ActivityInfo is an online Information Management tool used by hundreds of humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR for Monitoring and Evaluation, Case Tracking and Management, Clusters Management and Partners Coordination in more than 70 countries around the world. It offers a variety of functionalities allowing sophisticated database setup, offline or mobile data entry, advanced data analysis, reporting and the integration of other systems. During the event attendees will be introduced to the tool, learn how various information management scenarios can be managed with the use of ActivityInfo, and get familiar with the ActivityInfo API and its potential.

For more information visit: ActivityInfo Demonstration and Workshop Agenda

2. Open Workshop –  Capacity Building from the Emergent Future: Co-Creating Leadership through Grassroots Initiatives (during IHSA conference). 

Cooperative and grassroots initiatives, as those at Zaatari camp, demonstrate how participatory leadership and resilience transform refugee communities. In this workshop we are inviting humanitarian workers, researchers, and policy makers who work with refugee populations to rethink how to strengthen dialogue and cooperation between international and local organizations.  We are especially interested in exploring how technology, web-based spaces and mobile apps, can enable local humanitarian workers to make their voices heard. Our workshop draws upon the World Humanitarian Summit commitments to a) localize humanitarian research beyond traditional venues, b) support transdisciplinary research, and c) cooperate with non-traditional actors. The workshop title takes its inspiration from Otto Scharmer’s motto on “leading from the emergent future.” Scharmer’s organizational model suggests a shift from networking and monitoring to co-creative and participatory forms of leadership that take into account the well-being of the entire system. This eco-system approach requires empathic listening, experiential learning, transdisciplinary collaboration (engineers, planners, architects, geographers, policy makers, etc), and training in mindful and non-judgmental dialogue. Drawing upon the themes of the WHS we propose the following four pillars for building web- based spaces and physical spaces (seminars, summer schools) for transdisciplinary collaboration with grassroots initiatives.

• Capacity building (energy, housing, agriculture)
• Innovation in business and services
• Innovation in cultural heritage and arts celebrating the spiritual and philosophical traditions of refugee communities.
• Training in dialogic leadership and inter-personal intelligence

Key questions for discussion:
– How can humanitarian workers develop a more dialogic awareness to encourage trust and interconnectedness on local and global levels?
– What new knowledge and skills do humanitarian workers need as future leaders
– How could web-based platforms and mobile apps be used to promote spontaneous, informal exchanges and empower local actors who have little access to other platforms of representation?
– How could physical meetings, such as summer schools or seminars facilitate the sustainability of web-based platforms of representation?

 Coordinators of this panel are Dr. Anastasia Nikolopoulou, Dean, School of Humanities, University of Cyprus; Dr. M. Satish Kumar, Director for Internationalization, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast; and Dr. Ayoub Abu-Dayyeh, Philosophy of Science and Civil and Structural Engineering. Chartered Energy and Green Buildings Consultant; Vice President, Society of Strategic Energy Studies; Former President of Energy Conservation and Sustainable Environment Society, Amman, Jordan.

3. Book launch. From emergency to the politics of protracted crisis: The long-term effects of aid
3.30 pm on Monday 27-08-2018
Emergency aid is often planned as a temporary life-saving intervention. These days, however, many crises are long-term and aid is often provided for decades. In such circumstances, people, governments and societies learn and develop in ways which are often not anticipated by those who provide the aid, and by those affected by it, but which is essential to understand if aid is to be effective.

In this joint book launch, Susanne Jaspars and Bram Jansen illustrate the long-term effects of aid practices from two different dimensions: long-term food aid in Sudan, and a long-term refugee camp in Kenya. Susanne, in her book, Food Aid in Sudan: A History of Power, Politics and Profit, examines fifty years of food aid in Sudan. She finds that although the objectives of food aid have proliferated, they rarely had their intended effect. Long-term food aid did, however, benefit the Sudan government and its closely-alligned private sector. It contributed to their learning to control international organisations, the establishment of Sudan’s own food aid apparatus and its use to manage populations. Crisis-affected populations themselves have received little food assistance and have been left to become resilient to permanent emergency. Bram, in his book, Kakuma Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Urbanism in Kenya’s Accidental City, examines the evolution of this camp since the late 1980s, its transformation into an ‘accidental city’ and the everyday lives of the people who live there. The thrust of the book is that the camp and the ways it is governed and lived has become routine, yet coming to terms with its increasingly permanent features is problematic. This book explores the lives of camp dwellers as characterized by a humanitarian urbanism, in which the permanent uncertainties of exile are married with the everyday contours of life, coping and organisation in a context of elaborate humanitarian governance.

Discussants:

• Dorothea Hilhorst, Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction, Institute of Social Studies, the Hague,
• Youssif El Tayeb, Executive Director, Darfur Development and Reconstruction Agency, Khartoum.
• Alex de Waal, Research Professor and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation, Tufts University, Boston.

Chair. Tbc.

4. How to Get your Work Published – Routledge
This session aims to bust some of the myths around books and journals publishing in international development and humanitarian studies. It will cover the basic nuts and bolts, along with hints and tips, and with particular reference to international development and humanitarian topics. With plenty of opportunity for questions.

Helena Hurd is the Editor for Development Studies books at Routledge. She runs the world’s largest international development and humanitarian studies books programme, with responsibility for the IHSA book series, amongst several others.

5. “Author meets critics” round table
Crisis Management beyond the Humanitarian-Development Nexus – Edited by Atsushi Hanatani, Oscar A. Gómez, and Chigumi Kawaguchi. Routledge Humanitarian Series, September 2018

6. Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the limits of the law
“Stakeholder meeting for the joint project run by Global Rights Compliance and the World Peace Foundation. The Project will provide the factual and legal basis for ensuring awareness of starvation as an intentional and avoidable act, developing local, regional and international capacity to identify, avoid, prevent and seek accountability for starvation to provide for more positive humanitarian outcomes for millions of women, children and men. By invitation only.”