Check out the UN’s video promoting World Humanitarian Day.

Some might say it's a little worthy, but nonetheless it gives a good flavour of the variety of the work, and the type of people that do it. Two things that struck me; the first is the sheer size and scope of global humanitarian engagement. All sorts of people, all over the world, project managing and delivering a multi-billion dollar endeavour - more than $11 billion was officially recorded in 2010, and that does not include resources channelled through the Red Cross.

The second is the sense of common vision. To anybody who has been in the thick of a disaster response, it may appear as if a bunch of unruly, unregulated agencies are pulling in as many different directions. But beneath the surface, there is a rock-solid sense of what we hold in common with the victims of a disaster: humanity. And with that shared humanity comes the desire to help. 

Me talking to Aisha, a beneficiary of a cash transfer scheme, in Niger 2008.

Incidentally, anybody who thinks that that desire to help has in anyway been blunted during these times of economic austerity need only look at the British public’s response to the Pakistan DEC Appeal (£15 million raised to date). It’s money like this, as well as large slugs of money from donor governments, that allow humanitarians to continue doing their jobs, delivering emergency assistance in some of the world’s toughest places. 

In one of my early experiences with Medicins Sans Frontieres (also known as Doctors Without Borders) we were working in what were then the badlands along the Angolan-Zambian border. We found 400 people, mostly naked, with only 400 legs. The rest had been blown away by mines, and the victims had limped and dragged themselves to the relative safety of Zambia. We were able to provide principled assistance – assistance where it was needed most. 

Ah yes – the humanitarian principles. A quick reminder: humanity means that human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found. Humanitarian aid workers must not take sides (they must be neutral), and aid delivery must be impartial (delivered according to need). It must also be independent of political, economic, military or other objectives. To the uninitiated, they sound like a quaint throw-back to another era. And do they still matter? You bet they do - now more than ever. 

A burnt out village in Central African Republic

Humanitarian work is, at root, immensely simple: help where help is needed most. In the last year, it has been adherence to the principles that allowed humanitarians to deliver aid in rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka, in the war zones of Chad and DR Congo, and in restrictive regimes the world over. Some years ago, I passed through a village in a rebel-held area in the north of the Central African Republic. Smoke still wafted from burnt out huts, and the women and children cowered in the forests nearby. Without humanitarian neutrality, and the consequent acceptance by local militias, humanitarian workers would never have gained access here, let alone been allowed to deliver relief. 

Where humanitarian neutrality doesn't exist, the price is paid in lives, as the year-on-year increase in the number of serious security incidents (murders, bombardments, kidnappings) affecting the humanitarian workforce attests. 

Last year saw 102 deaths among humanitarian workers, killed as they went about the business of realising a human response to human suffering. World Humanitarian Day allows us to pause, and to remember them, and those they were trying to serve.

Two million people needing food; up to 800,000 people living in transitional shelter; up to 4000 temporary classrooms needed; some 240,000 pregnant and lactating women requiring nutritional support. This is the measurement of human misery. Yet, underneath this horror, we know we have been here before. And we must continue to learn from previous disasters.

Last night, I came across an excellent report from the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action  (ALNAP). Well-researched, it is a catalogue of what has gone wrong in previous mega-quakes. It also provides some instant answers to topical issues – such as the two currently chasing each other through newspaper columns: ‘How many people have died? And how many were injured?’. The answer: there is no rule of thumb – but getting it wrong may mean that you have a lot of under-employed field hospitals on your hands, as happened after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

And then there are the dead. Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies are rarely infectious; but they do pose a more insidious threat. In Aceh, I looked out over the silent, red-earth field that was the final resting place for an estimated 80,000. It had just been covered; and the smell of death was mixed with the smell of freshly-turned soil. In what remained of the city, the collective grief was like an endless, silent scream. On this, the ALNAP report is unequivocal: ‘In dealing with the dead, agencies should give priority to the needs of the living…. the real disease posed by dead bodies is not epidemic disease but the risk of mental illness caused by the lack of closure over the missing.’

I don’t underestimate the size of the challenge. I see that the Haitian government estimates 112,250 dead; how can you deal with this number of bodies? It is inevitable that many have already been consigned to mass graves. What will be important now is the support that the world can give to ease the mental anguish of the survivors.

Donate to the emergency appeal for Haiti | How you can help | Latest updates from DFID

‘The airport is intermittently open and closed. In addition, supplies arriving into the country are piling on the tarmac…’

The small Port-au-Prince airport is now being clogged with aid supplies. Credit: Rebecca Sudduth

It is the beginning of the perennial, mega-disaster problem. The airport is already clogged with supplies that are unsolicited and unprioritised and adding to it will make it even more difficult for the truly life-saving stuff – the medical kit, the water and sanitation material, the food – to get through.

