Various and Sundry

A quiet day in Nairobi-town, or relatively quiet - finally finished with the last meeting of this particular trip, and now just fantasizing about the flight home, after a month on the move.  (Cue very, very small violins.)   Anyhows, in this somewhat scattered state, thought I'd highlight a few of the more interesting odds and ends that I've trawled through Google Reader recently.

(Which, by the by, I'm beginning to think is the internet / news aggregator equivalent of crack cocaine.  Sometimes I wonder how I lived before Google Reader came into my life, and sometimes I wonder why I feel the need to spend an hour or two each day reading articles about what's happening in Burkina Faso.)

(No offense to anyone actually from Burkina Faso, which I'm sure has its pleasant moments.)

- As I'm sure many of you already know, the ReliefWeb vacancies section - enabling the fantasies of aid workers the world over - has recently introduced a geographical mapping of available positions.  Paul Currion at humanitarian.info has some interesting thoughts on this particular innovation.

(Also see Paul's series of posts - the Innovation Fallacy - about humanitarian innovation more generally, which are well worth the read.)

- And, for another view of the job-hunting process, Harry Rud in Afghanistan has posted a blog about the joys of reading CV's.  As he writes:

"Experience, education, and networks are usually given as the holy trinity of finding a job in development. Networking is not something I’m any good at, and the emphasis people give to it used to get me riled. But no. It’s true. Especially somewhere like Afghanistan, where you tend to live cheek by jowl in a highly pressurised environment, you really don’t want to get stuck with someone you don’t get on with personally and professionally. I’ve worked with a couple of idiots before who proved that for me. So you look for people you know, or know of, and those who have successfully worked in a similar environment before."

I couldn't agree more - see Finding a Job Overseas for more first-hand accounts of what it takes to find a job in the humanitarian field

- In terms of other useful resources, Alanna Shaikh at Blood and Milk has been posting a regular series on "Jargon of the Day", trying to bring such deveopment-speak as granularity, multilateral, siloing, holistic, modalities and incentivize back into the fold of comprehensible English.

And, for those with far too much time on their hands, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OHCA) has a wonderfully useful and somewhat absurd glossary of acronyms and abbreviations which runs to 112 pages.

- In the New York Times, Scott Malcomson reviews two recent books about humanitarianism - The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War by Conor Foley and The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All by Gareth Evans.

I'm hoping to read Foley's book over the holidays, tho just given the short review in the NYT, I'm not sure that I agree with his thesis:

"The only international principles that potentially fit all the situations in which humanitarians work are those of independence, impartiality and neutrality by which the movement has traditionally defined itself. The shift away from these principles in recent years has caused more problems than it has solved."

Or, more accurately, sometimes I think that humanitarians would have been targeted as a result of Afghanistan and Iraq regardless of what actions they did - or did not - take, solely by dint of being identified as "western" in the broadest sense.  At the least, I look forward to reading Foley's take on the issue.

(As for Evans book - which, in the interests of full disclosure, I also haven't read - have to say I'm skeptical about the Responsibility to Protect, as I have trouble seeing exactly how the theory translates into actual practice on the ground.)

For those interested in learning more, Opinio Juris has an interesting discussion about Malcomson's article.

- And, finally, for those searching for a daily dose of absurdity, see my co-blogger Michelle's piece about how Robert Mugabe is now blaming the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe on the British.

According to the Zimbabwean Ministry of Information: "Cholera is a calculated, racist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power, which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they can invade the country."

Which would be hilarious, or at least amusing, save for the fact that at least 1,123 people have died, with another 20,896 infected.  For background information on the crisis in Zimbabwe, see here.  USAID has also recently published an updated map of affected areas.