Design for Humanity Summit 2019

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Design

for Humanity

YEARBOOK 2019


The content of the articles and opinion pieces in this yearbook does not necessarily reflect the official position of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) or the International Organization for Migration (IOM) unless specifically stated.


Content Welcome Brendan Cahill 2 Humanitarian Keynote Address Argentina Szabados 3 Design Keynote Address Richard Blewitt 7 Design in the time of Displacement Introduction Alberto Preato and Angela Wells 11 From Camps to Communities Opening Remarks Brian Kelly Ecology of Humanitarian Tale Raul Pantaleo From Shelter to Home—The Role of Temporary Structures in Community Building Johan Karlsson Social Fractures/Social Structures Jan-Maurits Loecke Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge Lorin Kavanaugh-Ulku

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From Data to Stories Storytelling Keynote Address Amy Goodman Using Data to Tell the Story of Humanitarian Crisis and People in Need Erika Wei International Rescue Committee Sandra Vines Design-Based Thinking Jocelyn Kelly

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WORKSHOPS Understanding Human Migration and Refugee Situations in the Age of Big Data Jeremy Boy Rapid Play Planning: Playground Design in Zones of Exception Charles Newman Mapping Home and Hope Bree Akesson and Kearney Coupland Humanitarian Innovation: What We Learned Running Community-Centered Social Innovation Labs Lillie Rosen Designing and Building with Local Materials and Local People in Rural Haiti and Mexico Joana Torres Food and Memory in the Time of Displacement Ayesha Mukadam No Lost Generations: A Case and Field Study of Education Mary Stylidi Stimulating Crisis Response, Michael de St. Aubin and Saira Khan Code of Ethics? Azra Akšamija Ph.D. Inclusive Cities: Urban Planning Strategies for Sustainable Solutions Jessica Sadye Wolff Mapping Urban Futures: Lessons from Havana, Cuba Susan Fitzgerald Design Pedagogy for Social Justice, Integrating Principles of Theory U for Impact Susan Melsop

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Welcome

Brendan Cahill Fordham University, Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, Executive Director We live in a world that can be chaotic and cruel, and yet, against this dystopian vision, we prevail. If there is one thing that I have witnessed in the nearly twenty years of running humanitarian programs across the world, of being witness to poverty, instability, and injustice, it is that there is resilience in the face of deprivation. There is a desire to maintain our pride and our dignity, a need to maintain a home, or create a new home after displacement, or find a way to a safe home for our children and the aged. Design for Humanity was created to respond to this, to celebrate this resilience, to share lessons and experiences, discuss possible solutions or safety nets, in a world that is, at once, at the edge of a precipice and within reach of boundless possibilities. How do we design a way forward, not in creating a new shelter but in creating processes that allow for dignity in displacement?

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How do we incorporate technology – whether it is blockchain or telecommunications, banking or wifi, but also, simply, through color or font or transportation, or providing access. This iteration of our Design for Humanity looks at this response in two ways – "From Camps to Communities" and "From Data to Stories." In each case it moves from identification, or witnessing, to production, and response. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the second Design for Humanity Summit. With initial funding from the Permanent Mission of Ireland and the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation, the Summit has now welcomed hundreds of participants in person, and has been live streamed to thousands throughout the world. We call on everyone to work with us, or allow us to work with you, to make considered and inclusive design a central component of studying and responding to complex emergencies, so that we build resilient and happier communities throughout the world.


Humanitarian Keynote Address: Design is One

Argentina Szabados Regional Director, International Organization for Migration in South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia It is with profound pleasure and distinct pride that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) can again co-host the Design for Humanity Summit together with Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA). One of the key themes of the Design for Humanity initiative is that ‘Design is One.’ This spirit of togetherness, partnership, and inclusivity is not only of paramount importance in today’s world, in today’s time of displacement, but also in the long-standing relationship enjoyed between IOM and the IIHA. It is often said that a strong building needs a strong foundation, a fitting metaphor for the Design for Humanity Initiative. I am proud to say that the Design for Humanity initiative rests upon the most solid of foundations, a twenty-year strong relationship between IOM and the IIHA. The relationship between IOM and the IIHA has

grown steadily over the years, beginning with the IIHA’s flagship program, the renowned International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance (IDHA). I was in the IDHA’s second cohort of graduates, and, in the years to follow, countless IOM colleagues followed in my footsteps. One recent example is Mr. Alberto Preato, IOM Senior Regional Program Coordinator. Mr. Preato became involved with the IIHA through the IDHA, and he currently serves as the first Design Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow, as well as being a Co-organizer of the Design for Humanity Summit. There are numerous stories like his, not only cementing the strong bond between IOM and the IIHA but also allowing it to grow and diversify. This Design for Humanity Initiative is a perfect example of this growth and innovation out of our partnership. I mention this because, to be effective in the present and

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plan for the future, we must acknowledge the past and understand where we came from. This recognition is especially true in the case of migration and displacement, in the unprecedented movement of people facing our world today. Brendan Cahill, Executive Director of the IIHA, whose keen humanitarian instinct and unparalleled vision have allowed IOM and the IIHA to be the strong partners they are today, understands this. Innovative solutions are built upon common values and inclusive partnerships. We cannot work towards innovative solutions in isolation. Academia must work with the United Nations, and civil society must engage in dialogue with the private sector, tech experts, scientists, designers, researchers, and so on. We all have ideas, but ideas are not solutions. Solutions will arise with vision, humility, and dialogue. This is what the Design for Humanity Initiative, a product of such partnership, is all about – continuous learning, open and transparent dialogue, experience sharing, and knowledge exchange – because we need change.

Humanitarian Timeline: “Are We Doing Better?”

and to Somalia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Then, through to more recent crises in Haiti, the Philippines, Nepal, Ukraine, and Syria, with protracted and recurrent situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the dangerous and life-draining migration movements across the Mediterranean, the Rio Grande, the Sahara, and the Andaman Sea. It is important to delineate such a humanitarian timeline because the question we must repeatedly ask ourselves as we move through humanitarian history is: “Are We Doing Better?” Even if the answer is “yes, dramatically better,” we cannot be satisfied until we ensure we are leaving no one behind. No one. One of the key ways to answer this question is by looking at the numbers, the raw data. Using figures from UNHCR and UN-Habitat, one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than three billion people - nearly half the world’s population - do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. While we are making strides in lifting people out of ‘normal’ poverty, the numbers of people living in extreme poverty due to wars and disasters are rising at an alarming rate. Wars, disasters, and the fragility of living in megacities are all drivers for this.

As humanitarian practitioners, we must always This is where the design of ‘temporarily challenge and question ourselves. Again, we inhabited spaces’ can make the difference must look to the past, using our knowledge and between home or hell. experience to grow and innovate. Do the vulnerable, the conflict-affected, and the trafficking victims of 2019 feel better served ‘Temporarily Occupied Space’: A than those of 1989, or than those of 1951, the Home year of IOM’s founding? I am certain that in every language spoken by all The challenge, but also the opportunity facing of you in the room today, there is a phrase that us today, is unprecedented. We have the tools approximates the English expression: ‘No place at our disposal that we could only have like home.’ Home is something existential for all dreamed of during humanitarian crises of of us. In our mind’s eye, we decades past - from Biafra and Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s, to Ethiopia in the 1980s

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see the kitchen table where meals and stories were shared, we smile in remembering where the children would play, hearing their shouts of laughter, and we remember exactly where the wooden floorboards creaked. Home is also a community. It is the everyday language we speak - the people we see on our streets, the services we buy, the church, temple, or mosque. It is a massive part of our identity. To lose this community, this language and this identity to war, drought, flood, climate change, landslide or earthquake, is one of the most profound shocks a human can experience. There are many innovative and high-tech solutions to displacement, but, oftentimes, solutions are right in front of us - simple, sustainable, environmental, and based on local knowledge. The challenge for IOM and our partners is to provide services to traumatized families and communities in a dignified way, to give them protection, hope, and, of course, a secure feeling of home. One of the most-quoted sayings in humanitarian action is “there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary settlement.” We know that tents become huts, huts become shacks, and, in time, shacks become houses. People often think that the camps in Palestine are the world’s oldest. But, in fact, Cooper’s Camp in West Bengal has been housing Hindus from what is now Bangladesh since 1947. Seventy-two years. What can we do when the preferred option, for both host and displaced communities, is to pack the camps up and go home, when going home is not an option? Life goes on; babies are born, children need education, families need work. Life cannot be put on hold.

Another factor to the vulnerability of displaced people is that people tend to run only as far as ‘the next safe place.’ This is why the small country of Lebanon has seen its population grow by twenty-five percent with the influx of people fleeing the war in Syria. Many refugees do not want to be, or cannot make their way, too far from home. And, of course, no one wants to discard the dream of one day returning home.

Data: Not Just Numbers Lastly, I wish to draw attention to what may be the biggest opportunity we have to do well: using data. While no one can eat data or live under it, data provides us with a new set of rules based on reality, not guesswork. No fake news. We live in the age of data. We can no longer have a one-sided relationship with those we serve. They have the means to communicate with us – and with each other – directly. It also means that we can no longer develop our services on a hunch. We now have evidence that backs up what we do, and we can be instantly responsive as new data comes in. Data makes us accountable. In recent years, IOM has been pioneering our Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), which was originally intended to allow us to take the pulse of a situation of displacement by running interviews with large numbers of people on the move. It allowed us to be more reflexive and responsive and to learn from communities. Over time, it has developed to give us a vast repository of data, which allows us to speak with authority across a huge range of humanitarian issues and to do it, quoting the voice of the masses, as well as the individual and all the subgroups in between.

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It means that we can give authoritative answers, not just to ‘how many,’ but also who, why, and how. If someone wants to know how many Nigerians have been exposed to the threat of human trafficking, or how many Afghans have faced sexual violence on their journeys, we have empirical evidence, backed up with human stories. The exciting development in our use of data is just starting to be felt, as data meets technology. Thanks to technology, we can collect, gather, package, and disseminate data as we receive it. Drones and satellites give us an opportunity to give a visual representation of the scale of population movements, while on the ground, mobile phone cameras, superior to broadcast cameras just a few years ago, combine with 5G mobile Wi-Fi to give us the ability to tell stories from the most remote locales. More significantly, the technology is now democratic. Migrants and refugees can reach out directly, telling the story on their terms. It’s up to us to make sure their stories and voices are amplified in the narratives we, as

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humanitarians, journalists, and designers, share about migration. All of this is not just about numbers, about statistics – it is about human beings.

Looking Forward The Design for Humanity initiative undoubtedly brings together the brightest minds from diverse backgrounds who, together, can make a far-reaching and sustainable difference in ensuring the dignity and safety of populations in crisis. We must continue our quest for innovation and our joint commitment to building a more inclusive world because change is needed. And, even if we cannot change the world as a whole, we can change the world of one individual.


Design Keynote Address: IFRC and Some of Our Lessons Learnt on Sheltering and Settlement Around the World

Richard Blewitt Head of Delegation and Permanent Observer, Delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to the United Nations The topics of “From Camps to Communities” and “From Data to Stories” are critical if we are going to progress our working approaches to drawing on the best of design capacity and thinking in the interest of vulnerable people living in uncertain and often insecure environments. What do we all want in life? We want to feel safe, and with adequate protection, we want to feel we have some level of integration where we live; we want to be self-reliant, and we want access to education and health services. These minimums should inform all design for humanity. The context is about 70 million people on the move, the growing climate crisis, increasing xenophobia, increasing inequality and growing hunger, long term conflicts, and shortages of funding. At the same time, we have many advances in health care, humanitarians

learning to become more local and supporting nontraditional groups such as migrants on the move with humanitarian service points, responding more creatively in urban settings and communities reinventing themselves, presenting opportunities for improving the quality of life even in very stressed environments. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has worked hard to give shared leadership with UNHCR to the Shelter cluster for the last 14 years, and strengthen our 191 National Societies. On the way, we have learned ten valuable lessons over this time: 1. At IFRC, we are very principled about having built environment professionals taking care of our shelter and settlement programs. We will not hire anyone who does not have the necessary technical qualifications to be in charge of and technically responsible for

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shelter programs. This is not only because of liability concerns but because the thinking that comes with built environment branches is very beneficial for sheltering strategies and process. As a result, we are also keen to have built environment professionals thinking about our line of work and getting more involved (both coming from practice and academia).

manner. We need to work on this in the longterm and with a locally driven mindset. 5. The issue of funding is two-fold: first of all, shelter remains the lowest funded of all humanitarian sectors, and most of the funding we receive goes to emergencies in the form of household items. There is little money left over to think about recovery and self-recovery. Most donors have the perception that shelter is expensive as they think of houses and don’t grasp the fact that there are many other ways of supporting the sheltering process of people, and not all are expensive. Secondly, tackling the challenges that stem from long-term issues such as climate change, urbanization, or underlying vulnerabilities require a long-term perspective on all fronts, including the funding. It is not the same to get one-year funding five times and to get a single 5-year funding. The humanitarian and development agendas need to tackle some of the issues (at least the ones related to settlements) together or at least through an aligned approach. However, we are far from that.

