Movement rocked by more aid worker deaths

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 17 Movement workers or volunteers have lost their lives in attacks by warring parties in various parts of the world. In early February, six staff members of the ICRC were killed in Afghanistan when their clearly marked convoy was attacked on its way to a distribution in Jawzan province. Two other staff members were still missing at the time of writing. Also in February, two members of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were killed along with two people who had come to receive aid at a distribution centre in the town of Hamadaniya. Several others were injured. In January, two Mexican Red Cross paramedics were murdered by armed gunmen while carrying out humanitarian duties in Ixtapaluca, Mexico. Also in January, an accidental air strike on a camp for displaced people in Rann, Nigeria killed more than 70 civilians, including six aid workers from the Nigerian Red Cross Society. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement strongly condemned the attacks insisting that fighting parties take all necessary steps to ensure that humanitarian workers are never targeted.

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‘Wildfire diaries’ and radical change in communications

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.

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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.”

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