As monsoon flood waters began to recede in the south-western delta region of Myanmar, the fields around villages such as Yay Dar Gyi still looked more like a lake than farmlands in late August. Water levels in some paddy fields were three metres deep and the homes built on stilts just barely rose above the water. “The Red Cross has already started to plan for the long-term recovery of affected communities in other parts of the country where the floods have receded and people have returned to their villages,” said Nicolas Verdy, IFRC operations coordinator in the area.
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.”
Laws aimed at limiting support for groups considered as ‘terrorist’ are having unintended consequences on humanitarian aid .
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