A book Review

We live in a time replete with unprecedented human sufferings. To not have had None Government Organizations (NGOs), relief organizations such as the Red Cross or other representatives of global disasters is impossible to fathom. 

The Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action approaches the relationship between the media and challenges humanitarian organizations face in our time, in-depth.

Contributors include media professionals and experts from around the world, experienced in delivering humanitarian aid supply. They provide enough fodder to feed the hungry mind, longing for enough context and background knowledge of aid workers.

It tells using case studies and content analysis, challenges faced by representatives of humanitarian emergencies. There are negative consequences of humanitarian intervention, it shows. 

How strategic communications are designed and implemented in the field of humanitarian action are exhausted.

“An excellent book – well documented,” exclaimed a reviewer who believes the authors’ arguments bolstered by other writers have exposed the corrupt, hypocritical, self-serving aid industry and cynical collaboration with Kleptocrats and dictators of the world’s vampire states. 

Another reviewer called it “a great book from authors who have hands-on experience in humanitarian aid.”

Delivering humanitarian aid is a dangerous enterprise as it involves working with corrupt governments and rebels sometimes. “It is hard to avoid working with people who have blood on their hands even if the effort is to help innocent victims,” the reviewer wrote.

The authors state that “crisis communication is now intimately connected to the international humanitarian community – global public first responders and all who sustained humanitarian assistance during complex emergencies and their aftermath.”

They tell of how ” as the ground seems to shift beneath the people and communities affected by disasters – either human, natural, environmental or conflict generated – a newly emergent 24/7 media landscape reports, disseminates and ultimately reports new human suffering worldwide.”

Without question, since the end of the second world war, response to global crises have been swift as the intensity has magnified. These and more show the unprecedented nature of the exercise undertaken by the international aid workers who have erased all geographical boundaries during complex emergencies and their aftermath.

Anderson PhD., is professor and director of graduate studies in the department of communications and media studies at Fordham University. She also directs the peace and justice program.

De Silva is the director at the Institute of strategic studies and democracy, Malta. He was previously the senior adviser at one of the United Nations’ global divisions.

This text was a whopping $240 but could be yours now for $55. It has a considerable number of contributors, each with appropriate academic and professional qualifications. Little wonder the authors, if editors ensured that each has a write up at the end. They are referred to as contributors.

The introduction which is one of the few sections written by the authors narrates the power of the media in times of humanitarian crisis punctuating it with global challenges, constraints and consequences.

The price of the book was steep when I first read it. I recommend it to anyone who has a heart and has intentions of getting involved in helping solve the world’s calamities or merely cares enough to know what it takes to engage in the exercise of providing disaster relief.