When fighting in the central Iraqi city of Ramadi forced thousands of people to flee their houses, they look for refuge in safer areas in the country, particularly in Al Amiriyah Fallujah and Al Khalidiya in Al Anbar province. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society reported that more than 2,000 families were displaced, worsening the already fragile humanitarian situation. “The situation in the city is bad,” said Abu Ahmed, who was displaced by recent violence. “We witnessed many people losing their lives because of the exchange of fire.” The Iraqi Red Crescent dispatched aid convoys but recent rounds of fighting put an additional strain on the resources of the National Society, which was already providing urgent support for more than 2,500 families who had fled to the cities of Habbaniyah, Fallujah and Husaibah the month before.
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 Honduran communities at high risk of disasters, a Red Cross project helps families strengthen resilience and increase income through enterprises such as coffee production.
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