After a rather turbulent flight from Farah to Kabul and a change of temperature from a pleasantly scorching 48 to an equally comfortable 35 degrees here, I’m relaxing in the garden of my hotel and will finally try to give a bit of an answer to the most asked blog-question: “yeah, all very interesting and well, but what is it that you actually do all day?”. Hence the self-promotion below...
These first couple of days I have been spending a lot of my time looking at my staff and the ways in which they deal with the programme’s policy and rules, paperwork, the people we try to support and the many obstacles a program in a warzone faces. I’d primarily describe my role as ensuring that the implementation on the ground and the decisions made at HQ don’t frustrate each other, but combine to ensure a strong, relevant program that brings the best result to victims of conflict.
That’s why one of the first things I’ve introduced in Farah is intended to strengthen beneficiaries’ position vis-a-vis ourselves as aid deliverers. Up until last week beneficiaries were just told that they would receive a certain type of kits: an education support kit; a livestock kit; a home kit etc. but the quality and quantity of the contents were unknown to them. This lack of information made it impossible for beneficiaries to check whether they actually received everything they were entitled to: one of the most common and biggest mistakes in humanitarian assistance. So, since last week beneficiaries receive a full list in their own language of the type and quantity of goods they are supposed to receive and are encouraged to discuss the list amongst each other (also because not all can read). The list also clearly states that beneficiaries should check that they receive everything that’s on the list and have the right to complain if something isn’t up to scratch. It’s an incredibly simple, but often forgotten, way to make aid-recipients less dependent; less of ‘just a victim’ actually. It’s also a small first success as it will be introduced in other provinces as well.
It’s equally important that victims of the conflict know where to go and luckily the news that we have a new office at the UN compound has spread like wildfire. One of the first visitors was a very old man, a Sheikh of a village close to the Iranian border. He came to tell that his village had been attacked by international troops, leaving 7 dead and causing a huge amount of damage to houses and agricultural lands. According to him the international troops attacked his village because they thought there was a clash between the Taliban or the village was a Taliban stronghold; the village was under fire for a night. The Sheikh, however, said that it was all a misunderstanding: a tradesman from a neighbouring village had pitched his stall close to their village, much to the dismay of the villagers. After a number of warnings the villagers decided to kidnap / take (!) the tradesman, which then turned into a bigger clash between inhabitants of the two different villages, leading to the international troops to think / be informed that this was a Taliban related riot. It’s now our job to find out which story is true, both by interviewing villagers and checking with the army what their information tells them and us. If it indeed turns out to be a very unfortunate misunderstanding, the village is eligible for support and we will do a needs-assessment to decide on the right assistance.
These kinds of incidents or stories are a sort of daily confrontation for me, but then primarily in the phase of the assessments: the personal stories of victims and the administrative processing of them. We produce documents clearly stating the deceased, wounded, types of wounds etc. supported by photographic evidence. This job is mainly performed by my field staff, translated and then, if it’s all complete and correct, signed by me and transferred into orders for humanitarian assistance. The stories and photos are bad enough, but the strangest thing is encountering the people when they come to a distribution. I see them come in, recognise their faces from the pictures, remember their stories about what or who they lost. They have no idea who I am and that I’m that familiar with their lives and it would be wholly improper to go up to them and say: “I read what happened to you, terrible, how are you?” I do have short conversations with some of them about the usefulness of the goods, how they’re doing, how their kids are. But with some of them you would like to have a real talk. A couple of days ago a 14 year old boy came to the distribution, he had lost his family two months ago and was now living with an ‘uncle’. He was still on crutches from his leg wounds and because he fled after the incident he missed-out when needs assessments were done and we didn’t have assistance for him. This provided me with a good reason to have sort of a talk with him and he was happy to share his story with a stranger from Europe, thankfully I was able to make some extra suggestions for assistance in order to support his education. With a smile on his face the boy then awaited all the formalities and left me smiling with having had the chance, however short and indirect through a translator, to talk to an impressive little guy who would otherwise just have been one of the ‘files’.
