NEWSBYUNA M.

“If we’re going to talk about work as important -– and expensive –- as international aid, the least we can do is use accurate language,” my friend Alanna wrote in a recent guest post for Aid Watch. I could not agree more. In fact, I think we need to go a step further. It's not just that there are many kinds of aid -- it's that some things we call aid are not aid at all.

First, there are different kinds of real aid. Emergency humanitarian relief is short term aid used to keep populations alive during or in the immediate aftermath of disasters, both natural and man-made. This kind of aid usually comes in the form of very basic things: food, temporary shelter, medical care –- things no one could obtain for herself or himself in the aftermath of, say, a tsunami or displacement by military onslaught.  Development aid, taking place over a longer time span, aims to reduce poverty and create lasting changes in the way people live. Sometimes the two overlap in long-running crises.

Then there is what I call “pseudo aid” –- something else entirely that superficially looks like aid and gets conflated, usually by people who aren’t aid professionals, with relief and development aid. This conflation is intellectually sloppy and unhelpful.

Canada's Haitian-born Governor-General Michaëlle Jean broke down on Canadian television Wednesday evening, describing the destruction in her native land.

(Click the image at left to watch the video of Jean's speech. The English part begins at 4:40)

“We know every minute, every hour can make a difference and draw a line between life and death,” she said.

Jean touched on the particularly cruel timing of the earthquake, which destroyed the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince and may have killed tens of thousands of people, just as Haiti was beginning to recover from decades of political unrest and conflict.

"Yesterday, fate once again turned against the people of Haiti," she said, describing the Haitian community in Canada as "heartbroken and overwhelmed."

“Now more than ever, it is time for us to show our solidarity with the most vulnerable people in the Americas, our brothers and sisters in Haiti, whose courage is once again being so harshly tested."

At the end of her speech, Jean switched to Creole to deliver a message to the people of Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. "Women and men of Haiti, we must not lose hope. We are known for our strength and resilience, and need to stand courageously before this challenge that is affecting us again."

For the latest information on crisis and relief organizations working on the ground in Haiti, click here.

Photo credit: Globe and Mail

Haitian rescuers are working against the clock to free those trapped in the rubble of a 7.0 earthquake that brought down most of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The city is reminiscent not so much of Banda Aceh after the Asian tsunami, as of a city that has been heavily bombed.

My colleagues, Daniel and Mike Jones, have two posts up (here and here) about how to donate to the relief effort and stay informed, and options for getting in touch with someone in Haiti.

Information is still leaving Haiti slowly, and it's nearly impossible to get anyone on the phone.

The Haitian Government doesn't yet know how many people may have died, or how many are still trapped in collapsed buildings, but both figures are likely in the tens of thousands.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is on the ground providing emergency medical care, has released a podcast briefing on the situation in Haiti. Mark Goldberg at UN Dispatch wrote earlier today: "On a conference call with Medicines sans Frontieres moments ago, a representative in Haiti said that all of the hospitals to which it would normally refer patients have either collapsed or are otherwise unusable.  All MSF can do at the moment is administer first aid."

Children shouldn't die or suffer paralysis from polio, and they don't have to, thanks to the effective and easily-administered polio vaccine. The rationale for mass inoculation seems obvious, but even the prevention of childhood diseases can become a fraught political issue in a war zone. In Afghanistan, keeping polio at bay means working with the Taliban, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Afghan volunteers in the south and east of the country go door-to-door, village-to-village, carrying the standard vaccination toolkit, but something else as well: a letter from Taliban leader Mullah Omar sanctioning the vaccination campaign. The fight against polio has brought the Afghan Government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and at least one Taliban faction together in a fragile coalition to save children's lives as the war drags on.

More than 1,000 Afghan children were killed in war-related violence in Afghanistan in 2009, according to a report by the Kabul-based watchdog Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM).

"At least three children were killed in war-related incidents every day in 2009 and many others suffered in diverse but mostly unreported ways," ARM director Ajmal Samadi said.

Children were killed in suicide attacks, roadside bombings, air strikes and crossfire, as well as by landmines and other explosive devices left over from earlier periods in Afghanistan's long-running conflict, the report said.

The ARM report attributed 64 percent of violent child deaths caused by combatants to the Taliban and other insurgent groups, and the rest to NATO and pro-government forces.

The report also criticized insurgents for other human rights violations, including depriving children of the right to education. "Through a horrible anti-education policy of heinous attacks, intimidation and terror the insurgents deprived hundreds of thousands of children, boys and girls, of education mostly in the insecure south and east of the country," it said.

Though ARM's harshest words were directed at insurgents, the Afghan Government didn't escape criticism. According to the report, the government failed to implement laws to protect children, and allowed official security forces to abuse and illegally detain children with impunity.

ARM called on the Afghan authorities to establish a special child protection body and to liaise with the warring parties on reducing the harm children suffer as a result of ongoing fighting.

Photo: Nasim Fekrat / CC BY 2.0

Many conflict-related topics are considered "sexy" (ick, but it's true) -- arms smuggling, child soldiers, the resource-conflict nexus, and terrorism to name a few -- but not usually elections and referenda. But 2010 may change that, as voters head to the polls in many of the world's least stable countries to cast their ballots in elections that could easily trigger, escalate or help resolve conflicts. Here are four elections to watch.