In Aceh, a few weeks after the Tsunami, the runway was lined with 5m high piles of clothing sent as aid packages by people trying to help. Most of it had begun to rot; there had been an attempt to burn it, and some of it was still smouldering.

I can understand this want to give - whatever you can - at this time of need. It’s this want to help that drives us a humanitarian workers. It’s what keeps my colleagues in the Operations Room working through the night. And it’s a visible sign of the public support that we desperately need to do our work.

But, alas, it’s just not practical to give “stuff” - or to take relief efforts into your own hands. In the case of Aceh, clothing was never a humanitarian priority, and in any case, cultural norms meant that most people would not wear second hand clothing. The other irony was that most of the clothes had been manufactured in South East Asia in the first place, exported to Europe and had now found its way back – by eye-wateringly expensive flight – to Indonesia.

I remember back in the Operations Room, the lines were often busy with people wanting to help, to do anything, to do something. Several offers from the public stick in my mind. There was the British national who rang up from Thailand; she did not have much to offer, she said, but at home she worked in a travel agent, and so offered to assist with the incoming relief flights. And there was a gentleman from Australia who rang to ask us where he could send a super-tanker he planned to fill with fresh drinking water.

The one that is clearest in my mind, however, is the call we received from a lady who spent the day after the tsunami baking cakes for the survivors, and was asking if we could help deliver them.

Colleagues in the DFID Operations Room responding to calls

Similar well-meaning offers are appearing once again for Haiti. Today I heard of a lady that had rung in with the offer of using her personal yacht.

In an era when disasters are piped almost instantaneously into our sitting-rooms, and play out over YouTube, unsolicited donations are a natural and understandable expression of worldwide anguish at the plight of the Haitians. It is the same motivation that jolted Imran to reply to my last blog; a heartfelt, humanitarian response. How can I help?

There are a number of ways. I see that the American Red Cross has been savvy: Twittering you to donate $10 by mobile phone. (And I see the DEC Appeal in the UK has followed suit). I like that; and so do the American public, apparently: $35m has been raised since Thursday night. If you are a business, or have an in-kind donation, I see the UN has set up a portal which seems to act more or less like a dating agency, matching your donation against an identified need. Or if you are a person who just feels moved to scratch the humanitarian itch, find out how you can help on our website or donate now to the Disaster Emergency Committee appeal.

The take-home message is this: monetise the home-made cakes, sell the super-tanker, and rent out the yacht. Give the money instead, to an NGO near you.

Donate to the emergency appeal for Haiti | How you can help | Latest updates from DFID

That’s how it was just over five years ago, on the morning of the Indian Ocean tsunami. First impressions, filtered by the media, are worth nothing to relief-workers. In the tsunami, the first report I received from Aceh was that 8 had died; the final figure was over 130,000 for that province alone. And that makes me wonder, if they are reporting ‘hundreds’ dead in Haiti now, what will be the final tally?

The UK search and rescue team about to board the humanitarian flight out of London Gatwick

I see my colleagues in DFID have scrambled. The Operations Room will be open – a continual coming and going of people; maps and charts will be appearing on the wall; a rigourous routine of meetings will be in place. Pressured, but controlled, is how I remember it; at this stage, it is more or less a 24-hour operation, fuelled by sandwiches and crisps.

And the search is on for information – from all available sources, to begin the process of triangulation. We ring the UN, Red Cross and NGOs, we comb the internet, follow blogs and watch the TV reports: everything possible to help us piece together the picture, to form the UK understanding - even when information is thin.

How does it look on the ground? Well, at this stage, it will be chaos. Landlines are down; mobiles don’t work; civil administration may be shattered; there may be looting. Reports from our field team (now deploying) will be coming through by satphone.

The photos already show the extent of the destruction; there is debris everywhere, and, I am guessing, many, many distressed people. And into this environment come the relief-workers; the UK search and rescue teams are on their way; at this stage, this is the priority, to try to pull as many people – alive – from the wreckage.

The window is short, a few days, perhaps. And the other emergency responders are gearing up. Looking at the emergency response web platform, I see that no less than 18 teams are mobilising – to address everything from health needs to coordination needs. Coming from everywhere from China to Panama.

I have a sense that Haiti is going to need all the help it can get.

Donate to the emergency appeal for Haiti | How you can help | Latest updates from DFID

Central African Republic in the twilight hours

There was a party on in town. I could hear the low beat of drums, and the singing – mesmerising and unnerving at the same time. A wedding, perhaps, or a funeral.

