Global Social Work: Humanitarian work

For a brief time I had a roommate who was a water and sanitation engineer. He had worked all over the world in some of the nations suffering the biggest humanitarian crises. When he began a contract, it was his job to go into these countries as diverse as African nations, Haiti after the earthquake and many other places and assemble teams to begin the process of creating the most basic infrastructure - access to water and sanitation systems.

Learning about his work, and the dangers in it, was a blessing and it made me so thankful there are people like him doing this work. It has taken an enormous toll on him personally (psychologically, socially, even developmentally). He described times when he had to have bodyguards in some nations due to the risk of being kidnapped for ransoms in countries where civil law had completely broken down. He also lived a rather socially disconnected, nomadic life, which he was grappling with.

On Facebook (my Catalyst BC page, feel free to "friend" me), I'm following a couple (who were journalists in B.C.) who packed everything up and they are doing aid work in Honduras. It is very interesting to read about their experiences, observations of life in a third world country and see pictures. It keeps me much more humble about my life here in Canada.

Social Work: How Dangerous Is It To Deliver Humanitarian Aid?

January 9, 2013 • By Marc Herman

Yesterday in Geneva, the World Food Program, which is the UN’s food aid operation, admitted that its supply lines for aid to many Syrian cities have been cut. The announcement claimed that the world body is delivering food aid to 1.5 million people monthly in Syria, but needs to reach 2.5 million, to serve the estimated number of Syrian civilians lacking reliable access to food. In part, the million-person shortfall results from the WFP pulling staff out of the country, citing security risks.

What are those risks? According to the fascinating, unnerving Aid Worker Security Database, 187 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped on the job last year, worldwide. A concurrent study released last week by the Swiss Emblem Campaign, found just under 20 percent fewer casualties, 141, occurred among journalists, a community exposed to similar risks in roughly the same places, during the same period.

In Syria, eight people working with the Red Crescent, Red Cross, United Nations, and three Emergency Medical Technicians were seriously wounded or killed. Most were shot. One was caught in an aerial bombardment. That’s about one person every six weeks.

Most of the aid worker casualties in Syria were Syrian nationals themselves, the Aid Worker Security project found. The humanitarian relief industry suffered a casualty about once every other day in 2012, on average.

About Marc Herman
Marc Herman is a writer in Barcelona. He is the author of The Shores of Tripoli.

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If you're interested in looking into International Aid work, here are some resources:

Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

Cuso International

International Social Work III: Rising to the Challenge

Ann McLaughlin, MSW, ACSW, LICSW, The New Social Worker Online. 

nGoAbroad: Custom-Fit International Service