The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing a critical examination of how communities and countries prepare for multiple, overlapping crises. Here are a few lessons the Japanese Red Cross Society learned after the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant meltdown ten years ago this month.
As Covid-19 spikes again in many European cities, young volunteers hit the streets, trying to cool down the pandemic’s spread by bringing a healthy message to the places where young people hang out.
As of today, 50 countries have ratified a treaty that bans nuclear weapons, a significant milestone that adds momentum to the movement toward the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.
Do you have a taste for innovative solutions that help people get through crisis, that provide comfort after a storm, or that offer a lifeline to those who might be otherwise left out? If so, you will love these four Recipes for Resilience, and the stories behind them.
Migrants from Africa and beyond are now trapped by pandemic in Latin America, stuck in limbo while waiting for their chance at a better life.
75 years after two atomic bombs almost entirely wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, survivors such as Rieko Yamada won’t rest until the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
The deadly mix of climate change and conflict has long plagued parts of the Sahel. Now, the emergence of climatic hotspots are testing the limits of resilience.
Building trust by listening, learning and responding to community concerns.
Stopping Ebola virus disease is not just about providing information, vaccine and treatment. It’s about gaining the trust of people with good reason to be wary.
Laws aimed at limiting support for groups considered as ‘terrorist’ are having unintended consequences on humanitarian aid .
As migration is increasingly treated as a security matter rather than a humanitarian concern, migrants and those trying to help them are being regarded as criminals.
A reactive, emergency mentality. A reflection of society. Lack of political pressure. These are a few of the reasons why gender disparity persists in the humanitarian sector.
Half the people we serve (and often more) are women. Gender parity is not only a question of principle, it’s about results.
Will a new urgency, sparked by frustration, help close the humanitarian gender gap?
What does it take for a health worker to wish death for her patient, even while doing everything to save her? This is just one of the agonizing questions I was confronted with during a mental health assessment.
Red Cross Red Crescent magazine goes on the road with migrants as they make the exhausting journey through the freezing mountain passes of northern Colombia.
Fabian Arellano Peña, who leads the Colombian Red Cross’ disaster management team, explains what the world needs to learn from the Americas’ biggest, on going, mass migration.
A typical day for thousands of migrants making the long trek on foot through Colombia. These are their stories.
Given the climate predictions for many areas effected by long-term conflict, is it time to think differently about the way cities are rebuilt or assisted during warfare?
Climate change is not a primary cause of armed conflict, most experts say. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future, as the planet continues to heat up.
Will a warming planet lead to a more violent world? Or will it inflict more suffering on those living through conflict?
As the scale and frequency of fires hitting the Canadian province of British Columbia increases — in part due to climate change — the lives of local people are changing dramatically. Hear their stories.
olunteers are often called the ‘heart’ or the ‘backbone’ of the Movement because they have passion and they do most of the heavy lifting. Is it time to rethink these metaphors?
A guided tour with IFRC President Francesco Rocca through an ancient city being rebuilt.
A mother’s search for her daughter highlights how easily people fall out of touch — even in the digital age.
Families of people who have gone missing bear a singular psychological and emotional burden.
Even in the digital age, people going through crisis can still fall through the cracks
Editorial: An inside look at the changes ahead for Red Cross Red Crescent magazine
Mental health and psychosocial services can be critical to recovery efforts in times of crisis.
Whether travelling by train, road, foot or plane, migrants and asylum seekers often find themselves in extremely vulnerable situations.
With conflict and ravaged infrastructure complicating the response, the Somalia drought crisis is a case study on the challenges of saving lives in a complex emergency.
To keep pace with rapid and sweeping change, the humanitarian sector needs to fundamentally transform the way it works, moving from isolated action to collective impact.
Getting ahead of future trends is not always just about predicting particular events or outcomes.
With sea levels rising and the population affected by a succession of droughts and heavy tropical storms, the country faces existential threats.
Complex crises, such as the emergency in South Sudan, can test the capacity of the Red Cross Red Crescent movement to respond with one voice.
