Corporate Social Responsibility and Toxic Humanitarianism

As a public relations major, I’m sure I view the world a little differently than my classmates in anthropology. I haven’t had the technical training, the ethics classes, or the field work that prospective anthropologists go through during their undergraduate years, but I’ve come to understand so much more about the impact of public relations in the world of humanitarianism through my anthropology coursework. As a public relations major, I’m taught how to communicate with people, build relationships, and advise employers on the best course of action. While this is a valuable skill that can do great good for the world and for organizations, it’s important to be aware of the potentially negative impacts of public relations efforts.

Image courtesy of WVXU Cincinnati

The idea of corporate social responsibility is one that has taken off in the world of public relations over the past decade. With more companies being thrust into the spotlight for labor violations, sweatshops, and other scandals (take Nike’s scandal with sweatshops in Asia), the idea that companies themselves need to be responsible members of the global community has been championed by interest groups, citizens and public relations practitioners alike. While companies should behave ethically and give back to communities, venturing into the realm of humanitarianism should be carefully thought-out with a solid understanding of how intervening in conflict-ridden or impoverished areas will impact local economies. 

Image courtesy of Toms

Too often, well-meaning companies and individuals, acting on advice from public relations staff, marketing departments or boards of directors, begin large-scale “humanitarian” programs that end up destroying local economies. Take Toms shoes for example; while the mission of the company is well-intentioned, in many economically depressed areas, giving shoes away only serves to further disintegrate the local economy, putting the entire supply chain out of business- from shoe cobblers and textile makers to the raw materials distributors. Fledgling economies and markets need support from global companies instead of competition. During times of crisis, it’s easy to view refugees and displaced people as victims and not active agents capable of controlling their own humanitarian relief. Companies who truly wish to be involved in the sphere of humanitarianism should first begin by supporting and understanding refugees and those in crisis. 

Sources:

Kumar, Raj

   2015. 3 ways we should rethink humanitarian aid. World Economic Forum.    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/3-ways-we-should-rethink-humanitarian-aid/ 

Humanitarian Aid: An Unintentional Harm

Something I found amazing when I first started this class was humanitarian organizations, I thought it was amazing that there were people out there who were helping those in need, like refugees or asylum seekers. However, after our discussion of how Humanitarian organizations or efforts can be play out, I feel so naïve. I remember when I was in high school, freshman year, I saw a pair of Toms, and thought how awesome it was for someone like me to buy a pair here and someone in a far-off country would receive one because of my transaction. What I did not know was how this would affect the local economy and market of those who craft by hand these material goods that were now being distributed for free by a more privileged industry. It sadly doesn’t stop here, it becomes a domino effect of failed market and shut downs as each component that aids and creates the craftsman products are all affected. Something innocent as giving to those who I thought were the unfortunate, caused harm to pass onto others.
Humanitarian groups are a double-edged sword in this way. They have the intention to do good, but in that exchange of “good”, is a bad solution or aid that is being given.  NGO’s and organization like the UNHCR have become a crutch to the way we handle situations of crisis. Instead of nation-states directly handling or providing support for the human rights issue at hand; most of the time the UNHCR and other organizations are told of the matter and it is shouldered off to them. Essentially, they are given power over lives and are the task force mediator for the human rights everywhere. As we have seen and discussed in class, the UNHCR is stretched thin all over the world. Being so vast and wide, causes issues to arise within UNHCR’s refugee camps, which then in turn causes delays and issues processing refugee accounts and applications as the workload is endless. I was reading an article from the New Yorker, and they stated that, “a public institution that is self-policing is effectively unpoliced and deflecting the critique by claiming the critique is not a serious form of reckoning” (Gourevitch, 2010).  When we watched in class how Australia, tried to make themselves unaccountable for intercepting thousands of refugees and asylum seekers at mid-sea and then abandoning them at process centers at Nauru and Papua New Guinea, we were appalled at the lengths the prime minister of Australia will go to avoid giving and providing aid to those who need it. The usage of humanitarian aid is a very political game, especially the origin of where the aid comes from. For instance, the United States has hundreds of organizations that do donations and mission trips to countries like Haiti to build houses and spread support to those in need.  Interestingly enough, “ten thousand NGO’s working in Haiti, and in fifty years that country has been receiving humanitarian aid and it is still very poor to this day” Why is this? Haiti has become dependent for the support of others outside of their own country. If we keep offering this certain form of help, we are making matters worse. NPR stated in an article that, “this craze of humanitarianism is called “voluntourism” (Kelto ,2010). For instance, if a group of foreign aid was to visit a refugee camp that is filled with children who are separated from their families and they were young of age, we would be impressionable on them. For us to communicate and interact as family and friends, and then suddenly leave causes a sense of abandonment and even more psychological trauma or damage to take place. Visiting them instills a certain form of hope within refugees, which can raise their spirits and make them feel better about their future for a short duration. However, if there are more groups coming and going from these camps, or institutions then hope begins to dwindle and the thought of ever leaving the “refugee limbo” as it were, begins to become a cruel dream. There needs to be open discussion with NGO's and organizations like UNHCR, to ensure that the acts that are being paid forward are really the best way we can ensure good is being done in all aspects of our mission to preserve human rights.

