an-Humanitarian

UPDATA 1:

course was finished, ok marks, the paper was ready by 14may1998.html

HUM-an-i_tar_i-an Issues

The course on Humanitarian Issues is a part of European Courses program at the VU Amsterdam this spring. It is organized by Dr Joanne van Selm - Thorburn who's also our teacher. Most issues are presented by visiting speakers from the field. There will be a written exam about the addressed topics and everyone's also writing papers about the topics they choose.

Lectures

Started on Tuesday the 17th with an introduction.

Then on Thursday the 19th there was the first visitor, prof. dr. J.W. Gunning from FEWEC/OA talking about economic assistance. (some notes)

On Tuesday 24th of March Joanne told us about root causes for forced migration. (notes coming too..)
 
Thursday, the 26th, there was a visiting speaker but I missed it - had other things to do and didn't know where it took place :/  (I heard later that it was quite boring anyway, gotta get some notes from somewhere anyway).

Tuesday 31th March I was there and it was really interesting! This guy working for the (UN?) High Comissioneer on (National?) Minorities was there telling about his work and many backgrounds and current situations going on in Kosovo etc. I'll put some of it here. After the lecture we spoke some about the 'net and stuff.

Next Thursday the 2nd of April I missed, there was the Netscape / Mozilla breakfast party at the Waag which was great! (my breakfast lasted till the evening :)

On Tuesday the 7th, I made it to the lecture in time and got to hear all the guy had to tell about international wealth distribution. I'd been wondering about the assumptions behind UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) before so it was good to see how it works. And perhaps even better to learn so good arguments againts blind single-minded economists to tell why money isn't all in all in wealth, even! The notes about Inter-Country Human Development  are here now.

Since then many lectures have been cancelled and I had to skip one because of other work. The exam is soon so I've started to prepare and am writing the paper.

Work

I told the teacher in the beginning that I've no background in law or economics, like most of the other students, and am not really interested in national politics or Europe centered thinking in general opposed to the approach of these courses. However Humanitarian Issues are interesting and I hope to participate. I mentioned about working on the Internet and volunteered to something :)

We talked about writing a paper in the beginning of the course.

I was thinking about studying how and why Internet is related to humanitarian aid activities nowadays. I've been around ISOC, checking some of their UNDP related Internet programs in developing countries and attended the African Network Symposium last year in Inet'97 and feel the topic personally interesting yet controversial. What is the net good for when people don't have even food to eat? On the other hand advances are quite obvious, procen and praised .. but I'd still like to have a clearer picture about this.

She attended a conference in the states last week where, among others, the "big brother" data surveillance / lack of privacy issues had been addressed. It's a good and important topic but overboiling, hot and hyped so I wasn't too enthusiastic about her thought about writing that. If something related to privacy I could write about "small brother", individuals observing government official's activities, "aquarium goverments" and other so called netty forms of governing but I guess it'd be a bit far from the topic?

We agreed that I could write about what I suggested but the paper will still have to be, of course, academic and well done. I've never really done it - also the hypermedia thingie is still unfinished - so it'll be important practise.

I already gathered some material about Internet and Huminitarian Aid, developing countries etc. long time ago and started writing the paper .

The course seems to be ok even though sitting in the lectures is sometimes boring and the law and economy stuff goes a bit heavy. I told the teacher today that the Humanitarian Issues felt sometimes more technical than computer science ever .. with all those definitions, law details etc .. well we'll see.

Toni Alatalo

update 4:

Wed Sep 24 19:41:52 EEST 2003

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a Google Search does rank this 1st, or actually the paper, with keywords: internet humanitarian issues development UN rights governance surveillance choice participation

it's cached & highlighted version is interesting too

Sat Nov 17 07:03:18 EET 2001

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