Session Summary:
The recent earthquake in Japan elicited an outpouring of international funds and offers of assistance from a concerned international community. With the world’s foremost emergency response system, a common refrain to these offers have been “thanks, but no thanks”; only a handful of the hundreds of offers of assistance from well-meaning international NGOs were accepted – and limited to specialized tasks such as search and rescue teams and tracker dogs at that. While fortunate for Japan, there are many countries under stress and faced with crisis and/or conflict that continue to need the world’s support. Haiti, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Democratic Republic of Congo all need a lot more than search and rescue teams and tracker dogs.
Over the last decade, responses to countries in crisis have taken much the same tone. A crisis or disaster occurs, the international community responds with support, empathy and money, attention wanes and then it starts all over again. Billions have gone into counter-insurgency, humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts. The international development community has not been immune. Iraq and Afghanistan were the top two recipients of aid (that’s official development assistance) of some of the largest donors by volume with the latter of the two being Canada’s top aid recipient. These fragile states, hardly a new term, face difficulties that stem from deep underlying structural weaknesses. As Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, writes “Not one low-income country coping with fragility or conflict has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal.”
Nevertheless, development consultants are now seeing a rise in the number of opportunities in these countries. With the line between humanitarian and development appearing to blur, questions about the place and contributions of international development consultants in these contexts are glaring.
Register and attend the upcoming 2011 Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of International Development Consultants on May 12 and 13 to hear from experts from the field and academia on this topic!
Speakers:
Paul LaRose-Edwards, Executive Director of CANADEM
Paul has been working in the international community for 28 years and has been mounting and part of field operations since 1967. Much of his international time was in international human rights dealing with the politics of advancing rights. Paul has worked in mission-areas and countries such as Rwanda, Kosovo, Croatia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Afghanistan. He has been staff with NGOs such as Amnesty International, as well as the Canadian Government, the UN and the Commonwealth. He has worked as a consultant for an even larger grouping including the OSCE, EU and NATO.
Paul's last diplomatic post was as Representative of the UN Human Rights Commissioner for Human Rights in Indonesia, and for four years he was the Commonwealth Secretariat's Head of Human Rights in London. A former Canadian Armoured Corps Officer and Royal Military College Graduate, his recent work with militaries include the Canadian Forces College and Peace Support Training Center, UK Staff College, and NATO civil-military training, doctrine and concept development. In his 1996 study for DFAIT of UN field operations, Paul recommended the creation of CANADEM, and apart from a leave of absence to go on staff with the UN in Jakarta, he has been with CANADEM ever since.
Jessie Thomson, Emergency Response Program Manager, CARE Canada
Jessie Thomson is currently working as an Emergency Response Program Manager with the Humanitarian Assistance and Emergency Team at CARE Canada. Jessie spent last year working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Pakistan and has worked as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Response Group at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, as well as in the Refugees Branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Jessie began her career with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). As a 2008 Gordon Global Fellow, Jessie examined the challenge of protracted refugee situations, looking specifically at the gap between relief and development and the need for more concerted efforts to ensure effective transitions in post-conflict settings. In this role she also co-produced and co-directed the short film Home Free about Burundian refugees in Tanzania. Jessie has a BA from the University of Toronto in Peace and Conflict Studies and an MSc from the London School of Economics in Development Studies.
Professor Yiagadeesen Samy, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton Univeristy
Yiagadeesen (Teddy) Samy is an Associate Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. Born and raised in Mauritius, Samy has spent most of his adult life in Canada. He holds a PhD in Economics, and his fields of specialization are international trade and development economics.
He has published several articles in academic journals such as Applied Economics, the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Conflict Management and Peace Science, and contributed chapters to several books. His book (co-authored with David Carment and Stewart Prest) on “Security, Development and the Fragile State: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Policy” was published by Routledge in 2009. He is currently working on state fragility; fiscal pacts and development outcomes; aid for trade; and emerging donors.
Professor David Carment, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton Univeristy
David Carment is a full Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University and Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI). He is also a NATO Fellow and listed in Who’s Who in International Affairs. In addition Professor Carment serves as the principal investigator for the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project (CIFP).
Professor Carment has served as Director of the Centre for Security and Defence Studies at Carleton University and is the recipient of a Carleton Graduate Student’s teaching excellence award, SSHRC fellowships and research awards, Carleton University’s research achievement award, and a Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award. Professor Carment has held fellowships at the Kennedy School, Harvard and the Hoover Institution, Stanford and currently heads a team of researchers that evaluates policy effectiveness in failed and fragile states (see Country Indicators for Foreign Policy). Recent publications on these topics appear in the Harvard International Review and the Journal of Conflict Management and Peace Science.