After eight years as president of the world’s largest humanitarian volunteer network, Tadateru Konoé reflects on the critical work ahead in strengthening National Societies, volunteerism and local humanitarian action.
Will we ever be able to say ‘never again’ to drought, famine and violence in sub-Saharan Africa?
Guest editorial by John Lobor, Secretary General of the South Sudan Red Cross
How should cities, humanitarian organizations and local communities avoid the next urban pandemic?
The largely urban conflict in Syria has also had a major impact on cities in neighbouring countries. Lebanon, which hosts some 1.2million Syrians, is dealing with complex confessional fault lines.
We could say that today’s rapid urbanization is a tale of two cities. The first is a story of shining high-rises, the second, a tale of sprawling shanty towns. A guest editorial by Fouad Bendimerad.
How a digital mapping project in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania helps local communities take on urban risk, street by street.
Using an online map they helped developed with local residents, Tanzania Red Cross National Society volunteers offer a tour of the risks and assets of Kigogo, a neighbourhood in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
As cities take on greater importance — as population centres and economic hubs — they have also become front lines in most of today’s conflicts.
Working together to support stateless Shan people in the urban outskirts of Chiang Mai, Thailand.
In the so-called villas miserias of Buenos Aires, migrant communities face marginalization, lack key services and live in neglected neighbourhoods.
Communication, community engagement and preparedness are key as more National Societies use cash in emergency response.
As cash grants help Nepali families recover from the April 2015 earthquake, a vibrant marketplace for goods and services provides a foundation for recovery.
Author and researcher Patricia Leidl says the helping communities recover from crisis and overcoming poverty requires greater protection for women and girls.
In a field hospital at the al Azraq refugee camp, just 100 kilometres from the Syrian border in northern Jordan, a baby is born to a woman fleeing conflict in Syria.
Cash, a chance for change
By Degan Ali, executive director of African Development Solutions.
With more people on the move than ever before, conflicts lasting years and chronic violence on the rise in many areas, millions of children are deprived of even a basic education.
From Ecuador to Myanmar, Nepal to Somalia, Viet Nam to Canada, cash transfers are now an integral part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s aid operations.
As donors and international organizations discuss how best to support local organizations, many are coming up with their own ideas on how to ensure self-financing of local humanitarian relief.
Donors pledge to increase direct funding of local and national organizations.
With plenty of front-line experience fighting the mosquito that spreads chikungunya and dengue, National Societies in Latin America gear up against another mosquito-borne disease.
Donors and relief organizations agree that people affected by natural disaster or trapped in protracted conflict need more stable, long-term support.
Three months after delegates to the World Humanitarian Summit have gone back to their communities, what will all the big promises mean over the long term?
Bombed hospitals. Health and first-aid workers killed. Heavily populated urban areas bombarded. What can be done to ensure respect for the rules of war?
In a time of mounting crises and rapid change, we must rethink our collective response
Civil unrest poses some of the greatest challenges for local humanitarian organizations.
Nuclear accidents and other technological disasters are rare. But 30 years after Chernobyl, the disaster reminds us of the urgent need to prepare.
Technological disasters present great challenges for local first responders.
For the first time in its 150-year-plus history, the Movement has approved a Movement-wide logo representing all its components — the ICRC, National Societies and the IFRC.
Mobile phones were commonplace for many years before becoming an integral part of the humanitarian toolkit.
Turkish Red Crescent: entrepreneurial spirit as it faces one of the world’s greatest humanitarian challenges right at its doorstep.
In the shadow of mounting challenges, the Movement’s 32nd International Conference made a case for building a stronger humanitarian response from the ground up.
As humanitarians explore new technologies and innovation, how can local communities shape the technologies best suited for their needs?
A message from Yves Daccord and Elhadj As Sy to world leaders.
As the planet warms due to climate change, weather patterns are changing and in many cases becoming more extreme.
Beyond projects and emergency response, how can international humanitarian organizations support sustainable humanitarian engagement at the local level?