2. Our approach to shelter and settlements programming favors the “process approach” above a “product approach.” The process approach focuses on supporting the affected people to achieve their priorities and preferences when it comes to their home rather than providing them with “products” that will, in many cases, be closed solutions that do not lend themselves to modification or incremental expansion/extension and are not in line with people’s preferences. This position, of course, needs to be nuanced because there are times when giving items or products is the best sheltering option for the situation at hand (e.g., conflict or large-scale population movements where people move to an area where there is no other option - no host families, no existing housing stock, etc.). 6. Building back better and climate-smart is a good mantra, but often funding realities can get 3. We need to use design processes and in the way. My recent United Nations thinking to incrementally improve and innovate Development Programme (UNDP) experience in on the local building practices to achieve safe Sint Maarten was painful. To build back sheltering options for the people. We need to hurricane five resilient roofs for at-risk groups understand and analyze the priorities and cost 12,000 USD per roof (in line with the preferences of the people, as well as the local Governments standards), but the donor building practices, and try to introduce supporting the operation only wanted to pay technically achievable improvements to manage 2,000 USD. future risks they face. 7. We need to pay attention to those left 4. Disasters can provide us with elusive behind. Last year IFRCs World Disasters Report windows of opportunities to better plan focused on leaving no one behind. This looked communities or to improve their building at humanitarians needing to get better at practices. We need to take advantage of this by reaching people out of scope, out of reach and providing the appropriate technical support at out of sight. the proper time in the most appropriate

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8. Maybe one of the biggest threats that the world is facing is the loss of experiences from elders. Perhaps design and sheltering innovation should also look to this, recording & reviving this knowledge and balance it with developing new innovations. 9. We must always work with a moral/ethic value of what is built to promote humanitarian principles - dignity, safety, equality, social inclusion, respect of culture, and values. 10. We need to try and work with communitybased planning, enabling bottom-up initiatives, embracing change management, being pragmatic, increasing equity, and working to be gender-balanced. Now I would like to share some perspectives from one of our experienced shelter specialists, Xavier, who has spent the last 15 years working on shelter and is currently in the Pacific. When addressing shelter needs of people in the Pacific we: 1. Focus on the process and, in particular, the sheltering process, that people were following before a disaster, and the process to respond to their needs. 2. We look at the emergency response but also at enabling factors to contribute to the households and community self-recovery. 3. We focus on replicability, in the sense that often, the humanitarian response is serving only a tiny proportion of the needs on the ground. Replication is not about the capacity for people to replicate by buying material to reproduce the same. It is about being culturally appropriate, economically fitting, easily understandable, and with proper guidance. Xavier highlights four experiences to support reflection in the shelter planning process:

1. In Afghanistan, people used raw bricks as the primary construction material. The innovation brought here was to disseminate the "cooked brick" technology, but sadly the result was massive deforestation. Avoiding unintended negative impacts is critical to a thoughtful sheltering strategy. This is not an isolated example and is also not specific to one agency. It happens quite a lot that people don't think beyond their project's timeframe and location. IFRC is trying to address this through the Green Response initiative. 2. In the Pacific, when a community chief in Tanna (an island in Vanuatu that was impacted by Cyclone PAM in 2015) was asked about the significant challenge that his community was facing with housing, he replied, "the introduction of western materials." We need to understand local building practices, improve them, or innovate around them rather than introducing imported technologies. This point is the key to ownership, as well as the durability and sustainability of your intervention. 3. Then globally, "the tarpaulin." The tarpaulin is the fruit of extensive research with a lot of stakeholders from humanitarian and industrial stakeholders. For a relatively low cost, it's one of the main items used for humanitarian response worldwide. It's versatile, helping a lot of people to contribute to their sheltering process. This simple 4x6 piece of evolved plastic sheeting has two sides. One is light grey color, and the other one is dark grey with reinforced black lines to support fixing. How many people know that only one side is treated to resist the sun's impact? We must provide this information through awareness with distribution; otherwise, people might use it in the wrong sense, reducing its lifespan considerably. The tarpaulin can get used for other purposes, for instance, as a cholera bed; are we analyzing the impact of innovation on chemical treatment to lengthen the lifespan of

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tarpaulins, when skin is exposed to this directly? Are we sufficiently analyzing the potential negative collateral risks of our innovations? Xavier was involved at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland in a hackathon with great thinkers from all over the world; they were given 48 hours to "hack" and develop a project. Here the question was innovation for humanitarian shelter for people on the move in Europe. Predictably for Xavier, their first approach was to explore 3D printer technology to develop a brand new way to produce shelters after disasters. Xavier engaged them on the sheltering process, on replicability at scale, cultural appropriateness, and they came up with a simple signpost: "I'm a citizen, and I have a room to spare" to "I'm a person on a move who needs a room for tonight." I hope these few words with a focus on lessons learned and examples connect with you and give food for thought for the day ahead. Good luck

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Design for Humanity 2019: Design in the time of Displacement Introduction

Alberto Preato Senior Regional Program Coordinator, International Organization for Migration, IIHA Visiting Humanitarian Design Fellow, and Co-Organizer of Design for Humanity Summit A joint initiative of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the 2019 Design for Humanity (D4H) Summit showcased projects, experiences and reflections where innovative design meets humanitarian challenges. By bridging the expertise of humanitarian and design professionals, the initiative aims to drive humanitarian response in a more dignified, inclusive, and sustainable directions. How can design provide solutions to humanitarian challenges and improve the lives of people forcibly displaced by disasters, conflicts or the consequences of climate change?

What can designers learn from humanitarian practitioners, policymakers, and people on the move? What are the ethical principles of humanitarian design? What is the role of humanitarian design in reaching durable solutions for displaced populations? How can designers and humanitarians build on the skills and social capital of survivors of crises. These are some of the questions addressed by panelists at this year’s Summit, which focused on the use of dignified design in situations of displacement. Experts from design, humanitarian, academic and private sectors came together at Fordham University to share and discuss diverse design solutions, which are further elaborated in this book.

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In the morning panel, From Camps to Communities, we explored the physical dimensions of the spaces temporarily inhabited or occupied by migrants, internally displaced persons and refugees - spaces of mobility, transition, refuge and permanence. From sustainable planning in displacement crises, to urban and regional integration, speakers discussed how design can contribute to more prepared and resilient communities. In the afternoon panel, From Data to Stories, we explored the role of data and design in narrating journeys of displacement to evoke empathy, action and social change to the public. A panel of expert storytellers, data scientists, researchers and humanitarian practitioners discussed the various ways datadriven storytelling can promote human rights and amplify the voices of people on the move.

Both of these panel discussions celebrated the notion of design as activism and as a vital part of a principled humanitarian response. Speakers such as journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and architect Raul Pantaleo of TAMassociati, emphasized that design can and must take the side of the oppressed and the most vulnerable; that good design can allow people affected by crises to reclaim their right to dignified housing, opportunities for civic engagement and freedom of expression. At the 2019 Design for Humanity Summit we also learned that beauty and emotions matter, even in crises, and that design and humanitarian action at their core are not so different, because for both designers and humanitarians the ultimate goal is to care for other people and create a more just world.

Angela Wells Public Information Officer, International Organization for Migration Department of Operations and Emergencies and Co-Organizer of Design for Humanity Summit

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Design for Humanity Summit 2019

On June 21, 2019 the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs and the International Organization for Migration, hosted the Design for Humanity Summit 2019 at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus in New York City. Presenters from design, humanitarian, and private sectors explored the intersection of design and humanitarian action for dignified crisis response.

The Design for Humanity Summit 2019 was made possible with support of the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation. Community partners included Dezeen and IDEO.org.

Design for Humanity Summit 2019: Panel Discussion and Speeches

Welcome

Brendan Cahill Executive Director, Institute International Humanitarian Affairs

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Humanitarian Keynote Address

Argentina Szabados Regional Director, IOM in South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia

Design Keynote Address

Richard Blewitt Head of Delegation and Permanent Observer, Delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to the United Nations

Design Dialogue 1: From Camps to Communities How Design Can Contribute to More Prepared and Resilient Communities in Displacement Settings

Moderator: Brian Kelly IOM Head of Community Stabilization Unit Speakers: Raul Pantaleo Co-Founder, Studio TAMassociati Johan Karlsson Managing Director, Better Shelter Jan-Maurits Loecke Architect, Writer, Urban Founder, He.Lo Architects

Activist,

Co-

Lorin Kavanaugh-Ulku Senior Advisor, Open Innovation Competitions, U.S. Global Development Lab, USAID

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Storytelling Keynote Address

Amy Goodman Host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!

Design Dialogue 2: From Data to Stories How Data-Driven Storytelling Can Promote Human Rights and Amplify Voices of People on the Move

Moderator: Amy Goodman Host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now! Speakers: Erika Wei Senior Data Visualization Developer, UN OCHA’s Centre for Humanitarian Data Duncan Lawrence Executive Director, Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University Sandra Vines Director for Resettlement, International Rescue Committee Jocelyn Kelly Founding Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) Women in War Program Paul Dillon Managing Editor, IOM’s Communications Division

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Media

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Design for Humanity Summit 2019: Workshops

Understanding Migration and Refugee Situations Design in the Dialogue Jeremy 2: Boy Age of Big Data Data Visualization and Design Specialist, UN Global Pulse, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations Rapid Play Planning: Playground Design with Refugee Communities

Charles Newman Designer, Builder, and Researcher, Unfrastructure Design, LLC

Mapping Home and Hope: Using Mapping Tools to Better Understand the Place Experiences of Displaced Refugee Families

Bree Akesson Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Social Work

Understanding Migration and Refugee Situations in the Age of Big Data

Jeremy Boy Data Visualization and Design Specialist, UN Global Pulse, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations

Humanitarian Innovation: What We Learned Running Community-Centered Social Innovation Labs in Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, and the Philippines

Lillie Rosen Learning Manager, DEPP Innovation Labs

Designing and Building with Local Materials and Local People in Rural Haiti and Mexico

Joana Torres Architect and Founder, Oficina Design

Food and Memory

Ayesha Mukadam Visual Artist

No Lost Generation: A Case and Field Study of Education as a Core Human Right for Refugee Children, from the Holocaust to the Syrian Civil War

Mary Stylidi Regional Commissioner for Unaccompanied Child Refugees in Greece and Syria, UNHCR

Simulating Crisis Response: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Visualize the Spread of Ebola and the Impact of Response Interventions Used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Michael de St. Aubin Project Coordinator, KoBoToolbox, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Code of Ethics? Share Your Critical Reflections on Art and Design in the Humanitarian Context!

Azra AkĹĄamija Director, MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL) and Associate Professor, MIT Art, Culture and Technology Program

Inclusive Cities: Urban Planning Strategies for Sustainable Solutions

Jessica Sadye Wolff Urban Planner and Researcher

Mapping Urban Futures: Lessons from Havana, Cuba

Susan Fitzgerald Design Director, FBM Architecture and Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University

Design Pedagogy for Social Justice, Integrating Principles of Theory U for Impact

Susan Melsop Associate Professor of Design, Ohio State University

Kearney Coupland Ph.D. Candidate in the Geography Department, Wilfrid Laurier University

Saira Khan Data Analyst, Signal Program on Human Security and Technology, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

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Design for Humanity Dialogue I:

From Camps to Communities Speakers focus on the physical dimensions of the spaces temporarily inhabited or occupied by migrants, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees – spaces of mobility, transition, refuge and permanence. From sustainable planning in displacement crises, to urban and regional integration, speakers discuss how design can contribute to more prepared and resilient communities in displacement settings.

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Opening Remarks

Brian Kelly Head of Community Stabilization Unit, International Organization for Migration Our session is titled “From Camps to Communities.” We should change that name to “From Communities to Camps to Communities.” Everyone starts somewhere, and they most often don’t start in a camp; a space designed to be temporary although, in practice, so often is not. We are going to talk about how design can contribute to creating more prepared and resilient communities within these displacement settings. Like the other panelists here today, I have a background in crisis response; in short, I am a humanitarian aid worker. When we respond to a large-scale crisis, we rapidly staff up. The value-add from the international humanitarian community is the ability to bring size, scale, and standards.