1. Afghanistan

An Asia Foundation survey released last fall showed that a majority of Afghans have confidence in their parliament. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for this May, and many international observers are predicting a bloody and unfair election season marred by assassinations of candidates, stuffed ballot boxes, and attacks on local and international election monitors. The Afghan government is also struggling to raise the cash necessary to pay for the elections, now just four months away, and international donors are wary after last August's fiasco of a presidential election. If the elections go smoothly, they will be a boon to the interconnected security and democratization processes, but pulling them off without a de-legitimizing amount of corruption and violence will require the international community to act fast and coordinate better than it has before. Four possible election scenarios are described in detail here.

2. Sudan

Sudan faces multiple crises in 2010. The ruling party of President Omar al-Bashir, indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, continues to repress its political opponents, and efforts to allow internally displaced Darfuris to vote in the country's upcoming multiparty elections in April -- the first in 24 years -- have been badly hindered by a contested census and Khartoum's attempts to reduce the voting power of the rebellious Darfur tribes. While the now simmering crisis in the east still grabs the most media attention, violence in Sudan's south was worse last year, with 2,500 people killed and 350,000 displaced according to a new joint NGO report. The Lord's Resistance Army, the scourge of northern Uganda, is now carrying out attacks against civilians in southern Sudan as well. Add to this mix preparations for a 2011 referendum in which southerners will vote on whether to remain united with the north or secede. Indeed, 2010 could see a perfect storm in Africa's largest country. For in-depth coverage, I defer to my colleague Michelle, Change.org's expert on all things Sudan.

Outrage over the killing of 10 Afghans, including eight schoolboys, during a joint operation by international and Afghan security forces in the northeastern province of Kunar on Dec. 26 continues to grow in Afghanistan and in the progressive blogosphere.

On AfterDowningStreet.Org, David Swanson wrote that "Dragging children out of bed and killing them is not a freak blip in the course of a war. It is war reduced to a comprehensible scale."

Compelling words, but we don't know if that's what actually happened. Not yet.

The news stories being used to back up the claim that eight children were roused from their sleep, handcuffed and shot in cold blood all cite the same two sources that are actually just one source: the head of a delegation chosen by President Hamid Karzai and dispatched to Kunar on Dec. 29, and the statement Karzai's office released when the delegation returned less than two days later.

There are a few problems with this.

What follows is a cautionary tale, in timeline form, about the perils of investigating, reporting on, and responding to civilian casualty incidents in armed conflict.

Dec. 26 – An incident took place in a small village in Kunar province, northeastern Afghanistan, and Afghans were reportedly killed.

Dec. 27 - Local authorities claimed an airstrike by foreign forces had killed nine or ten civilians. The International Security Assistance Force, NATO’s command in Afghanistan, said the incident did not involve an airstrike and the Afghans killed in the operation were insurgents who had been planting improvised explosive devices.

Dec. 28 - Kunar Governor Fazullah Wahidi disputed the ISAF claim, telling Reuters elders from the village said 10 civilians had been killed, including eight schoolboys.

Kunar Police Chief Khalilulah Ziaye, meanwhile, said the details of the incident were still being verified.

"Our investigation is not over yet, the area is very remote, and difficult to access for security personnel," he said. "The reports that we have received from people (residents) is that they were school students, in class 10 and 11."

Ziyae also said the operation involved a ground raid on a multi-family compound, not an airstrike, contradicting the governor's previous statement. From Ziaye's remarks to reporters, it was unclear if any police officers were in the village yet.

On Dec. 22, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the restriction of the highest political offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina to members of the country's three main groups was a violation of the right to free and fair elections and freedom from discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case of Sejdic and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina concerned the exclusion from the Bosnian presidency and the upper house of parliament of Dervo Sejdic, a Bosnian Roma and Jakob Finci, a Bosnian Jew. As a member state of the Council of Europe, Bosnia is legally bound to implement the court's ruling.

"The European Court has made it clear that race-based exclusion from political office, such as that suffered by Jews and Roma in Bosnia, has no place in Europe," said Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch and former co-counsel for Finci. "The US, EU and the other states who still play a major role in Bosnia, should ensure the ruling is put into immediate effect by backing a change in the constitution."

Israeli human rights and pro-peace organizations are facing a new campaign to discredit them and stifle their work.

The campaign is being led by NGO Monitor, a right-wing organization that has gained notoriety by hurling overwhelmingly spurious accusations of anti-Semitism, sympathy for Hamas, and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel at almost any group working in the Palestinian Territories, with Palestinians, or to support a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Among the best known organizations previously targeted by NGO Monitor are Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christain Aid UK, Trocaire, Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), and the Center for Constitutional Rights, but pro-peace Jewish and Israeli groups haven't been spared either.

The UN is another perennial target for NGO Monitor's ire, and the Goldstone Report on violations of the laws of war during the war in Gaza last year gave the group's employees plenty to shout about in blog comment threads, even though the report found that both the Israeli military and Hamas committed war crimes.

Now, NGO Monitor is hitting its domestic foes with a new report titled "Trojan Horse: The Impact of European Government Funding for Israeli NGOs," which it bills as "a detailed analysis of funding provided by foreign governments for highly politicized Israeli NGOs."