Could a voluntary compliance mechanism, designed to be non-binding and non-political, help bridge the gap between the ideals behind the rules of war and real-world practice on the ground?
With support from the Lebanese Red Cross, the ICRC distributed 90 tonnes of food to around 10,000 Syrian refugees in northern Lebanon in late September.
At the 25th United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues in Hiroshima, Japan, Movement representatives emphasized the need for governments to take urgent action to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons through a binding international agreement.
Many countries are still involved in illegal arms transfers despite having committed themselves to an international treaty to regulate the flow of such weapons, according to the ICRC.
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.
In Pakistan, monsoon rains coupled with outbursts from glacial lakes have so far claimed 219 lives and affected about 1.5 million people.
As monsoon clouds threatened still more rain, the Indian Red Cross Society geared up to respond to floods that killed more than 200 people and affected some 10 million others.
The conflict in Yemen claimed the lives of four more Movement workers in recent months.
Even for those who manage to make it to a destination country with a good economy, their odyssey is not over.
Powerful images of migrants drowned at sea, crossing over razor-wire fences or arriving on shore after a shipwreck have propelled the current migration phenomenon to the forefront of public consciousness in Europe in the past year.
Sent back to Guatemala after being caught by police in Mexico, Guatemalan migrants arrive at the border with little more than the clothes they are wearing.
Along the Mediterranean coast near the border of Italy and France, people fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty live in limbo.
For many who make dangerous sea crossings, or walk hundreds of kilometres towards Europe, their first concern is finding safety.
The Gulf of Aden has long been one of the world’s deadliest places for migrants. Now the conflict in Yemen has reversed traditional migration patterns and created new humanitarian challenges.
Stories among the many tragedies that have befallen people hoping to reach safe shores in Europe in 2015.
People fleeing conflict, persecution, poverty or natural disaster deserve to be treated with humanity.
It has been fifty years since the adoption of the Seven Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. Do you think they’re still relevant to 21st century life and humanitarian work, or do they need updating?
The day is coming when humanitarian workers in the field will assume that any person, be they female or male, child, elder, youth or adult, may be a survivor of sexual violence.
In the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the epicentre of fighting between Boko Haram and the Nigerian army, the scale of humanitarian needs and the horrific mental scars and physical injuries the violence is leaving on the population are appalling.
As the Nepal Red Cross Society continues its work on behalf of thousands of people affected by the earthquakes in April and May, it also pays tribute to three National Society members who died while on duty on 25 April.
When the 32nd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent convenes in December, will the voices of people at the grass roots be heard?
A project that links high-tech weather forecasting with traditional knowledge is being piloted in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu in an effort to help people cope with climate change and disasters.
The secretaries general of 21 European Red Cross Societies, along with IFRC Secretary General Elhadj As Sy, have called for more compassionate action on behalf of migrants after yet another series of sea disasters claimed the lives of thousands of people in the Mediterranean Sea.
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.
Even before conflict broke out in Iraq and Syria, people in the Middle East were suffering from severe water shortages as the past few years’ rising violence and record low rainfall have made access to an adequate quantity and quality of water increasingly difficult, according to a recent report by the ICRC.
Why a solid legal foundation is the first building block for effective and principled humanitarian action.
As conflict intensified in Yemen, and many aid agencies were forced to leave, locally based Movement workers have been the backbone of the humanitarian response.
People in Nepal are learning how to survive, rebuild and deal with trauma as more aftershocks bring back terrible memories.
How hand-held tablets and a system for uploading data in real time may make detention conditions healthier and more humane in the Philippines.
How data are helping people in a fractured country avoid the death sentence imposed when life-saving malaria drugs are not available.
Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are often hidden due to social stigma, fear of reprisals or further violence.
In the aftermath of genocide in Cambodia,the principle of impartiality faced one ofits greatest trials.
The Fundamental Principles turn 50 years old this year. What better time to examine the challenges faced in putting these key guiding principles into action?
Chile’s greatest mysteries: what happened to those who disappeared during the country’s decades of military regime?
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