July 2020
Reporting:
Malcolm Lucard
Videography:
Thibault Lauritzen
Health emergencies don’t hit everyone the same way. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, is forcing people to distance themselves physically and to stay at home as much as possible. But those with physical disabilities can become particularly isolated and vulnerable. Helpers or support systems might no longer be available.
Protecting oneself from infection is more difficult and many people with disabilities face a higher risk due to pre-existing conditons. To make matters worse, critical health and prevention messages are not always shared in a way that people with visual, hearing or physical disabilities can receive them. “During emergencies, people with disabilities often get forgotten,” says Dalal al Taji, a professor and advocate for people with disabilities who lives and teaches in the Gaza Strip. In this episode of Expert Sources, al Taji explains the challenges faced by people who have disabilities and who live in conflict zones or other places impacted by crisis.
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.”
Half the people we serve (and often more) are women. Gender parity is not only a question of principle, it’s about results.
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