Innovation in humanitarian aid – Herein lies the future

ICT for Peacebuilding, ICTs in general, Links 2 Minutes

Linked to UN OCHA +5 Symposium – Where was the innovation?, I thought of listing some practices, technologies and their application in the field that interest me because of their potential for augmenting peacebuilding and conflict transformation, that I believe has broad overlap with the imperatives of humanitarian aid.

While none of the examples below are a definitive guide on the use of ICT for humanitarian aid, collectively they point to the indubitable trend of decentralised, collaborative information and knowledge exchange in support of timely, appropriate and sustainable action.

Many of the following point to that which I’ve written on this blog, but the published work of and progressive thinking of those such as Paul Currion, Nigel Snoad from Microsoft Humanitarian Systems Group and Eric Rasmussen, now CEO of INSTEDD, prove that a few (powerful) thought-leaders fully immersed in this sector concur with that which is presented below.

The posts below also contain many more links to pertinent information. Further, though some of them may appear to be oriented towards peacebuilding, political activism or media, the essential technology can easily be adapted for humanitarian aid related work.

Humanitarian FOSS and community driven first response

GIS and Data Visualisation

Second Life and virtual worlds

Mobile Phones and mobile devices

Citizen journalism with affected communities / victims

And lastly, the plethora of lessons identified and innovations at Strong Angel III.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

Published

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