Sarah Spencer (left) and Khadija Bahram Photos: The IRC

Earlier this week, Sarah Spencer, the IRC’s acting director for gender-based violence programs, was named as one of six winners of Cosmopolitan UK magazine’s Ultimate Women of the Year awards.

Now, Khadija Bahram — who guides an educational program that reaches 10,000 children in Afghanistan —has been named an “Adventurer of the Year” by National Geographic.  You can read Khadija’s story on the National Geographic Adventure Web site.

More »

Sarah Spencer Photo: The IRC

Sarah Spencer, the IRC’s acting director for gender-based violence programs, was this week named one of six winners of Cosmopolitan UK magazine’s Ultimate Women of the Year awards, chosen from thousands of nominations for exceptional women from across the UK.

Spencer hopes that the award will help raise awareness and inspire readers of Cosmopolitan magazine to take action to support the women and girls she works with, who are so affected by violence and brutality in conflict and post-conflict zones.

Read more about Sarah at the IRC-UK Web site

More »

On June 5th Chet Nath’s younger brother Mona Rath, with his wife Pabitra and daughter Pratiksha, finally arrived from Nepal. Now Chet Nath’s two-bedroom apartment is shared by seven people, with Chet Nath and his family in the master bedroom, Mona Rath and his family in the second bedroom, and Tek Nath on a twin bed in the living room.  Chet Nath’s eldest brother, Khara Nanda, is also in New York, living with his family in his in-laws’ apartment.

More »

Photo: The IRC

When comercial lender CIT filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, American taxpayers lost $2.3 billion to a wasted bailout. That’s a lot of money. To drive home the point, business writer Lawrence Delevingne asked the International Rescue Committee and some other humanitarian groups how $2.3 billion could have been spent to help out in the developing world. We crunched some numbers:

- $2.3 billion could buy 378.3 million mosquito nets (@ $6.08 each) to help prevent millions of deaths from malaria worldwide

- $2.3 billion could send 44.2 million girls to school for a year (@ $52 per girl per year)

Read about more missed opportunities in Delevingne’s story in The Business Insider, “10 Really Good Things We Could Have Done With The $2.3 Billion We Wasted On CIT.”

More »

12-year-old Lakot Cavine raises her hand to answer a question during lessons at Kitgum primary school. Photo: The IRC

Joanne Offer recently traveled to northern Uganda, once the scene of one of the bloodiest civil wars in Africa. Today, the IRC is helping hundreds of children and former child laborers go to school for the first time.
 
My visit to Uganda coincides with a time that many children dread—the start of the new school year. Yet as I travel from school to school, I can see that for the children here things are different

“Before I was able to come to school, I was fetching water for money,” said 12-year-old Lakot Cavine. “It was hard work and it made me tired. I worked all day in the sun. It was a long day.”

Today, Lakot attends primary school in Kitgum, thanks to a unique program run by the IRC called LEAP— Livelihoods, Education and Protection to End Child Labor. Across north and northeast Uganda, the IRC is paying the school fees of children and former child laborers, repairing school buildings, installing latrines, constructing new houses for teachers, and training teachers to become better instructors.

“Since the IRC started helping us, school enrollment has gone up,” said Nadutuka Daniela, the head teacher at the Loodoi Primary school in the district of Moroto. “The IRC is paying fees and has given materials—books and uniforms—that parents can’t afford. People are so happy about it.”

Young shepherds in Karamoja help their families by looking after livestock. Photo: The IRC

Poverty is an overwhelming fact of life in these parts of Uganda. In Karamoja, people are struggling with severe drought, the effects of decades of cattle-raiding, under-investment by government in vital infrastructure such as schools and health centers, and lack of economic opportunity.

Communities are still recovering from years of displacement—thousands of people in northern Uganda were forced to flee the brutal civil war between the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and the government. They are only now starting to re-cultivate farms that had lain abandoned for years. A severe lack of rain this year has ruined many new harvests.

“Parents can’t provide for their children so the children end up washing cars, working in mines or even as prostitutes,” said Ojara Austin, an IRC community worker in Kitgum.

Women contribute to a communal savings and loan in Kitgum. The money can then be loaned to members at low interest. Photo: The IRC

To help parents economically, the IRC is helping establish village savings and loans associations. Parents contribute a small amount to the savings and loan every week—from as little as 50 cents to $3—and can then apply for a loan of up to three times their savings.

“I was able to obtain a loan and I am now involved in a small business in town,” said Mary Olworo, who lives in Kitgum. “I buy and sell items like tomatoes, fish and maize. Even more important, I have been able to use the money to buy school books for my children.”

To Help:  The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child protects children. Only two nations in the world have yet to join the global community in ratifying this agreement: Somalia and the United States. Urge President Obama and Congress to ratify the convention without delay. Sign our peition at theIRC.org/rescueachild

More »

World Up EDU/IRC Summer 2009 Refugee Summer Academy from World Up on Vimeo.

