marco Dormino