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We grab logisticians, security officers, deep field workers, and others. Are we thinking about the level of design experience which they have? Are we thinking about design specialists as standalone members of the team? Mostly, no. The IOM Regional Director for Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Argentina Szabados, used the phrase “unprecedented opportunities” to frame what we are facing as a humanitarian community now. That is so true even though the second word of that phrase is more often ‘crisis’ as in ‘unprecedented crisis'. What we have now is an unprecedented opportunity. How are we going to utilize that


opportunity? How do we make sure that we get design thinking integrated within a response while ensuring that people affected by the response are at the center of it? Unfortunately, we have a lot of opportunities to try this. If we go from West Africa, dealing with Boko Haram, to Central Africa with the Ebola crisis, to East Africa with conflict in Somalia and large outflows from Ethiopia, across the Red Sea to Yemen, and of course, we have Iraq and Syria. We could keep on moving east and talk about the Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar, a lot of displacement through conflict still in the Southern Philippines, and we haven’t even gotten to Venezuela yet. Unfortunately, we are presented with a huge opportunity to practice our trade. We have such an immense obligation to do it and to do it well. For 2018, as Brendan mentioned in his introduction, over 70 million people were displaced, double the figure from 20 years ago. 61% are now based in urban areas, which is another shift. Two-thirds of all of them are displaced for more than five years. So, can we really use the word “temporary”? We design for temporary, we want temporary, but 1 in 5 situations lasts more than 20 years. That is not temporary; that is a generation. I often talk to governments about alternatives to camps because camps are horrific places, and this is coming from an individual representing the global cluster lead on camp coordination and camp management. They create dependency, and they create significant issues relating to sexual violence against women. There are all sorts of negative impacts on the environment and elsewhere with camps. While camps are very easy to open - they are very, very hard to close.

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Ecology of Humanitarian Tale Raul Pantaleo Co-founder, Studio TAMassociati Humanitarian action is utopian, and sometimes revolutionary, in terms of content and methods. It demands a "transparent" and ecological communication, symmetrical to the ideals it represents. What we mean is very simple and extremely articulate at the same time: The consistency, and credibility, of who issues the message The clarity and effectiveness of the content The ethics in managing irrational and emotional aspects between agent and subject The ability to stimulate sincere participation in the issues at stake The transparency in transmitting positive elements without hiding difficulties and problems. We believe, therefore, that those who design and communicate humanitarian actions must

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have a personal adherence to issues specific to this utopia, such as social equity, defense of human rights and the environment, anti-racism, social economy, participatory culture, and active citizenship. In other words, communicative action cannot be separated from the context of other human activities. Our challenge as TAMassociati is precisely this: to rethink design in terms of its ability to communicate what is practiced inside it, as a medium with an independent capacity to practice a culture of rights. Our research involves deep reflection on the language of design. Its purpose is to identify a form of universal communication capable of creating a dialogue between spaces and users. It means designing empathic artifacts that people can identify with. Hence our vocational choice to dedicate ourselves exclusively to impact design as professionals and activists of social change, making our professionalism coincide with our civic commitment.


From Shelter to Home—The Role of Temporary Structures in Community Building

Johan Karlsson Managing Director, Better Shelter When tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, a majority from the city of Qamishli, arrive at the village of Kawergosk in Iraqi Kurdistan, there is not a tree in sight to shade from the beating sun with temperatures reaching 40 degrees celsius. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), together with the military and the refugees themselves, pitch 10,000 tents from local stockpiles, and families begin to move in. Over a few days, Kawergosk grows to the size of a small city. Two months later, 13 prototypes of the Refugee Housing Unit (RHU) – a pre-fab, flatpack shelter developed by UNHCR, the Ikea Foundation, and the social enterprise Better Shelter – are delivered to Kawergosk camp for testing and evaluation.

The context is representative of the intended use of the RHU – a high influx and limited local capacity, which does not allow for locally-driven shelter programs. Durable solutions are neither planned for nor possible to be implemented as long as the emergency phase remains. The design of the RHU prototype is simple: a self-standing steel frame clad with lightweight wall and roof panels. It has two doors that can be locked, windows, ventilation inlets, and a small solar light. It is packed in two boxes and ready to be assembled without additional tools. The 13 shelters are built in two neat rows, directly onto the soil. Families move in and begin to make changes. The RHU prototypes are transformed from “shelters”

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The context is representative of the intended use of the RHU – a high influx and limited local capacity, which does not allow for locally-driven shelter programs. Durable solutions are neither planned for nor possible to be implemented as long as the emergency phase remains. The design of the RHU prototype is simple: a self-standing steel frame clad with lightweight wall and roof panels. It has two doors that can be locked, windows, ventilation inlets, and a small solar light. It is packed in two boxes and ready to be assembled without additional tools. The 13 shelters are built in two neat rows, directly onto the soil. Families move in and begin to make changes. The RHU prototypes are transformed from “shelters” into homes. Furniture, kitchen sets, textiles, and personal belongings become part of the interior. Larger changes to the design follow – the tarp floors are soon replaced with concrete floors cast by the families. At night, they sleep on mattresses laid out on the floor, which in the daytime are stacked along the walls to create sofas and to free up space in the middle for play, cooking, and chores. And the households change too – after a few weeks, a family welcomes its sixth member, when a baby boy is born inside their RHU. Proving that aesthetics are also considered in a humanitarian emergency; the families soon paint the walls and decorate their homes with textiles. Photos of family members are hung next to memories from home, children’s stuffed toys, and posters of celebrities and motorcycles. And changes are not limited to the interior – gradually, as the families earn an income, the shelters’ surrounding areas are fenced with material found in the local market. They plant gardens and build verandas, extensions, and reinforcements. While not the permanent solution, temporary shelters like

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the RHU can be the starting point and enabler for establishing a home and a community. Six years later, in 2019, the families have received new durable, two-bedroom shelters. Some still use the RHU prototypes as external living rooms or garden sheds, while others have dismantled them and reused the material as fences or as insulation. The families have changed too – new members have joined, and others have passed away. The boy who was born in an RHU will celebrate his sixth birthday this fall. Due to an enabling political context and a longterm plan for the camp, the development in Kawergosk has been positive compared to many others in the region. It has transformed into a city with roads, water, electricity, drainage, schools, shops, and meeting spaces – functions that build a community. Many refugees are not as fortunate – it is said that 14,000 families currently live in tents, which are long overdue for replacement in the region. This situation indicates that emergency solutions are not used temporarily in many contexts and that a structure’s ability to be adapted and reused must be considered in shelter innovation. The RHU project was enabled by our partners UNHCR and the IKEA Foundation, and as of today, UNHCR has deployed over 40,000 RHUs in 40 operations worldwide. To continue improving the living conditions for people caught in protracted crises, we encourage more development within the shelter sector through prototyping and pilot programs in similar partnerships.


Social Fractures/Social Structures

Jan-Maurits Loecke Architect, Author, Co-Founder HE.LO Architects The Fugue, mastered by Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel, is a complex but extraordinary genre of music in which one tune is followed through and then repeated in different ways to find absolute harmony in the end. This is a process of constant approximation and gives the impression of one melody relentlessly being chased by another. The Fugue, actually part of refug(u)ee, is reminiscent of the ephemeral situation of refugees, with their many voices under relentless physical and emotional stress, without knowing where and when they are heading next or achieving harmony. Over 70 millionš displaced and migrants worldwide bring us together at this Design for Humanity Summit in New York. Migration is not a phenomenon of our times; it has, and will always exist. Without it, humankind would not be such a tremendous success story, and we would not have left the first cave at all. We started wandering, overcame obstacles, grew more resilient with each challenge and failure.

Through storytelling, we passed on what we experienced and believed was right and wrong. Migrants were our mentors; they were and are also risk-takers and decision makers. With human settling emerged definitions such as territories, possession, segregation, and borders. Relocation became more perilous as groups were 'pushed out' or not 'allowed in.' Plotted on to the evolution's timeline, the period that political borders existed only emerged very recently and sadly gained new political momentum. How can design help for projects like a refugee camp, with the only certainty that it will happen, but without knowledge of the geographical, climatic, or social context, the duration, frequency residents arrive? It is an edge condition in transit, socially as well as geographically, with temporality often becoming permanent. For reasons of efficiency and control, refugees are initially sheltered in an almost institutional manner, in predictively gridded plots, spaces intended for effective

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processing, stored without any space for individualism. Anonymity risks isolation, dysfunctionality, and dysconnectivity. To successfully help spaces become places, it is important to comprehend the meaning of home and identity. Breaking anonymity and unintended uniformity will create empowerment and caring communities, the basic of well-functioning neighborhoods. He. Lo's spatial storytelling for Ceuta shows zones of self-organization and expression, adjacencies of denseness and openness, and follows the contours of society and geographical context.² Architecture and urban planning are synesthetic hybrids of many senses, contrasts, textures, odors, acoustics, light, and shadow as well as social aspects like wellbeing, curiosity, interpretation, and memories. One way to respond to social ruptures and fractures in our society is to create structures that are social and ethical. Being as participative as possible, they strengthen identity, heritage, positive memories, and social resilience. Functioning communities, as the most resilient cornerstones in societies, instigate care, education, joy, and acceptance. A well-balanced allowance for cultural infrastructures like community, nature, and gathering spaces, is needed to be added to the UNHCR Emergency Handbook³, a percentage for social cultural space to be added the 3-3.5m2 per person once immediate response stage is passed, as this is below parking lots in urban parking structures. In a time where architecture and engineering have made leaps in terms of responsiveness through complex analytical tools, parametric processes, and digital manufacturing and concepts like biomimicry, buildings can be designed which were never possible before with an environmental and economic sustainable agenda. But foremost the social

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sustainability needs attention; one could say EnvironMENTAL gives a hint towards mental health. Building components under stress (in this case, heat or load) are endangered to break unless that stress is diverted, and the same goes for people. Social structures aim to ease stress. Open and parallel structures converge along individuals' paths for moments in time, often initiating an identity for remote places that are defined by temporality and unpredictability. . Like socially successful cities do not try to predict the unpredictable or plan the unknown future, in this case it is important, that the structures and spaces allow social “accidents” and instigate unpredictability. This creates resilience, a sense of empowering civilness. I couldn't agree more with Alberto Preato and Angela Wells, the initiators of D4H, "Leaving no one behind meaning not only responding to communities in need but actively including them in the design of the projects and policies that govern their lives." Systems of musical notation encourage the formation of participative collectives⁴. Spaces can learn from music how to connect, inspire, liberate, empower, and bridge lingual, cultural, or generational barriers. As I started with the Fugue, I conclude with reference to John Cage, who I met. He empowers the interpreter to refine the composition, challenge the authorship, while Cage himself, the originator, steps back. The wounds of people and places in such extreme stressful contexts of war, natural disasters, oppression, and injustice might result in anxiety, anger, and despair becoming a constant companion in a refugee's later life. These wounds want to be healed, and we see a chance in this ephemeral context that social structures and a renewed emphasis on participative social-cultural spaces help to create resilient communities and initiate optimism.

1 UNHCR refugee trend report, Filippo Brandi 2 MoMA “Insecurities, tracing Displacement and shelter,” Medium https://medium.com/insecurities/35-9176-n-5-3670-w 3 3-3.5m2 per person, UNHCR Emergencies Handbook, pp 215-227 4 Spacial Murmuring, “migration and spaces of ideas,” Henriques, Loecke, Papdakis 2013


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Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge

Lorin Kavanaugh-Ulku Senior Advisor, Open Innovation Competitions, U.S. Global Development Lab, United States Agency for International Development I admire all of the innovators at the Design for Humanity Summit. I am a bureaucrat from Washington, DC, helping shape the programs that fund innovation, but I don't get to do much of the actual hands-on work like those of you here today. I am here today to tell you about an innovation program that our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) built to create opportunities for financing innovative ideas that address critical humanitarian needs in complex emergencies. Let me give you a little bit of context about the program: over 200 million people require humanitarian assistance today. Millions of people, the most vulnerable people, are in conflict zones, which are very difficult for us to reach, and often aid can't get to them. These are places like Syria or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Within these countries are communities where it is just impossible to provide humanitarian aid to affected populations.