Later, the party wound down, and I listened to the scratchings and scurryings, twitching and rustlings of the nightlife around me. Something started to cavort on the tin roof nearby. As I was dropping off to sleep, a mango crashed to the ground near my head and almost gave me a heart attack.

Before dawn there was a new kind of singing - the choir was practising. As the sky grew lighter, I realised that I was not alone. Hundreds of ants were teeming across my mattress, the soldier ants waving their pincers as they guarded the flanks. Under my mattress, I found a dead lizard. Ant breakfast.

This is my last day in Central African Republic, and then it’s back to the very different rhythm of life in headquarters. At least there are no dead lizards. This week my colleague Dominic will take up the blogging baton as he visits Zimbabwe. Watch this space.

All the women contribute money to the boxes

We are in the shanty side-streets of Paoua, where crumbling buildings patched with tin crowd in on dusty alleys, and where skinny cats patrol. I am sitting with a group of thirty women, and their attention is focussed on two metal boxes in the middle of the circle. They are money boxes, one painted red and one painted green. Altogether, it doesn't look like much. But in fact, something very important is happening here, and the idea is ingeniously simple.

Each week, each of the thirty women in the group contributes 100 Central African Francs (about 15p), which is divided between green and red boxes. And each week, the fund releases a block of money to one woman. So what's the big deal?

First, this is a way for women to squirrel away money where there are real, but often mundane, risks to making household savings. One woman told me how she had lost all her savings because mice ate through her plastic savings bag. But more often, it is men that are the problem; they tend to fritter savings. Second, it is a way of generating credit. The sum given to one woman each week is piteously small - not much more than a few pounds - but it is an amount that could never be accumulated in the hand-to-mouth existence that families in Paoua lead.  And credit is vital if women are to kickstart businesses, such as selling cooked peanuts or cassava chips - the stuff of petty trade that lines the edges of the streets in Paoua.

The money is meticulously counted

This is the women's weekly meeting, and they have dressed up for the occasion. They smile broadly at my faltering attempts to greet them in the local tongue of Songho, and then return to chatting quietly as their contributions are collected. Then the money in the green box is meticulously counted, and everything is carefully recorded in a ledger by the group's secretary. In a corner of the courtyard, a woman is working a knitting machine, and beside her is a pile of woolly children's hats. There is a market for these - something I never did understand in this sweltering corner of the world - but their sale provides a further income stream for the green box. So apart from providing revolving credit, the box can then also furnish loans to the women in the group.  And what accumulates in the red box covers the cost of emergency healthcare; a simple health insurance scheme.

In my job, I am used to looking at emergency wells, food distributions and displacement camps. So on a hot afternoon in a Paoua slum, it took me time to understand the significance of what I was watching. In this dusty courtyard, these women were able to look up - for a brief moment - from hardscrabble day-to-day questions like putting the next meal on the table. The quiet diligence of these women and this revolving credit scheme supported by DFID is something transformational - an engine that may just allow us to move beyond the relief handouts.

There is stability, of sorts. An uneasy ceasefire persists between government and rebels. But other armed groups complicate the picture, and security is fragile. Across the bush, there is a delicate mosaic of areas of control, their boundaries shifting as the different groups flex their muscles.

Under a tree in the bush, we stopped to talk to the softly spoken local leader of the rebels. Important to talk to these guys - I wanted to be sure humanitarian workers can get on with the job of providing vital relief to villages in the area, whether it's supplying food or supporting education projects. We were well outside Paoua on the dusty track that leads to Cameroon. Yes, he said, the relationship with the humanitarian workers was fine, as long as they stay neutral. We left him then, surrounded by his soldiers – just ordinary young men in trainers and jeans, bandanas, shades. Some of their homemade weapons were held together with brass wire.

The local population has been scattered from villages into the bush by rebel fighting and banditry

Beyond collecting “taxes” from the locals to sustain themselves, the rebels present a decreasing threat to the surrounding population. The roaming bandits are scarier, as they are only intent on pillage – in the Central African Republic it is estimated that half of all displacement is caused by their activities as they come through and burn everything in their path. Around Paoua, because the rebels exert a degree of control, the bandits are less active than they were, although the threat remains. And accordingly, some of the villages further south have set up their own self-defence groups, a sort of home-guard.

The area's infrastructure has been ruined during the fighting

Not far from here last week, the rebels clashed again with the government; apparently some dispute involving Peuhl tribesmen, and a few herd of cattle. In the ensuing spat, 49 houses were burnt, and another several thousand people were added to the total of those living rough in the bush. Even though there is a tentative political process underway, and much talk of the rebels handing in their arms, it seems to me that there is going to be the need for relief interventions for some time to come.

