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Keywords: Humanitarian Aid

  • INTERNATIONAL

    From persecution to protection and the purgatory in between

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 28 October 2021
    6 Comments

    Mark Twain is reported to have said ‘history does not repeat, it rhymes.’ Watching a US helicopter evacuating people from the US Embassy in Kabul, that was rhyming. Many have seen this picture before, 30 April 1975, but then it was Saigon. The massive confusion, mixed messages, terrified people, lack of human rights protection happened in 1975, and still happens in 2021.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What’s next for Afghanistan?

    • Hava Rezaie, Hayat Akbari, Zaki Haidari
    • 28 September 2021
    6 Comments

    It has now been over a month since the Taliban seized Kabul. As attention inevitably shifts elsewhere, the painful question arises: What's next? Is this another 'back to the future' moment? The signs are grim. Over the last two weeks, the Taliban have issued a number of edicts which demonstrate that their attitudes to women have not changed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    NATO is sanitising its intentions

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 30 April 2020

    After building a reputation for foreign intervention and collateral damage — the most recent example being Libya — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is asserting its influence during the COVID-19 pandemic, this time by exploiting the humanitarian paradigm. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Lives over politics for Palestinians

    • Andra Jackson
    • 07 April 2020
    8 Comments

    After almost 14 years under an Israel imposed economic blockade, as well as coming under bombing, most recently on the 27th of March, Gaza is struggling. Medical and food supplies are rundown, many houses are in ruins, power is intermittent, and there are water quality and sanitation issues.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A sign of hope for the Rohingya people

    • Bree Alexander
    • 31 January 2020

    On 23 January, the International Court of Justice handed down an unprecedented unanimous decision on provisional measures in the case of The Gambia v Myanmar. While the judgement has given hope to some, the Rohingya population still remains largely in dismal and precarious refugee camp conditions.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesian perspective on Medevac

    • Carolina Gottardo, Nishadh Rego, Lars Stenger
    • 21 February 2019
    8 Comments

    On 7 February in Manado, Sulawesi, Sajjad, a 24 year old man who had just finished a degree in IT, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He died six days later. On the day of his death, Australians woke to the government's claim the passage of the Medevac Bill would restart boats from Indonesia and weaken Australia's borders.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    New responses to global humanitarian crises

    • Denis Dragovic
    • 29 June 2018
    3 Comments

    A few years ago, I travelled back to the war zones where I had worked providing humanitarian assistance to see what happened to the people and projects. I realised then that some things need to change. One of them is that we need to give communities who have borne the brunt of wars more time to recover.

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  • RELIGION

    Aid work grounded in good relationships

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2018
    9 Comments

    The reports of sexual exploitation by officers of aid organisations illustrate the truth of Aristotle's dictum that the corruption of the best is the worst form of corruption. The factors that contribute to such behaviour are complex. They illustrate the constant need for self-reflection personally and in organisations, especially when doing good works.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's tepid Rohingya response fails the region

    • Erin Cook
    • 19 October 2017
    8 Comments

    Australia's incoherent urge to 'lead' in the Asia Pacific while refusing to meaningfully reflect on the responsibilities this would require has left us floundering in the face of what the United Nations has called the 'ethnic cleansing' of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bi-partisanship shame of refugee policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 August 2017
    29 Comments

    What possessed Filippo Grandi, the relatively new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to go public last week, having a go at Australia for our government’s treatment of unvisaed asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat? He repeated UNHCR’s demand that Australia terminate offshore processing of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island and that we not outsource our responsibilities to others.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Putting a face to the effects of Australia's aid freeze

    • David Holdcroft
    • 12 May 2017
    4 Comments

    Alain is one of around 11,000 people living in this particular camp in the south of Zimbabwe. It seems an unlikely location to talk of the freeze on funding for Australian foreign aid announced in the budget, but it is in places like these, unseen and therefore unknown by the Australian population, that the effects are often felt. Alain is lucky: the camp where he lives has good education. Worldwide however, only 50 per cent of children in forced migrant situations will attend primary school, 22 per cent secondary and a paltry 1 per cent any institution of higher learning.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Being clear eyed and misty eyed about human rights and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 October 2016
    8 Comments

    Australia's policy is unique and unrepeatable by other nations because it requires that you be an island nation continent without asylum seekers in direct flight from the countries next door and that you have access to a couple of other neighbouring island nations which are so indigent that they will receive cash payments in exchange for warehousing asylum seekers and proven refugees, perhaps indefinitely. The policy over which Turnbull presides is not world best practice. It's a disgrace.

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