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Nearly 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development's humanitarian assistance dollars support complex emergencies. However, as the length, frequency, and scope of complex emergencies continue to increase, it is getting more difficult for us to respond to all those challenges around the world with the limited resources we currently have and the strategies that used to work in the past. We are trying to think about the new ways that we can provide aid to those that are affected by complex emergencies. One other layer that I want to add to this already complex situation is that less than 1% of all humanitarian funding is invested in innovation. That means that investment in new solutions is considered a low priority vis-à -vis the tremendous need in this space. But this is starting to change. At the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), we have been challenged to


transform the way we deliver development and humanitarian assistance and update our strategies for addressing the world's most pressing problems. That's where I come in. I lead the Open Innovation Competitions team in the U.S. Global Development Lab, which is essentially the innovation incubation center for the agency. It's where we are trying to test out new programs and design opportunities to see what works. On the innovation team, we work with usercentered design principles, adaptive management programming, and open innovation strategies such as prizes and challenges to invite new solvers to help respond to our most significant challenges. We fund the most promising ideas and solutions, test them, and scale up those that are successful. Our goal is to help support teams like the Humanitarian Assistance team in OFDA, bring in new solvers, actors, potential partners and bring in new solutions that may help them become more effective and efficient with limited humanitarian assistance resources. To achieve this, we work hard to make USAID more permeable to actors who are

traditionally not eligible for our awards. Typically, there are only a few firms around the world that are competitive enough to win a USAID proposal. Through open innovation, we are trying to change that completely to make it easier for anybody to access our procurement structures to open up open innovation competitions. That is one easy way that we are lowering the bar significantly to allow for better shelter designs to get into USAID and a more diverse group to start working with us on some of our programs. How else can we bring in other solvers who have fantastic ideas? Well, we provide more dedicated funding! In 2018, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance recognized that the complex emergency space was ripe for new solutions from all around the world. USAID's OFDA partnered with the U.K. Department for International Development, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the implementing partner Grand Challenges Canada on the $32.5 million Creating Hope in Conflict: Humanitarian Grand Challenge. This partnership brings together these very important donor pairs who all agree that this is an issue that cannot be solved on its

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own. We needed to come together and invite the world to help share ideas for us to better support people in these complex emergencies, but we also wanted to find out how can we work with communities to develop those solutions. Creating Hope in Conflict focuses on finding and accelerating solutions that enable life-saving or life-improving assistance in four sectors: safe water and sanitation, energy, life-saving information, health supplies, and services. In terms of the types of solutions the Challenge is looking for, the focus is not just on gadgets: process innovation is a critical part of this puzzle. We invite solvers to come up with new ways to deal with supply chain issues or to develop products in the communities using 3D printers or thinking about how telemedicine can help support medical interventions. For the initial call for innovations, there was an unprecedented response with over 600 applications from 86 countries around the world. These applications dealt with a wide variety of issues from gender-based violence solutions helping women become more secure in a camp situation to smart toilets that helped reduce the need for removal of waste. The total request for funding far outstripped the total available funding, which means deciding on what to invest in is not easy. And now we have a new round for innovations. As we look to the future of this Challenge, we are hoping to bring in more donors and more private sector partners to build the funding path to ensure that there's more money for innovation in humanitarian space. We don't want to just fund solutions; we want to build an ecosystem around those solutions and ensure that innovators are not standing alone. We want them to be provided with mentors and other funders and investors that are around them that can help bring these ideas forward and make them sustainable for the future.

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Design for Humanity Dialogue II:

From Data to Stories Speakers explore the role of data and design in narrating journeys of displacement to evoke empathy, action and social change to the public. The discussions delve into the various ways data-driven storytelling can enhance the work of humanitarians to promote human rights and amplify the voices of people on the move.

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Storytelling Keynote Address

Amy Goodman Host and Executive Producer, Democracy Now! I was asked to say a few words before the panel, and I thought, "What better way than to start the way we do every day on Democracy Now?" and that's with the news headlines. But first, how many of you know Democracy Now? The daily, grassroots, global, unembedded, independent, international, investigative news hour, on for 23 years on 1,400 public television and radio stations around the world and broadcast online at DemocracyNow.org. We originally came out of Pacifica Radio, which was founded in 1949 by a war resistor named Lou Hill. When he came out of the detention camps, he saw the need for a media outlet that's run not by corporations that profit from war, but by journalists and artists. As George Gerbner, the late dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania would say, "Not run by corporations that have nothing to tell and everything to sell, that are raising our children today." The first station was KPFA in Berkeley,

then KPFK in Los Angeles, then our station in New York, WPFW in Washington, and, in 1970, KPFT in the Petro Metro of Houston. That's a historic station because, within a few weeks, the Klu Klux Klan stuck dynamite to the base of the transmitter and blew it to smithereens. They rebuilt quickly, they went back on the air in a few weeks, and the Klan strapped 15 times more dynamite to the base of the transmitter and blew it up again. I think it was in the middle of Arlo Guthrie singing "Alice's Restaurant," which I thought was a good song. It took months to rebuild, and this phoenix rose from the ashes in January of '71. The national media was there, Arlo Guthrie came into Houston to finish his song live on the air, and it's been broadcasting ever since. I can't remember if it was the "Grand Dragon" or the "Exalted Cyclops" because I often confuse the Klan's titles, but he said it was his proudest act. I think that's because he understood how dangerous independent

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media is. Dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves. When you hear someone speaking from their own experience, whether it's a Syrian climate refugee who we interviewed in the Calais Jungle in France during the UN Climate summit or a woman in Yemen whose sister was blown up during a US drone strike at a wedding party, whether it is a child in Afghanistan or an uncle in Iraq, you may not agree with them. I mean, how often do we even agree with our family members? But it makes it much less likely that you'll want to destroy them. I think that that understanding is the beginning of peace. The media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth; instead, it is all too often wielded as a weapon of war, and that's what we have to challenge. The reason the Klan wanted to destroy Pacifica is that when you hear someone speaking from their own experience, it breaks down the caricatures and the stereotypes that fuel hate groups. It breaks down the caricatures and stereotypes that allow you to separate yourself from that person. Instead, you say, "Oh my gosh, that Palestinian child sounds like my baby, that Israeli grandmother sounds like my bubbe." Suddenly, we care about what's happening. I think that is absolutely critical. The media laying the groundwork facilitates all of your humanitarian work because when there is a political will, there is no question: there is a way to deal with all of these issues. The magnificent plans you've laid out, both concrete accomplishments and your dreams for the future of displacement – that's the background of Democracy Now. I just thought I'd start how we start every day, and that's with the headlines, and how, astoundingly, every headline links to refugees. This was our headline yesterday: "A New UN Report Finds Nearly 71 Million People were Displaced Last Year by War, Persecution, and

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Other Forms of Violence...the number is more than 2 million people higher than last year, represents a jump of 65% from a decade ago. Nearly 26 million refugees were recorded in 2018, over half of them under the age of 18, of these, less than 100,000 were resettled. Over 41 million people worldwide are internally displaced, and three and a half million were registered as asylum seekers." These numbers, I'm sure you are all quite familiar with. Our top story today: "President Trump Reportedly Approving, then Abruptly Calling Off Military Strikes Targeting Iran Thursday Night,� with the New York Times reporting US Warplanes were already in the air, ready to attack, when Trump called the plan off. He'd initially okayed the strikes as retaliation for Iran downing a US drone. Iran maintains the drone had entered its airspace while the US claims the drone was in international waters. Trump's response to the first attack on the drone was to say, 'Iran made a big mistake, this drone was in international waters clearly, we have it all documented,' he said, 'It's documented scientifically, not just words, and they made a very bad mistake.'" If only he respected science, would we be in this situation that we are in today with the UN, with the US pulling out of the UN Climate Accord, eviscerating yet another regulation around coal emissions in the United States? And just in the last few weeks, the Department of Energy announcing they will no longer use the word "methane," saying they will now call it "freedom gas," with one of the top officials at the Energy Department saying, "We are spreading molecules of freedom around the world." I want to move on to today's second headline: "The Republican-Led Senate Voted Yesterday to Block the Sale of Billions of Dollars' Worth of Weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab


Emirates.� Key backers of the bipartisan bill included Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Bob Menendez. The House is also expected to pass the bill, but President Trump is threatening to veto the legislation. Why does this matter? Why does it link to everything that you do? Because we're talking about the use of weapons by these regimes in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to bomb Yemen back to the Stone Age. It's the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world, and, according to another article, "A British court has ruled that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are unlawful because the government did not consider whether they would be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. The court's decision came in a case brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, which cited Saudi Arabia's use of British arms in its devastating war in Yemen. Andrew Smith, a spokesperson for the group, celebrated the ruling. He said, "What this ruling makes clear is that, for far, far too long, the UK government has looked the other way as tens of thousands of people have been brutally killed in the most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world."

And then, we move on to migrant children in the United States. Democracy Now has always treated the human rights groups in the United States as part of a pro-democracy movement. The way the media talks about pro-democracy movements, it's only for other countries, because we in America have already "achieved democracy," so these US human rights groups, they cannot be a part of this larger movement. But you never really "achieve democracy." You have to fight for it every single day. That's what these human rights groups do, and that's why it's critical that the media provides a platform for people like all of you to speak out. People who are the experts in your areas rather than the pundits we get on all the networks who know so little about so much. The Associated Press has reported, "Some 250 infants, children, and teenagers have been locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water, and sanitation at a Border Patrol Station near El Paso, Texas." One of our headlines today: "One local lawyer said a sick two-year-old was being treated by three girls between the ages of 10 and 15 because no one else was helping him."

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Children have reportedly been fed uncooked frozen food or rice, have gone weeks without bathing or clean clothes. Attorney Holly Cooper said, "In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity." This comes as the Trump administration argued this week in federal court that the government is not required to provide toothbrushes, soap, or beds to children who are detained along the border. The Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian made the argument before an incredulous three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. All three judges repeatedly questioned the government's claim. Judge Wallace Tashima said, "If you don't have a toothbrush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary, wouldn't everybody agree with that? Do you agree with that?" The Justice Department lawyer said, "there is fair reason to find that those things may be part of 'safe and sanitary'." The judge said, "Not maybe. Are a part. What do you say, maybe? You mean there are circumstances when a person doesn't need a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap for days?" The lawyer replied, "Well, I think Customs and Border Patrol Custody, its frequently intended to be much shorter term," so Judge Marsha Berzon also pointed out the kids sleep on cement floors. She said, "Are you really gonna stand up and tell us being able to sleep isn't a question of 'safe and sanitary conditions?'" The Justice Department lawyer said, "Your Honor, I think what I'd like to —" "No," she said. "You're not really going to say that," the judge said. And the lawyer responded, "I'd like to really focus in on what your question is." I want to turn to the protest that's going to be planned, as a group of Japanese-Americans who were once held in US internment camps is planning to protest outside Fort Sill, tomorrow

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in Oklahoma. "During World War II, the US government imprisoned about 700 people of Japanese ancestry at Fort Sill. There were over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans imprisoned around the United States. Earlier this month, the Trump Administration announced it is soon starting to hold migrant children at Fort Sill." And then to Colorado, a case we have followed continuously. Immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra has just been denied an application for a visa in her latest attempt to stay in the US, where she has lived for more than a quarter of a century. Earlier this year, Vizguerra took sanctuary at the First Unitarian Society of Denver Church after her stay of deportation expired. She had already been in sanctuary in 2017 for 86 days, the mother of four kids, three US citizens. She was named by Time Magazine last year as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She couldn't come to the Time celebration here in New York because she was in the sanctuary, and if she stepped foot outside the Church, she would be arrested. I went inside the Church to talk to her and her children, and her little 10-year-old boy, who was going out on a march that day, said, "my mother can't go out on this Cesar Chavez march. I must be her voice." But to be able to hear their voices – again, not the know-nothing pundits – that's what will change the world. We must go to where the silence is. As you know, especially those of you working with refugees around the world, it's not often silent where you are. But it is for the corporate media. Those voices do not hit the media radar screen, and it's our job to elevate them. These are the voices that will save all of our humanity. And then, moving on to a federal judge in Massachusetts blocking federal authorities from making immigration arrests inside state


courthouses. People will come to testify on someone else's behalf, and ICE will come to the courthouse and arrest them. A few months ago, a judge and a former court officer were arrested for trying to help an immigrant get out of the And then you have Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernรกndez ordering "the deployment of 25,000 military forces across Honduras as protests grow, demanding his resignation. Anger against his authoritarian administration has been building for years, but recent unrest triggered in April amidst news of government plans to privatize healthcare, pensions, and education." We know what this means: with the continued US support of repressive regimes and questionable elections, you have more and more immigrants who try to make their way to the US border. It is absolutely critical we give voice to all of them. I wanted to end with the suicide rate for indigenous women soaring as national rate hits post-World-War-II high. The overall suicide rate has jumped by 33% since 1999. The crisis is most severe in indigenous communities. According to CBC, the suicide rate for indigenous women has increased by

139%. For indigenous men, 71%." This brings me to our final story, which is the fight for sovereignty over indigenous land in the United States and how this relates to refugees. "The operator of the Dakota Access pipeline planning to nearly double its capacity to a point where it could transport nearly all the daily oil production of the nation's #2 producer. Energy Transfer Partners are informing North Dakota regulators that plans to expand the pipeline capacity by more than half a million barrels-perday to as much as 1.1 million barrels." How does that relate? It's about climate change; it's about climate catastrophe. Those of you who listen to or watch or read Democracy Now know how intensively we cover the standoff at Standing Rock in North Dakota, and I thought I'd end with that story before we move on. In April of 2016, the unofficial historian of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota named LaDonna Brave Bull Allard opened her property along the Cannonball River to the "resistance." She thought a couple of dozen people would come to fight what she called the "black snake." This is, of course, the Dakota