Paoua's main street is slowly coming back to life

Welcome to Paoua. It’s a dusty dot-on-the-map of the Central African Republic, in the swathe of land controlled by rebels. Last time I was here, more than a year ago, it was a town with a siege mentality; it was full to bursting with those driven from villages burnt to the ground. It had once boasted a huge cattle market, but the conflict had snuffed that out; economic activity was at a standstill.

Now I'm back to see what progress has been made. It's my job as one of DFID's Humanitarian Advisers to make sure that the money we're putting in meets the needs of the people that were caught up in the conflict. And as we edge along a rutted track through town, I can see that life has changed. Women are carrying things to market; there are motorbikes – there is now a busy motorbike taxi service in town – and youths loll by small, petrol-driven milling machines. Along the edge of the track, the bric-a-brac of petty trade is arrayed in the dust; blocks of soap, packets of biscuits, cigarettes, flip flops. At a small shack, carefully painted signs advertise mobile phone credit. The network reached Paoua a few weeks ago.

Small telephone shacks are an early sign of the modest economic revival

But in spite of signs of economic life, the local government official is downcast. At the hottest part of the long hot afternoon, I munch peanuts and sip warm Fanta with him in the freshly painted office of the Mayor. He has such aspirations. The town needs schools, a sports stadium, a rubbish lorry. The Mayor needs a car, a house, a typewriter. Outside town, the rural folk need health centres, water, agricultural support. He presents me with the list.

He’s right, of course; we have to shift from relief handouts to helping people to help themselves. And we have to involve the local government, not just because it is courteous to do so, but because local ownership will allow our efforts to endure. But the constraints are manifold. Line ministries are fragile, expertise and experience are thin. Where do we start?

The Hollywood version of Bangui

Bangui in the Central African Republic has not got much in common with Hollywood, except the imposing sign on the hill above the city. City? Well, not really. 10 minutes of driving takes you from one edge to the other; it has a cosy, friendly feel; colourful, gently bustling, untidy, with avenues shaded by trees, and long bars of light checkering the market stalls in the evenings. The main street is a bit different; it is wide, very wide, with buildings set far back from its ragged tarmac edge. It is as wide as runway; and that’s what it was in olden days, and then they built the town around it, and a new runway further out.

Down in the market

In the heart of the town, it is crowded in the morning; Bangui is on the move, school kids padding along the dusty road, market traders straining with bicycles stacked high with farm produce, the occasional vehicle nosing its way through the throng, and women setting up their stalls on the ground, mounding up their bananas, their vegetables, their eggs. And their baguettes.

The baguette is ubiquitous. Along with the croissant, it is part of the extensive French legacy here. And today, in a long round of meetings, I came across another excellent French contribution; the word ‘saussisage’. It means ‘the slicing of something into sausage-like sections’. The English language is poorer because we do not have a direct translation.

Meeting with international NGOs in Bangui

After a lot of meetings, over two days with our many UN and NGO partners, I see I am in the business of saussisage. My job, just now, is to work my way round the mechanism for delivering humanitarian relief in this troubled country. Is the system effective? Are we viewing the problems facing the 200,000 displaced and returnee populations in the conflict-affected north correctly? Is DFID dividing its money to ensure maximum impact between the different aspects of relief – the water, the food, the medical care? In short, I want to know how well are we cutting our sausage.

Overlooking the River Chari

I am standing on the bridge over the Chari, the river which forms the border between Chad and Cameroon. I came here as a sort of a pilgrimage – one year ago today, this bridge was a jostling mass of people; 30,000 people crushed across to escape the fighting in N’Djamena.

Today, at dawn, it is quiet. The sky is lightening, and the first commuters are stepping round me; young men chatting in low sleepy voices, or working their mobile phones; women in long colourful robes carrying bundles of grass on their heads. On the river, a dug-out canoe is a sharp flat silhouette against the water, two men gently coaxing it with long poles between the sandbanks. On the bank, people huddle around soft orange fires and dogs scavenge; a woman is throwing handfuls of seed into carefully furrowed dust. Other women move silently amongst the low mud buildings beside the bridge, swaying beneath buckets of water drawn from the river. In the strengthening light, children have emerged to play in the stagnant waste water outside open front doors.

On the bridge, the traffic is building up. A prehistoric lorry makes an elemental roar as it passes, and the bridge shakes. The lorry is stacked inconceivably high with bleached wood scavenged from the countryside, for N’Djamena’s fires.  A man passes on a hand-cranked bicycle, his legs withered and lifeless; polio is still a reality in Chad.

Wind ruffles the water, and I turn to go. A camel passes me, its massive hooves making small explosions in the dust. An old man robed with a turban draped round his head and face urges it forward with a thin cane. A few metres behind, an old woman, his wife, trails along in the camel’s wake.