Operationalizing Peace Operations Reform

Clearing the Decks After a Year of Reviews: Operationalizing Peace Operations Reform, organised by ZIF, the Centre for International Peace Operations, was held from 25 – 26 February just outside of Berlin. Agenda here. I was asked to make a presentation on New Technologies and New Media as it related to UN peacekeeping. The presentation …

Haiti and Beyond: Getting it Right in Crisis Information Management

The ICT4Peace Foundation released a new briefing today, co-authored by me, critically looking at the response to the devastating Haitian earthquake in early January. We chart in brief the significant progress made in the use of ICTs in humanitarian aid, and also how much more needs to be done in order to sustain and systematise …

Crisis information wiki on Chile earthquake

Image courtesy Wikipedia Just set up for the ICT4Peace Foundation, like I did before for the Haiti earthquake, a wiki to curate information on the Chilean earthquake. As noted on the OpenStreetMap wiki, the 2010 Chile earthquake occurred off the coast of the Maule Region of Chile, on February 27, 2010, at 03:34 local time …

Cyclone Nargis: Lessons and implications for ICTs in Humanitarian Aid

Almost a year ago, in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, myself and others at the ICT4Peace Foundation were copied to a spate of emails that included voices from inter-governmental, non-governmental, private business and commercial organisations, academia, former field level practitioners and others on how best to respond to the monumental challenges of information and …

Ushahidi helps develop Crisis Information Management demo tool

From the ICT4Peace Foundation came news today of its collaboration with Ushahidi. The ICT4Peace Foundation, Geneva has mandated Ushahidi to develop an ICT4Peace Crisis Information Management Platform Demonstrator (CIMD), based on Ushahidi’s existing platform with the following features and functionality. A product that is able to be deployed in the field with a minimum of …

Recommendations and ideas to strengthen best practices of Crisis Information Management at the United Nations, New York

This is an excerpt from Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities that can be downloaded in full from here. The authors strongly feel it is timely for the UN System as a whole to address, at a strategic level, issues of crisis information management and technology best practice and interoperability – to …

Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities

Sanjana Hattotuwa and Daniel Stauffacher From October 2007 to February 2008, representatives from the ICT4Peace Foundation met informally with a number of high-level representatives at key agencies based at the United Nations in New York in preparation for a stocktaking exercise on crisis information management capacities and best practices. These meetings with heads of agencies, …

UDHR: A historical record of the drafting process

It's websites such as the new UN archive on the drafting process that led up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that showcase the potential of the web to make information otherwise inaccessible instantly available globally. The UDHR 60 years on continues to be a bedrock for democracy. The documents archived on this …

Public-Private Collaboration for Humanitarian Action – OCHA Guiding Principles

In the section titled Corporate branding vs. humanitarianism - The imperatives of sensitive aid delivery on my final and detailed post on Strong Angel III, I placed on record the concerns I had with private enterprise entering into humanitarian aid. For example, I vividly recall the representative of an extremely well known GIS solutions provider …

ICT4Peace and Humanitarian FOSS featured in PeaceIT!

The latest issue of Peace IT!, a journal for conflict and crisis management professionals published by the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) is out and can be downloaded here. The journal explores how ICTs can be used effectively to prevent, manage and resolve crisis to the benefit of peace and security. This issue features an article …