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Access Pipeline, built by Energy Transfer Partners, that would take fracked oil from the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and hook up with a pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico. The indigenous Standing Rock Sioux said, "No." They weren't different from other North Dakotans, as the people of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, said "No," and the people of Mandan, where the courts and the prisons are, had said "No." These are the prisons where hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting the pipeline were imprisoned, but the people of Mandan themselves had said "No," and so ETP could not build the pipeline there. Instead, they were building it next to the Standing Rock Reservation. They didn't call themselves "protestors," they called themselves "water protectors," because they were concerned that, going under the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, the pipeline would endanger the water supply of the 7 million people downstream. They see themselves as protectors of the planet for everyone, fighting for a sustainable future. They see themselves connected to the people of Sub-Saharan Africa who must leave their homes because of desertification. To the boy we had on Democracy Now, who had migrated to Durban, South Africa from the Maldives, and said, "my country is drowning." To the people of Sub-Saharan Africa who say, "you are cooking our continent." The indigenous people of this country say, "We're doing it for everyone so you can stay in your homes, and we can stay in ours." This was the presidential election year in the United States, 2016, and media was almost completely ignoring this historic moment. Ladonna Brave Bull Allard opened her property for a couple of dozen people. Hundreds, then thousands came, from Latin American indigenous tribes to United States First Nations

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of Canada, to non-native allies. They opened up one resistance camp from Sacred Stone to Red Warrior Camp to other camps. Because the indigenous people saw it as a struggle for everyone, we felt it was critical to get their voices out. We went there on Labor Day Weekend. This was at the time when, in the Presidential Debates, not one of them—I won't call them journalists, maybe personalities— raised the issue of climate change. Climate change affects everyone, partly why you do the work you do, and why you have to do the work that you do. We went there Labor Day Weekend, and what we saw was indigenous men, women, boys, and girls holding glasses of water to give to the fully militarized police departments that would meet them with tanks, with MRAPS, with automatic weapons. These were their neighbors! Years before, when Michael Brown was killed, and the people rose up, the militarized police departments of St. Louis met them with full force. This is recycling in America today. You take the weapons from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you give them to the local police departments of the United States. This dynamic is being fought by many, including former police chiefs who say, "How do you think we're gonna see our neighbors if we're looking at them through the barrel of a gun?" The next day, a group of native people went to where they were going to plant their traditional flags. This was an area they considered to be their sacred burial ground. They had told the judge who would be ruling on whether they could prevent the pipeline from going in this area, and the judge said, "If you believe that, give me a map, prove it to me." They complied, and the judge gave the map to Energy Transfer Partners, yet when the tribe got to the area, there were six Dakota Access Pipeline bulldozers already excavating the land. Though the judge would be ruling in a few days, the company had taken advantage of this moment, taken the map, pulled their bulldozers from


other sites, and had begun to destroy the facts on the ground, excavating the area so that the issue would be a moot point by the time the judge ruled. They were furious. They came upon the property, and they stood in front of the bulldozers, the women and the girls against these Earth-crushing machines, massive machines – and we were filming all of this. In fact, we were the only ones there filming. We just never turned off the cameras, and the bulldozers slowly pulled back, one by one. They kept pulling back, and the people kept marching forward, now in the hundreds, and that's when the Dakota Access Pipeline guards unleashed dogs on the protestors. People were bitten, beaten, maced, and pepper-sprayed, but they prevailed at a ridiculously high price –for the land, they said, for the water. Finally, the guards took their dogs, the tractors moved on, the bulldozers got out of the way, and we had this incredible video, which we hosted online. Now, I'm often invited on MSNBC or CNN, and I say, "Why aren't you doing more around climate catastrophe? The time to do it is when you give your weather reports, prove that these disparate conditions of drought and

freezing cold and floods actually are connected. Why don't the meteorologists talk about this? That's what most people tune into." The hosts always say, "the executives of our network say people's eyes glaze over when you say, 'climate change.'" So, we posted online, and within 24 hours, there were 14 million views that showed the lie to the execs that would drool at getting that kind of popular response. We interviewed people like Winona LaDuke, who lives on the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota, and she said to the governor, "You are not George Wallace. This is not Alabama in 1965. We are through." That Thursday, the governor called out the National Guard in anticipation of the judge's ruling, and quietly, though I didn't know it at the time, issued an arrest warrant for me. It may have had something to do with showing the pictures. The next day we did our show, just down the street from here, and then my colleague and I flew to Canada. Now, I wasn't fleeing, I was invited to the Toronto International Film Festival because they were doing a documentary on I. F. Stone, the great muckraking journalist who said to journalism students, "If you can remember two words, remember 'governments lie,' if you can

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remember three words, remember 'all governments lie.'" That was the name of the documentary, and in it, they documented the news organizations who were following in his footsteps. Because they documented Democracy Now, we came out there to speak after. The next day, during my talk at the University of Toronto, hundreds of people came out, students and professors, and midway through, I got a text that said, 'You're under arrest.' I do see it's a North Dakota number, so this is probably real. I also know that if there's an arrest warrant issued for you, you won't necessarily be immediately arrested, but if you have interaction with FBI, police, or Border Guards, that you'll be taken. Here I am in Canada, and I have to come home, so I just looked out on the crowd and said, "Could someone call me a cab?" I thought I would refrain from telling them of what I had just been alerted to, so I could just make it over the border. I went home to New York, where I learned the news of the warrant was true, but I didn't take it personally. This was a nationwide threat, telling journalists, "Do not come to North Dakota," so we knew we had to go back and call the authorities' bluff. When we landed in Bismarck, they dropped the charges, announcing they would bring stronger charges of felony riot, as if I'm a one-woman-riot. I called my North Dakota lawyer, not that I had one before, and I said, "what does this mean?" and he said, "Maybe a year in jail." I said, "A year in jail? How much time do I have?" and he said, "Well, you'll be arraigned in two days," so I said, "Two more days to cover the protest." On that Monday morning, we did the broadcast from Mandan right outside the prison and the courthouse so I could just turn around and turn myself in. Well, it was the prison, the courthouse, and the Ten Commandments in between. I interviewed the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, the 45th chairman named Dave Archambault, and I asked if he had been arrested, and he said,

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"yes, at the beginning of this, for civil disobedience, a low-level misdemeanor." I asked, "what happened to you?" and he said, "Oh, I was put in an orange jumpsuit, and I was jailed, strip-searched." I interviewed Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle, the pediatrician of the Standing Rock Reservation, and I said, "Were you ever arrested?" She was among the first since she's the most concerned about the kids' health, she said, "Oh yes, I was arrested on a low-level misdemeanor, and I was strip-searched, put in an orange jumpsuit and I was jailed." I mean, how much humiliation can people take? At the end of the broadcast, we were heading across the street, and hundreds of Native Americans came to show their solidarity, and this time, all the media was covering this because a journalist was about to be arrested. It was the homepage of the BBC and Aljazeera and the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and even Vogue Magazine was covering this. As I was going across the street, we were told that the judge would not even sign off on the charges against me. And it was not only me. The Native Americans who were facing court that day had their felonies and misdemeanors dropped. This is what happens when the media shines a light in the right direction. This is the kind of reality TV we have to support. This is why we need independent media. I want to end with the story, this historical story, as this week, we saw in Congress a hearing on reparations in the United States around slavery. Ta-Nehesi Coates, the great writer, testifying for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee. I wanted to leave you with this story of 1955: The story of Emmet Till, and why the images matter. The 14-year-old AfricanAmerican boy lived in Chicago, and his mother, Mamie, wanted him out of the city for the summer, sent him to Money, Mississippi, and there he lived with his aunt and uncle and cousins. As he's sleeping one night, a white mob comes and rips him out of bed, and he ends up on the bottom of the


Tallahatchie River. They said he wolf-whistled at a white woman. He was tortured, and he was killed. When his body was dredged up and sent back to Chicago, his mother, Mamie Till, did something incredibly brave. She said she wanted the casket open for the wake and the funeral. She wanted the world to see the ravages of racism, the brutality of bigotry. Jet Magazine and other black publications took photographs of his distended, mutilated head, and they were actually published. With that, they were seared into the history and consciousness of this country. Mamie Till had something important to teach the media of today. Show the pictures. Show the images. Could you imagine if even for just one week, the media showed the images of war, of refugees attempting to find safety, showed the images of climate devastation? If the top of every radio and TV newscast was the story of a child who died in Afghanistan, and we actually learned her name and who her parents were? If the top, above the fold, of every surviving newspaper, was a woman in Syria trying to make her way to safety, and we actually learned her name because names are just as important as letting people tell their own stories? If every tweet, every email, talked about a soldier dead or dying? Americans are a compassionate people. They would say no: war is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century. Democracy Now.

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Using Data to Tell the Story of Humanitarian Crisis and People in Need Erika Wei Senior Data Visualization Developer, UN OCHA's Centre for Humanitarian Data step by step, what happens to a family when they are forced to abandon their land, homes, jobs, and schools in search of safety. In the story, the journey of the South Sudanese family is divided into several segments to show the specific threats and relief they encounter along the way. The narrative helps connect the data to the lives of the people affected, resonating on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Since 2013, conflict in South Sudan has left over 7 million people in need of assistance and protection. Approximately 8.7 million people in the area are food-insecure, half of them severely so, with 26,000 in famine-like conditions. As many as 1.9 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to violence, leaving them internally displaced and in search of safety. Data points like these are more than statistics alone. At the Centre for Humanitarian Data, we believe this data can be used to tell a story that better informs responses. ‘Displaced in South Sudan: A Journey of 1000 Kilometers’ is an interactive data visualization that shows,

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Organizations such as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the International Organization for Migration have been tracking internal displacement and migration for many years. Accessing this data from a trusted source is key in the preparedness stage to establish a baseline picture of a region pre-crisis or to show trends across a period of time. The use of this data is transforming humanitarian response, enabling organizations to understand better and target specific needs, monitor how a crisis is changing, and measure impact. With stories like this one for South Sudan, interactive visualizations, and data-driven tools, more people within the humanitarian sector can understand and use data. At the Centre, we aim to create a future where everyone involved in humanitarian response can access the data they need, when and how they need it, to make informed and responsible decisions. The datasets used to create the South Sudan story are accessible on HDX, the Humanitarian Data Exchange. HDX is the Centre’s signature product, and an open platform for finding, sharing, and using data about humanitarian crises around the world. Nearly 9,000 datasets are currently shared on HDX from organizations all over the world.


International Rescue Committee

Sandra Vines Director for Resettlement, International Rescue Committee As the Director for Resettlement at the International Rescue Committee, my job is to ensure that newly arrived refugees receive high-quality early resettlement services. At the IRC, we have a Refugee Voices movement with the intent that former refugees can share their own stories and affect change, notably change in the political arena. In refugee and immigration policy in the U.S., refugees own their stories, and the data-driven points that we have cannot replace the power of these stories or the agency that they have when they tell their own story. With that said, data and tech solutions can help practitioners get better outcomes for refugees. The U.S. refugee admission program, since its inception in 1980, has been pretty much paperand-pen, with the whole 21st-century tech movement seeming to have left it behind I want to give you all a quick refresh on the U.S. refugee resettlement process:

First, refugees arrive at the U.S. in an orderly manner. The vetting process takes two or more years, and before refugees can arrive, they must have a sponsor. Agencies like mine connect refugees to cities and towns in the U.S., so my colleagues have the ability to essentially predetermine whether the refugee children will be fans of the Baltimore Orioles or the Seattle Mariners. There are more immediate consequences for adults, such as the question of whether they will be able to get a job quickly and pay the bills. When we place refugees in a city, we feel a weight to our decision. We want them to be placed in a city that will be optimal for them, and where they will thrive. In my organization, we have 24 cities around the U.S. where refugees can be placed, including Boise Idaho, Abilene Texas, Missoula Montana, and of course, Seattle and Baltimore. Most of the 30,000 refugees arriving this year will join a family member or friend who they identified

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identified overseas, so in that instance, they are placed based on where their tie is. 35% of IRC’s caseload, however, will have no ties, meaning they could be assigned to any of IRC’s offices across the U.S. How do my colleagues make such a consequential decision? We rely on a set of experts that gathers once a week to determine where to place refugees, one representative from each of the nine resettlement agencies. They have a deep knowledge of their networks and typically give consideration to three primary factors when deciding where to place a refugee family. The first is the family’s size. Are we dealing with a single mother from the rural Congo with six young children, or are these two urban Iraqi parents with two teenage children? This all has to do with the cost of housing in the U.S. We all know that wages have stagnated, and the cost of housing, particularly rentals, has only risen. Because of this disparity, it will not come as a surprise to you that the U.S. refugee resettlement program emphasizes early selfsufficiency and self-reliance. We use the sparse details that we are given such as age, previous work, and writing ability to determine where refugees will be best placed. The last factor we consider is medical need, so at the refugee admissions program, while we do value early self-sufficiency, we also accept any refugee regardless of their ability to work. We sometimes receive cases with intensive medical needs, maybe a child who needs a certain kind of pediatric surgery immediately after arrival, and we will place that family in a particular town solely because that town has the hospital that specializes in that surgery. Intersecting the three factors are considerations of two things: housing availability and employment. Placement experts keep careful records on employment rates and the fluctuating cost of housing. To complicate things further, the State Department, which is our government funder

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places a cap on how many refugees can arrive to a certain city in a 12-month period. If a location has reached its capacity, we are forced to consider a different location in the U.S. The placement experts consider these factors and more, but in cities where there are hundreds of refugees arriving, it generates a number of possibilities that is too difficult for any individual to optimize. This has been our problem. Here is the solution. Our partners from the Stamford Immigration Policy Lab developed a matching algorithm for refugee placement. I am going to sketch out what it does from a practitioner’s point of view. For the past year and a half, the IRC and another colleague agency have been working with Stamford to improve our placement process and refugee outcomes. The algorithm that Stamford developed creates a system that supports the placement experts in assigning refugees to different U.S. communities so as to maximize their integration outcomes while taking into account capacity constraints such as limited housing. The matching algorithm uses historical data and individual outcomes to predict employment probabilities for new refugees in all locations through mapping and matching cases to locations to maximize employment. The initial results are very promising, and we have found that it has improved outcomes by about 45% for refugees at the IRC. We are eager to utilize this algorithm not only to enhance economic outcomes but also to enhance the overall lives of resettled refugees. All the more that the algorithm is flexible to work with any preferred integration outcomes for which data exists, so perhaps in a later iteration we could focus specifically on youth: determining what is a positive integration for youth, what does it mean if they graduated high school, how could we use this data in ways that go beyond the employment marker?