NEW video - The students at the IRC’s Refugee Youth Summer Academy in NYC had an amazing, creative summer thanks to World Up.

More »

Rahmad Pari and Anna Husarska interviewing displaced women from Swat valley. Photo: Sasha Pippenger/The IRC

IRC senior policy adviser Anna Husarska writes in The Guardian about the difficult and delicate work of our colleague Rahmad Pari, who is assisting people who fled the fighting between Pakistan’s military and the Taliban in Swat Valley.  You can read her story here.

More »

IRC water specialists use GIS technology to monitor tap stands. Photo: The IRC

 

Today, Blog Action Day, we’re joining more than 8,400 bloggers around the world to help focus attention on climate change.

Since 2000, the International Rescue Committee has worked to bring water to the people of Ethiopia’s drought zones. Now, IRC water specialists are using cutting-edge technology to find and deliver this valuable resource.

In the village of Oda Keneni, IRC engineers used Geographical Information System (GIS) navigation tools to find an underground reservoir. Then they directed the water to a public faucet−or tap stand−in the village. Using electronic sensors, the engineers continuously monitor the flow of water to the tap stand.

Alaya Muhammad collects water at a tap stand the IRC built near her home. Photo: The IRC

Before water came to Oda Keneni, women walked two hours to the river and back with heavy cans on their heads, braving the threat of attack or rape on unsafe trails. “We could only bathe once a week and wash clothes once a month,” says Alaya Muhammad, a 30-year-old mother of nine. Women sometimes fought over a bucket of water, she recalls. Even so, villagers frequently were sickened from drinking contaminated water.

All that changed once the tap stand−a 10 minute walk from Alaya’s home−started working. Her family can drink and bathe whenever they wish. Her children no longer fall sick from polluted water. Alaya no longer suffers from injuries caused by carrying heavy buckets long distances. And because women and children no longer spend up to six hours fetching water, they have more time for chores at home and for school. Women who complained of stress and physical abuse at the hands of their husbands (because of long absences spent collecting water) now report fewer incidents of domestic violence. “Before, my husband and I always quarreled,” Alaya says. “Now we discuss things and decide together. Sometimes I make him go for water!”

The IRC believes technology can be used to solve other chronic problems in African villages. “We’re using satellite imagery, GPS and aerial photography to analyze where and why crops fail and even why small businesses are failing in certain regions,” says Behar Hussein, an IRC GIS specialist.

In Oda Keneni, a village elder best expresses the change technology has made in the lives of the people in his community. “We feel as if we are not drinking water now,” he says, his hands clasped in gratitude. “We feel as though we are drinking milk!”

More »

In Ethiopia, drought and food shortages are recurrent problems. Photo: Emily Holland/The IRC

Today, Blog Action Day, we’re joining more than 8,400 bloggers around the world to help focus attention on climate change.

Every year, the International Rescue Committee aids millions of people displaced by conflict and war. But environmental degradation around the world is creating a new category of people known as “environmental refugees.” What’s more, their ranks are growing rapidly.

The U.N. estimates that some 50 million people worldwide could be on the move by 2010, seeking refuge from hunger, droughts and depleted soils—more than those displaced by war and political repression combined. Up to 250 million people could be displaced by climate-related disasters by 2050.

Catastrophes like 2004’s Indian Ocean tsunami or 2005’s Hurricane Katrina uproot millions of people almost in an instant. People displaced by environmental shifts, on the other hand, are displaced gradually by causes linked to climate change, including desertification, deforestation, diminishing water supplies and rising sea levels.

“While industrialized countries are most responsible for the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, poor countries are most affected,” says Sue Dwyer, the IRC’s vice president of programs. “The most vulnerable people are at highest risk.”

The IRC and the aid community have woken up to the impact of climate change on the communities with which they work and are calling for more international support to meet the threat. But what can be done?

The IRC supports global efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and slowing climate change. We are also preparing local people for climate-related disasters and helping to reduce their vulnerability to climate change. In parts of drought-stricken Africa, for example, the IRC is gathering better climate information and using new technology to find water and other resources.

Elsewhere, the IRC is helping to set up early-warning systems in disaster-prone regions and is supporting a variety of community preparedness measures.

“While we cannot stop climate change, we can dampen its impact and, in the process, save lives,” says Dwyer.

More »

A displaced Bajauri man and his daughter in the Jalozai camp. Photo: Sasha Pippenger/The IRC.

While hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been able to go back to their homes in Pakistan’s conflict-ridden Swat Valley, some of the poorest people in the country are unable to return to their destroyed homes and crops. Six months before a Pakistan military offensive against the anti-government Taliban sparked the crisis in the Swat Valley, a similar anti-Taliban military campaign in the tribal agencies of Bajaur and Mohmand agencies resulted in the displacement of over half a million people.

“People are desperate to go home but simply can’t,” says Mike Young, the IRC’s country representative in Pakistan.

Read the full story here.

More »