Design-Based Thinking

Jocelyn Kelly Director for Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s (HHI) Women in War Program I have thought a lot about how to approach this talk today, and I actually have the privilege of coming straight from a workshop during which I spoke with some high-level humanitarians who have been in the field for decades. When we mentioned to them that we were going to come to Fordham for this unique and innovative event, they said, “sure we need designs, but even more than designs, this field needs design-based thinking.” To all who were in the audience of the Design for Humanity Summit, and especially those that have considered switching careers and entering the humanitarian space: There is a place for you in this field. I come from a public health background, a field that historically rose out of the field of medical research. This means that ours is a field characterized by people who have pens, paper, and clipboards, the concept being that we go around, talk to populations, write down the information, and leave with it to design

future interventions. I think one of the most important things that we can do now in the field of public health, now in the field of humanitarian action, is turning that system entirely on its head. We must create collaborative processes where we work hand in hand with those affected by crises to make adaptive, accountable and creative systems to solve some of the most complex problems we’re facing in the world today. My start in the field came when I responded to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. I was startled and shocked to find that large numbers of incredibly smart, well-intentioned, trained people could look at a disaster situation, think of interventions, take those interventions out, and make the situation worse rather than better. At the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, one of the issues that we are deeply committed to is how to improve the humanitarian space using evidence-based response. I realized that we do not bring

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enough science or evidence into how we help people in their most vulnerable moments, and this led me to pursue a Master’s in Public Health and Human Rights. During that process, I got an internship in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When I traveled there, I was set up to learn from a team of nurses who were responding to the epidemic of conflict-based sexual violence happening in the area. As someone who had been trained in human rights and public health, I immediately designed a survey, because that’s what we had always been told to do. The nurses had been trying to figure out the underlying and resultant problems and how they could best address the unimaginable needs of these women who had been through conflict-related sexual violence. So, I created a survey, and as one does, it had very neat checkboxes so that you could theoretically get your clipboard out, tick the boxes, and determine the best solution to this problem. The first day, the nurses went out with these surveys and began to conduct them. I felt that something was wrong. Something was not working, and we weren’t doing the kind of research that we needed to do. The second day, they went back and tried to give the survey again, but this time I noticed there was a little bit of writing in the margins. By the third day, the checkboxes had been checked, but the nurses had written across the entire survey, telling the full narrative stories of these women. They felt that our human rights and public health checkboxes weren’t doing justice to the stories that were emerging from this terrible violence. From that experience, I took away this idea that we need both qualitative and quantitative methods, both narrative and numbers, to really understand humanitarian action. I want to tell you a little bit about one of my recent projects in the same area, the Eastern

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DRC, where I have worked for over 15 years with the same research firm. One of my favorite quotes is, “Poverty is having people read and write about you when you can’t read and write yourself.” We were working with a locally-run NGO which had been tasked by the Congolese government to understand better how to mobilize, disarm, and reintegrate former child soldiers as well as all of the other vulnerable youth in these conflict-affected communities. They sought to find the most appropriate, meaningful ways to make the youth into cocollaborators rather than a research population, and how to undertake a meaningful research process with youth who had had been robbed of the opportunity to read and write. I think the answer is in the process and quality of the engagement rather than in the outcome. To undertake this very sensitive and challenging project, we decided to use participatory action research, which is rooted in liberation psychology by Paolo Fieri. We ended up throwing all of our preconceptions out the window, getting all the project partners that worked with vulnerable youth and organized a launch conference. We presented the group with a menu of research strategies that we had used at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and determined which of the strategies would be the most effective with our population. Together, we crafted research questions, designed the research methodology, and decided where we wanted the project to go. From that menu of methods, they decided on the traditional techniques of key informant interviews and focus groups, but also chose some newer, less conventional methods like Body Mapping and PhotoVoice: visual methods. The powerful thing about visual methods is that they allow populations to viscerally and directly interact with the data that they generate, whether or not they’ve had the opportunity to go to school. Through PhotoVoice, we distributed cameras


to the former child soldiers and vulnerable youth. We had them also go to storytelling, meaning-making, and narrative workshops where they were encouraged to think about how they used visual methods to create their own narratives. Body Mapping is another interesting process where you take a huge piece of paper and trace the outline of a human body on it. Participants can point to the human body and discuss the effects of a phenomenon like child soldiering. On the outside of that body is the ‘social space’ where participants can illustrate how the social arena changes after undergoing child soldiering. Their responses were powerful, as their illustrations of the problem became extraordinarily complex and meaningful expositions on how individuals and communities were affected by young children being brought into armed groups. They created rich tapestries of Body Maps, these visually striking dictionaries showing exactly what was happening to people in this area. You can visit WeCameBack.org to look at both the photo essays and the Body Maps. One example of how this approach can provide data is that one vignette on one of our maps depicted a huge child soldier on an oversized

chair. He was standing with his arms raised above his head, with lots of tiny children cowering under the chair looking up at him. This was one perfect, poignant way of illustrating the largest problem that we had tried to tell the DRC government about, which is that child soldiers are told that being intimidating, powerful, and non-collaborative is the only way to survive in your armed group. But then in school, being told that being submissive, collaborative, and working with your fellow children is the only way to survive. We never mentally demobilize child soldiers; we just put them back into civilian life and hope for the best. You can see how visual methods create a rich amount of information that can be leveraged in profound ways. I’ll briefly discuss a project that we are undertaking now with UNICEF, where, rather than leveraging visual methods themselves, we leverage design-based thinking. About fifteen years ago, UNICEF came out with guidelines for the different humanitarian sectors, instructing how to integrate violence prevention strategies with your particular piece of the humanitarian puzzle. For example, if you are making clinics,

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here were instructions on how to make clinics that support people in seeking healthcare without facing violence. If you are making latrines, here’s how to design latrines without having men and women mix at night in a way that would expose women to the risk of violence. We have discussed with UNICEF, first of all, how to prevent violence with a higher success rate, but second, how to show that undertaking basic violence prevention makes the entire humanitarian response better, more effective, and safer for everyone involved. We have some great examples of how simple thought processes starting at the beginning of setting up a camp can change the entire outcome for the population involved. One classic example is that of a nutritional feeding center where starving babies were taken to get enriched therapeutic milk. The center was set up along a road that was being constructed, so you had large groups of male construction workers hanging out on this road while you had 15-year-old mothers and their babies crossing this gauntlet to get to the nutritional feeding center. I doubt I need to tell you this, but no babies got fatter in that camp. It was such a simple thing to take into account, and without considering these personal factors at the beginning of a process, it is impossible to get where you want to get in the humanitarian response. If we show that integrated violence prevention is not only better for women, but also for those babies who depend on that nutritional milk, only then can we get further in the humanitarian process. In closing, I would say we need your designoriented thinking. This is a plea to say: Let’s not just improve the architecture of shelters, but let’s improve the architecture of the humanitarian system as a whole. Let’s not just improve the design of camps, but let’s improve how we design around the dignity and empowerment of those in them.

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Workshops

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Understanding Migration and Refugee Situations in the Age of Big Data

Jeremy Boy Data Visualization and Design Specialist, UN Global Pulse, Executive Office of the SecretaryGeneral, United Nations UN Global Pulse is an initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General on big data and AI. Its network of innovation labs in New York, Uganda, and Indonesia enables UN System partners to discover and mainstream applications of big data and real-time analytics for sustainable development, humanitarian action, and peace. Global Pulse's advocacy agenda focuses on public-private data philanthropy partnerships, and data privacy and policy innovation to enable the responsible and ethical use of new technologies and new data sources for the public good. The workshop proposed for the Design for Humanity Summit II aims to foster a discussion around the value of big, unstructured data for understanding human migration and refugee conditions. This data has great, often untapped value for telling the stories of the plight of persons of concern, which can help activists advocate for the rights

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of these people; and for improving the timeliness and effectiveness of humanitarian responses to crises. However, this poses many questions: What new sources of unstructured data can be useful for understanding the situation of persons of concern? Can this data be used to anticipate humanitarian crises? How can they be fed into operations? Can they make response planning more dynamic? What will it take to integrate them into existing workflows? What are the ways in which unstructured data might be misused? UN Global Pulse has conducted several case studies to explore answers to these questions in collaboration with the UNHCR Innovation Service since 2015. The first, entitled "Along the Way" and conducted in 2015-16, investigates how social media can provide


useful information to humanitarian organizations, as migrants make their way into Europe. The second, entitled "Rescue Signatures in the Mediterranean" and conducted in 201617, explores how vessel tracking data can shed new light on maritime migration crises. The third, entitled "Towards Understanding Refugee Integration in Turkey Using Call Detail Records" and conducted in 2018, explores how patterns in cell-phone activity can help improve the understanding of refugee integration in a receiving society. Global Pulse is also studying the potential of more experimental data sources and technologies. These include public radio talk shows, which are mined to listen to the voices of people in areas where internet connectivity is low, or where communities do not have sufficient means to access the Internet; satellite imagery, in which the detection of features is automated for facilitating the study of migrant and refugee settlements; and automatic speech generation around the situation of persons of concern to provoke humanitarian actors to think about the implications of artificial intelligence on the perception of migrants and refugees by host communities.

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Rapid Play Planning: Playground Design in Zones of Exception

Charles Newman Designer, Builder and Researcher with Unfrastructure Design, LLC When considering the service delivery of communal architectural/spatial design in the context of humanitarian response, the customary client-designer-builder dynamic can become fragmented, blurred, and problematic. Sources of funding are often allocated from an external, remote source; typically, a donor. This results in the primary user becoming a beneficiary rather than a client, relieved of the customary role of providing an owner’s review and approval of design vs. cost. Additionally, beneficiaries often contribute to construction efforts themselves, further blurring the line between contractor and client. This diffused allocation of responsibility can result in the designer having to navigate across overlapping responsibilities and divergent comprehensions of design constraint: from

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the remote funding organization that seeks to ensure certain goals are met, to the beneficiaries that possess intimate knowledge of need and desire, to the builder that must navigate a dynamic - often hazardous – work environment. How then, can a designer create not only needed physical space and infrastructure, but design clear documents of service that define and uphold team member roles and responsibilities, clarify common goals, and align the expectations of all stakeholders around an informed design intent? Presented with a case study from Humanity and Inclusion’s Growing Together project, a social inclusion program funded by the IKEA Foundation with a goal to build 15 inclusive playgrounds with refugee communities across Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Thailand, workshop


attendees were divided into four groups and presented each with a different challenge: design a playground with the information provided. With recently collected data and site measurements from ongoing construction projects, each scenario presented a different relationship with the builder, different financial resources, and budget constraints. The scenarios also showed varying social/political regulatory frameworks that dictated construction timelines and methods and detailed voting results for playspace components from children, parents, and teachers. Upon reflection at the end of the exercise, teams discussed the challenges when confronted with fragmented information, limited budgets, and sudden changes to design constraints. Comments were offered that alluded to the prioritization of designing components and systems that could be easily modified and reapplied to different sites and scenarios. Teams also discussed strategies of graphic representation that divert away from prescriptive detail, while reinforcing a continuous design intent.

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Mapping Home and Hope: Using Mapping Tools to Better Understand the Place Experiences of Displaced Refugee Families Bree Akesson Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Social Work Kearny Coupland Ph.D. Candidate in the Geography Department at Wilfrid Laurier University

Over the past several years, there have been increased numbers of people fleeing war and violence in their home countries. With the sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees in poor resource settings, sites for living, working, and learning have developed rapidly without attention to the social and spatial implications. Focusing on the experiences of Syrian families living in Lebanon, our research examines how the everyday mobilities of children and families are affected by displacement and describe the multiple interrelated factors that contribute to (im)mobility. Our research team used a unique methodology engaging participants in collaborative family interviews with drawing and mapmaking, GPS-tracked neighborhood walks, and daily diaries. In addition to

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capturing the socio-spatial experiences of Syrian families displaced in Lebanon, the research provided an opportunity for families to share the stories of their journey from life in Syria before the war, life in Syria after the war, their flight from Syria to Lebanon, life in Lebanon, and their hopes for the future. Forty-six Syrian families participated in the study, to identify their needs, hopes, and barriers to resources in their everyday lives. In addition to limited access to education, employment, and medical services, families discussed the emerging challenges related to limited mobility, including boredom, lack of socialization, depression, and changing family dynamics. The results of these methods provided a story


of the interviewed families' experiences in Lebanon illustrated by GPS maps, drawings, and photos. The stories aim to inform the development of effective programs and policies and serve as a basis from which to design spaces for community cohesion. This unique research not only provides an example of a research methodology that actively engages displaced populations but also finds opportunities to share the stories of these families through an interactive website. The site, outofplaceresearch.com, is dedicated to highlighting the resilience of the families that welcomed our research team into their homes and lives.

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Humanitarian Innovation: What we learned running community-centered social innovation labs in Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, and the Philippines Lillie Rosen Learning Manager at DEPP Innovation Labs

The humanitarian sector has offered communities affected by crisis limited space to lead in the diagnosis of problems and the design of solutions in relief efforts globally. This approach risks that support programs will be subject to the biases and assumptions often associated with external intervention, and will not reflect the needs and priorities of crisisaffected people. The Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness (DEPP) Innovation Programme – a two-year programme funded by UK Aid – focused on creating inclusive, resourced spaces and networks to enable disaster-affected communities to identify and develop innovative solutions to the disasters or conflicts that disrupt their lives. Through innovation labs in Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya and Philippines, the program supported a diverse group of innovators to

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research, explore, build, test, and pilot new solutions to recurrent local problems. We learned three key lessons about how to best support local ingenuity for humanitarian problem-solving. Create an enabling environment. While innovation is everywhere, formal innovation methodology is not. To be truly accessible to an underserved group of brilliant changemakers with limited exposure to trainings on design and innovation, the program had to develop new tools and approaches to make the concepts accessible beyond Western, literate, English-speaking groups. Next, local innovators need time and space in their lives where they can work on something that will not pay the rent. This required scholarships and grants to enable participation from all socio-economic levels.


Finally, some support emerged as more important than anticipated - like support to practice innovation mindsets, interpret user feedback, conduct research, manage teamwork and cope with the emotional ups and downs of the journey.Â

pilot, and implement the community-designed solutions.

Integrate design tools and mindsets with humanitarian protection principles. Humancentered design (HCD) proved to be an important methodology to support local designers to develop relevant solutions. The results clearly demonstrated that affected communities frame and prioritize their problems differently than the humanitarian sector, and they design solutions that leverage local resources, knowledge, and networks to deliver impact. However, for HCD to work well in a humanitarian context, some additional considerations should be made. Some of these include managing how testing prototypes builds expectations in the community, who holds the accountability for those expectations when the designer is from the same community, how post-conflict dynamics are considered when bringing a representative group together, and what support innovators receive to manage the stress of a fast-paced design process. Be creative about pathways to scale. Using a design method for new humanitarian solutions will only help you create a validated prototype. From there, many programs are designed to support an entrepreneurship model, where innovators are expected to form start-ups. However, this is not a realistic path for all innovators, who face unique barriers if they come from a resource constrained environment, or if they are refugees in the country where they are designing solutions. As humanitarian sector implementers, we needed to do more to find pathways for the solutions into the sector, and access to networks to test,Â

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Designing and Building with Local Materials and Local People in Rural Haiti and Mexico

Joana Torres Architect and Founder, Oficina Design A beautiful and functional design shouldn’t be the privilege of the few who can afford highend architecture. Oficina is a non-profit practice that provides architecture and construction management to those who cannot afford it. We carry out the projects in collaboration with people from underserved communities, and together, we design, build and restore houses and shared facilities to enrich their societies. Each project is a design-build workshop where we train participants from the community about techniques for buildings that are sustainable, durable, and beautiful. We share two presentation:

recent

projects

at

this

House Louisana, was built in 2017 in collaboration with the Heliotrope Foundation and the people of Cormiers, Haiti. House Louisana is an earthquake-resistant

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sustainable home for Mrs. Louisana and her extended family who lost their home in the 2010 earthquake. The project is a collective work of art and architecture involving local and international artists, farmers, and engineers, among others. The design, based on Haitian vernacular architecture, creates a dialogue with its surroundings with familiar elements like double-pitched roofs, front porches, and plenty of outdoor spaces for circulation. During a three-month construction, we employed and trained more than 200 skilled and unskilled locals on sustainable building techniques. We implemented low-tech, low-maintenance, and low-cost solutions that can easily be replicated by the local community and are appropriate for Cormiers, a village with no running water or electricity. Almost 80% of the materials used in House Louisana are local and natural, including the main structure made of Guadua Bamboo and the walls made of earth.


House Louisana also played an important role in stimulating the local economy through the creation of fair-paid labor and the purchase of local materials and services. In 2018 we created ZumaPoop in Oaxaca, Mexico, we designed and built children-centric dry toilets and hand-washing units for La Casita —a women-led, free daycare for children of families with little or no income. The daycare is located in Moctezuma, an informal community that lacks water and sewage in the suburbs of Oaxaca. We used well-established local construction techniques, including wattle-and-daub walls, and we used materials produced by local artisans such as roof and wall tiles and ceramic restroom appliances. These materials and techniques are not only the most affordable, but they integrate well with the local environment and enable others within the same community to follow the same design for their own dry toilets. ZumaPoop is a participatory project to, for, and by the community. Educators, parents, volunteers, and the children actively participated in the design phase with charrettes and workshops and volunteered throughout the construction. Presently, children and educators proudly work on the maintenance of the space and composting process. ZumaPoop dry-toilets benefit directly more than 30 people, both children and adults, who frequent La Casita every day, many of which have no restroom at home.

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Food and Memory in the Time of Displacement

Ayesha Mukadam Visual Artist Food speaks a universal language. It is your childhood. It is your culture. It is your identity. Food can break down barriers and build strong human connections.

record and document recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation.

This recipe kit equips families to recreate a sense of ‘home’ wherever they are in the world, Working as a visual artist from Cape Town, instilling a sense of humanity, community, and South Africa, food played a prominent role in dignity. The kit empowers families to cook and my upbringing. My grandparents were share their family heritage with others and immigrants from India, and food was the only allows them to travel back to their home link I had to my grandparents’ home in the country in secret through the scent and taste of village of Morba, Mumbai. these traditional family food dishes kindling a strong memory of home. Refugees are forced to flee their homes and leave with minimal physical possessions, but Food can powerfully evoke emotion and what they do carry are mountains of jeweled memory. Through this kit, we aim to empower memories. refugees and migrants to share their family recipes and food memories through a narrative As a result, a recipe kit was conceptualized and process of storytelling. designed for refugees and migrants. It consists of writing utensils and paper to enable people that have been displaced from their homes or home country to physically

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No Lost Generations: A Case and Field Study of Education as a Core Human Right for Refugee Children, from the Holocaust to the Syrian Civil War Mary Stylidi Regional Commissioner for the Unaccompanied Children Refugee in Greece and Syria, UNHCR

Surviving devastating times in past and contemporary history, such as the Holocaust or the ongoing Syrian War, mandates finely-honed skills for coping and adaptation to massive traumatization. When mediating the reaction to emotional, physical, economic, cultural, and psychological stressors, people are forced to utilize defense and coping strategies to deal with unimaginable, devastating horrors. The Syrian civil war had created an education crisis for the Middle East, just like when the Holocaust, and its aftermath, had created a similar one for Europe. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that less than 40 percent of Syrian refugee children are enrolled in formal education. While the education of individual Syrian children is under threat, so is the future

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of Syrian and host-country societies. These regions' stability and prosperity will depend on ensuring that school-aged children receive the education they need to be resilient to the circumstances they face and can provide for themselves and their families. While Syria's future depends upon its children, a lost generation is being created. This problem, and particularly the effort to solve it, has taken on the moniker "no lost generation," meaning that the world cannot stand by while children, who are forced to flee conflict-plagued areas, become further removed from educational opportunities. Without this generation of child refugees receiving even the most basic education, large portions of the world will face a harsh future without doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers needed to rebuild their nations. In the face of this bleak prediction, State governments, United Nations


agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private donors have joined forces behind several initiatives to end this educational crisis for Syrian refugee children. Traditional humanitarian responses are still based on three core "pillars": food, medicine, and shelter. Less than two percent of humanitarian funding is spent on education, although it is viewed as one of the most – if not the most- promising pathways to non-violent conflict resolution and reconstruction. Food, medicine, and shelter are essential to any humanitarian response for human survival, but educational opportunities have become just as critical. Recently, there has been a critical push by UN agencies and missionaries to prioritize education and make it the "fourth core pillar of humanitarian aid," which is the idea that this workshop was conducted upon. The "fourth core pillar" rationale argues that without children being educated, we as human beings run the risk of creating a future where development stagnates, and chaos, violence, and impunity spurred on by a lack of knowledge run rampant. Every single child, no matter where they come from or what circumstances surround them, must receive an education. Only then can they realize their full potential of what they are capable of achieving and contributing to human society, thus preventing a vicious cycle of global violence. Even without wide-ranging catastrophic implications, millions of uneducated children form a severe problematic situation simply because the situation is a violation of their human rights.

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Stimulating Crisis Response Michael de St. Aubin Project Coordinator, KoBoToolbox Siara Khan Data Analyst, Signal Program on Human Security and Technology

The current Ebola (EVD) outbreak in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to escalate, reaching close to 1,500 reported cases and close to 1,000 deaths in just nine months. Regional challenges such as ongoing conflict and extremely low levels of the community's trust in medical personnel dramatically restrict the rapid interventions necessary to contain the spread of the virus. Unless we deploy more efficient and more strategic interventions, this outbreak could expand to levels last seen in the West Africa outbreak between 2014 and 2016, which resulted in the deaths of over 11,000 people. How can we, as researchers, designers, humanitarians, first responders, and affected communities, better understand how EVD manifests and spreads? How can we

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overcome the systematic and structural challenges that hamper public assistance measures required to contain and ultimately eradicate the rapid spread of an epidemic? The Visual Response Simulator (ViRS) considers these questions and compliments the current diagnostic humanitarian reporting practices with predictive analytics. What began as a class project is now an advanced Agent-Based Model (ABM) that simulates the spatial and temporal movement of individuals. Researchers now have the ability to virtually study how EVD might spread across a landscape using an epidemiological framework based on the actual, historical data that can be tailored to their area of interest. Epidemiological modeling is not new, nor is ABM. However, ViRS is unique in that it

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introduces an innovative predictive data model in a user-friendly, entirely visual format. Users can simulate and control behavioral and built-environment interventions, measuring the predicted effectiveness on cumulative case counts, case fatality rate, and incidence rate across time as easily as clicking on a map. The data visualization of those findings includes maps and graphs that are used to present this complex phenomenon, allowing it to be easily communicated, presented, and interpreted by a wide audience. User interaction and generation of graphic outputs can be used to study and inspire data-informed decisions and knowledge-sharing.

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Code of Ethics? Share Your Critical Reflections on Art and Design in the Humanitarian Context!

Azra AkĹĄamija Ph.D. Director, MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL) and Associate Professor, MIT Art, Culture and Technology Program War, environmental disasters, and unequal distributions of wealth push fragile communities into conditions of scarcity. How can art and design practitioners support these communities, while steering away from savior mentalities? What tools and models can be learned from and developed through the socially engaged art and community-driven design that ethically address or reverse these conditions? It is impossible to be ethical always and in everything. Moreover, ethics differ vastly across cultures. What is possible, however, is having an honest consideration of ethics and their value in a rigorous practice. This workshop Code of Ethics? explored ethics of cultural interventions in the humanitarian context. The Design for Humanity Summit II participants were invited to contribute to the international research and discussion Code of Ethics? platform from the perspective of their

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research or practical experience. Run by the MIT Future Heritage Lab, the Code of Ethics? confronts cultural interventions in art, academia, and the humanitarian sphere with the refugees’ point of view, ethically problematizing the encounter, power relationships, and aesthetic versus social judgments regarding socially engaged art and design. The multitude of voices is disseminated online, not to prescribe a moral protocol, but to disrupt those in place through various critical viewpoints. Through the exchange of critical reflections, questions, and dilemmas, the platform aims to identify and raise awareness about important ethical concerns relevant to a wide range of actors operating in the humanitarian sector. The workshop began with a presentation of the work conducted by the MIT Future


Heritage Lab (FHL), a research and art lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture. Operating at the intersection of art and design, preservation of cultural heritage, and humanitarian relief, the FHL invents creative responses to conflict and crisis. The Lab’s approach springs from the belief that culture is an essential human need. Since 2016, the FHL has been operating its satellite hub in the Al Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. Established in 2014, this was designed to become the region’s largest camp, with a capacity to shelter 150,000 people. FHL has been collaborating with international museums and local Jordanian educational, cultural, and humanitarian aid institutions on activities and programs supporting the education of displaced Syrians and preservation of their living culture. The second part of the workshop entailed a discussion about the ethics of art and design in the humanitarian context. Workshop participants were asked to respond to, critique, and/or replace one question selected from the list of concerns collected through the Code of Ethics? platform–FHL has collected these questions through workshops and events involving discussions with Syrian refugees, students in the USA, and Jordan, collaborating partners in various educational, cultural, and humanitarian organizations. These questions range from the ethics of encounter to power relationships between “humanitarians” and “beneficiaries,” to aesthetic versus social judgment of socially engaged art, among other concerns. The participants received bittersweet golden chocolate coins, indented with inscriptions “privilege” and “good intentions” on the one side, and “benefits” and “road to hell,” on the other side.

Code of Ethics? Questions On… 1. Needs How do I know that my creative work is addressing a “real” need? Are aesthetic and cultural needs necessary for the well-being of refugees? Is art/design/culture a basic or essential human need? Are refugees a “captive audience” for a project that I think is needed or I want to do? 2. Agency of Art, Culture, Design What is the role of art and design in the humanitarian context? What does it mean to “empower” refugees through design? How do I define authorship of projects that involve refugees? How do I document the created artworks/designs? Is it ethical to take pictures of refugees, if they are part of my/our project? 3. Education Where are my skills and knowledge best utilized? What can I learn from and teach to stateless people? How do I avoid perpetuating colonial power dynamics of knowledge exchange when working with threatened communities? Does my contribution to refugee education amount to educational certificates or degree programs? What is the benefit of a one-time workshop/course that I can offer, if this educational contribution is not part of a formal education program?

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4. Cultural Preservation At the time of war and destruction, what is the role of cultural preservation? Is the preservation of threatened historical monuments more important than the preservation of refugees’ living culture? How is heritage preserved in an environment of cultural deprivation, such as a refugee camp? 5. Creative Process Do I design for or with refugees? How can I make use of my creative skills without taking the agency away from refugees? What is the role of collaborative processes? Are the process and the product of an intervention equally important? Are the expectations about the final result that I communicate with refugees realistic? 6. Economy Do refugees get paid for the collaboration with me? If yes, how is the project funding distributed? Is my contribution attuned to the limited resources of the humanitarian context? How can I contribute without burdening the humanitarian agencies? How do I fundraise for and promote my work with refugees? If I use funding for a good cause, does the source of funding matter? How is the economy of host countries affected by the influx of displaced people? Is the refugee crisis to be monetized?

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7. Impact How many people are benefiting from my work? How do I measure/prove the impact of creative art/design/culture-based work? Does my work have a positive impact on the host population? 8. Intentions Is facilitating stateless people my moral obligation? Do I recognize the assumptions and biases I bring on the table? What motivates my work in the humanitarian context? Would I do this work without gaining any professional or social capital? Does my work in refugee camps imply that I advocate the existence of refugee camps? What are the power dynamics that my work with refugees entail?


Inclusive Cities: Urban Planning Strategies for Sustainable Solutions

Jessica Sayde Wolff Director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL) and an Associate Professor in the MIT Art, Culture and Technology Program In a time of hostile rhetoric and fiscal austerity, local governments are demonstrating unparalleled leadership in inclusive city planning for refugees and immigrants. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ 2018 Global Trends in Forced Displacement, 61% of refugees and 80% of internally displaced persons live in urban areas. As displacement becomes increasingly urban and protracted, city planning is an effective tool to promote sustainable solutions. It will be crucial for humanitarian organizations and the private sector to acknowledge the role of cities and to develop effective partnerships for sustainable responses. As traditional humanitarian response models were not designed for service delivery in an urban context, humanitarian organizations, the private sector, and cities must cooperate

and consider how to align programs to ensure that humanitarian programs simultaneously advance broader development goals. Urban planning provides an opportunity to bridge the historically segmented phases of humanitarian and development aid. Nearly every city government has an existing development plan, which includes land use, economic development, transportation, and capital projects, among others. These existing goals do not change when a challenge arises, be that a natural disaster, or the rapid arrival of a refugee population; in fact, they become even more important. It is a critical moment for humanitarian organizations, the private sector, and cities to align interests, identify synergies, and deliver stronger services to displaced and local populations alike. For example, Hamburg, Germany, used a new

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land-use planning law to enable the rapid construction of asylum seeker housing, while contributing permanently to the city’s overall social housing stock. São Paulo, Brazil, has granted all immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, access to social rights, all public services, and local political participation. The cities of Athens, Greece, and Kampala, Uganda, have both organized city-wide coordination forums to manage collaboration between the city, humanitarian organizations, and the private sector. As cities continue to plan and deliver services for all residents, displaced and local communities alike, humanitarian organizations and the private sector should look to local governments as a partner in program design and implementation to ensure effective and sustainable strategies.

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Mapping Urban Futures: Lessons From Havana, Cuba

Susan Fitzgerald Design Director, FBM Architecture and Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University Sites of urban food production in Havana, Cuba, are an adaptable and available land resource for supporting food sovereignty and access to green medicine. Originally generated by the crisis of the Special Period, they are increasingly part of everyday urban complexity involving the social, spatial, economic, and temporal. Hard to describe when viewed from above, it is important to get close to these sites to understand how they are made and re-made and whether there are lessons within them for this transitioning city. Henri Lefebvre made the powerful supposition that cultures dynamically produce space over time, which, in turn, shapes society. He started to develop rhythmanalysis as a tool to understand this relationship providing a useful method to study this assertion at sites of urban complexity. Rhythmanalysis captures every day, heterogeneous, and evolving urban narratives of a city, making it an important orientation to participate in and interrogate

these sites to challenge how they could help (re)imagine a transitioning Havana. This workshop studies how social, economic, ecological, and spatial rhythms are entwined over time to create the oeuvre of everyday urban life surrounding these sites. It focuses on beats particular to city life in Havana: the quotidian, the seasonal, the slow decay of infrastructure, the sudden collapse of buildings, and the resourcefulness of everyday invention within the prevailing milieu of scarcity and documents the ways in which the urban every day is continually changing and important to this evolving city. These sites of urban agriculture are part of Havana’s habitus. Mapping of these spaces within the city and the subsequent findings tease out possibilities for constructing urban futures. Beyond the visual, this temporal method understands that the city is sensorial and performative and that these attributes

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play a significant role in the quality of urban space and life. While clearly a study of sitespecificity in Havana, Cuba surrounding sites of urban agriculture, this workshop proposes an alternative methodological approach for recording and designing the city. Since the Sixth Communist Party Congress in spring 2011, reforms have been made by the government legalizing house sales and expanding self-employment, incrementally moving Cuba towards a freer market economy. The reinstatement of embassies in Havana and Washington after sixty years of hostilities, the death of Fidel Castro, and the evolving U.S. presidencies impact the everyday rhythms of the city. When capturing this period of transition (2012-2019), rhythmanalysis is used to listen, while drawing and mapping are used to record, as both an analytical and illustrative tool, the evolving socio-spatial practices of these sites. These studies of rhythms, in turn, develop into architectural propositions to intercede in every day, not to change lives but to accomplish a tiny revolutionary transformation in the city.

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Design Pedagogy for Social Justice, Integrating Principles of Theory U for Impact

Susan Melsop Associate Professor of Design, Ohio State University “What role can design serve?” This question is posed to university students in an international experiential design-build course with design impact and social justice at its core. Students are our future; what they learn and how they learn to practice design will affect our everchanging policies, programs, and systems – particularly in the arena of human rights. In the inaugural Design for Humanity Summit yearbook, Sergio Palleroni stated, “public interest design … offers promising new models of practice that better serve the growing public needs not being served by society or practice.” This is true; my question is – as a university professor – what models of pedagogy best prepare students to join these practices and/or lead initiatives toward social change, equity, and justice? As educators, our role includes training students in the disciplinary rigors of design. Yet, as social design practitioners, we

are additionally responsible for setting a moral tone, identifying ethical expectations, and modeling ways to engage with others, including non-designers, government officials, NGO’s, and marginalized populations. Design pedagogy, in this regard, must be broader and more inclusive in its processes of engagement to affect real change. New models of pedagogy are required to prepare students to be ready for the interrelated and complex challenges we face today and tomorrow. Based on a humancentered design approach, the communityengaged teaching we advocate integrates principles of theory U, mindfulness practices, care ethics, and self-awareness to leverage transformative student learning. As such, the model aims to cultivate trust among students, faculty, and community members, fostering collaboration, and igniting collective creativity to stimulate positive social change. As an academic case study, Design Matters in Brazil offers a learning model for

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public interest and social design practices. It merges design-build learning with sociocultural exchange through direct and sustained community engagement. Design Matters in Brazil (DMB) brings students from different universities together to address the needs of a vulnerable “street situation” population in São Paulo, Brazil providing students experiential learning in the field. Over three years, my colleague at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, and I have co-developed the international DMB design-build course to serve the National Movement for the Street Situation population, or “PopRua.” Their vision is our mission: to convert an abandoned building into a resource center to help alleviate the hardships of street living and provide a means to “exit the street” through educational workshops, job placement, culture, and art. CISARTE, Centro de Inclusão Social Pela Arte, Cultura, Trabalho e Educação, is the site for the Design Matters in Brazil course. Each project is community-driven and begins with participatory action research. Students practice reflective journaling and critical consciousness as part of the learning journey. The types of projects designed, built, and installed over two, one-week long periods include: a wayfinding system for the 1500 square meter space, a directory, 4 kitchen tables, 8 dining chairs, a bookshelf, a storage wall, a sound-insulating curtain wall, stools and benches, and vibrantly colored wall graphics, along with photographic images of PopRua members, transforming the space into “place” with vitality and purpose.

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One project warrants particular mention as it epitomizes the aims and impact of the designbuild course. The poetic inscription project is so named as it captures the aspirational spirit of the people living on the streets. Beyond its functional utility, the storage unit is conceived as a billboard to amplify the unheard voices of the socio-economically marginalized street situation people. During a participatory design research session, students collected aspirational sayings and statements from this underserved population. Together they assembled the quotes, and with the help from PopRua, members created a billboard that graphically displays their words of wisdom, insights, and aspirations to live life with dignity, belonging and community. This type of experiential learning, working directly with underserved communities, demonstrates that design education can play a role in social justice and contribute to the change we need in the world.


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Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) prepares current and future aid workers with the knowledge and skills needed to respond effectively in times of humanitarian crisis and disaster. Our courses are borne of an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines academic theory with the practical experience of seasoned humanitarian professionals. The IIHA also publishes on a wide range of humanitarian topics and regularly hosts a number of events in the New York area, including the annual Design for Humanity Summit.

Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation The Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation (CIHC) was founded in 1992 to promote healing and peace in countries shattered by natural disasters, armed conflicts, and ethnic violence. The Center employs its resources and unique personal contacts to stimulate interest in humanitarian issues and to promote innovative educational programs and training models. Our extensive list of publications and regular symposia address both the basic issues and the emerging challenges of humanitarian assistance.

Refuge Press

International Organization for Migration Established in 1951, IOM is the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration and works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners. With 173 member states, a further 8 states holding observer status and offices in over 100 countries, IOM is dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all. It does so by providing services and advice to governments and migrants. IOM works to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.

Dezeen Dezeen is the world's most popular and influential architecture and design magazine, and the winner of numerous awards for journalism and publishing. Our mission is simple: to bring you a carefully edited selection of the best architecture, design and interiors projects and news from around the world.

IDEO.org IDEO.org is a nonprofit design studio. We design products and services alongside organizations that are committed to creating a more just and inclusive world.

The Refuge Press, the publishing arm of Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, is our independent imprint in partnership with Fordham University Press. The Refuge Press publishes primarily in three areas; Changing Perceptions, Lifting Voices from Forgotten Crises, and Reflections on Our Time.

Credits Publisher: The Refuge Press, Brendan Cahill Editors: Camille Giacovas, Jeff Paddock, Michael Innocenti Photographer: Bruce Gilbert Yearbook Design: Camille Giacovas Cover Photo: Rainer Gonzalez Palau / IOM 2018



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