References

Kelto, A. (2010, November 02). In S. Africa's Orphanages, Is Doing Good Really Bad? Retrieved March 03, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130998857&sc=17&f=1001

Gourevitch , P. (2010, November 3). The Moral Hazards of Humanitarian Aid: What Is to Be Done ... Retrieved March 3, 2018, from https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-moral-hazards-of-humanitarian-aid-what-is-to-be-done

It Started With an Instagram Account

            It started with an Instagram account. As I was studying refugees, I came across an Instagram account belonging to a non-governmental organization that used photographs to “document, help, educate, and empower refugees and internally displaced people.” As a photographer myself and interested in refugee studies as an anthropologist, I gave this account a follow.  The account I am referring to is @everydayrefugees. Now, I look back on the decision to follow this account and recognize myself as a person naïve in understanding how refugees are depicted and how their stories are told and that as my studies progressed, I now view this account differently than I did when I first followed it.

            On first glance, I was impressed with the photographic style and quality of images being presented. It is impressive photojournalism for sure.

The scenes are set well, the lighting was good, there is a distinct lack of anything drawing attention to something that can be perceived as “ugly.” Most of the images taken depict very similar attributes.

Children playing, laughing, and learning have a dominant presence and looking at it made me feel as if those actions were commonplace and that refugee camps were generally happy and lively places and that the UNHCR was actively assisting and ever-present ready to help. It fueled my hope that the situations of refugees were improving.

        It, genuinely, is a wholesome, beautiful account, but looking back at it as I type this there is something that I find lacking. This is not something that is truly this accounts fault, but rather an overarching problem concerning the depiction of refugees. Each photo has a caption that describes the location and the action of the people being photographed; however, the refugees typically go unnamed and are present solely in that moment of time. It is in this that I see how the common depiction of refugees can cause them to become "ghosts." The depiction does not describe the refugees' situations and does not allow them to communicate their stories. The depiction does not allow us to see the treatment of refugees by organizations of power or the struggles they may be having inside the camps. Through this depiction, they are just a face, an action, a location. Commonly, through the ethnographic depiction, they are just a story, a case study. Through an organizational depiction, they become a statistic, a case number, a ration card. Through a governmental depiction, they become a problem. A single person may exist in the moment captured and be gone the next. They truly become a ghost population.

      As I mentioned before, this is a beautiful account and I still enjoy viewing it, but I view it with less hope than I did before. I see their depiction and can't help but wonder who that person is, how they got there, how their asylum case is going, and is everything really being done to help them. This feeling is not just due to this account, but in refugee depiction as a whole where something is always lacking and questions always go unanswered. Especially when the question is "whose voice am I really hearing?"

All photo credit goes to @everydayrefugees and is directly from their public Instagram account. I personally enjoy this account and recommend it to everyone.

A Generation of Displaced People

January 20, 2018 marked the one year anniversary of President Trump's inauguration. It also marked the first day of a three-day government shut-down that was due in part to the debate over immigration legislation, particularly in terms of deciding the fate of the nearly 700,000 DACA recipients. The following day, January 21, marked the one year anniversary of the Women's March that occurred as a response to Trump's inauguration. On this particular anniversary, several Women's Marches occurred all throughout the country, including here in Knoxville, Tennessee. As with the first Women's March that took place in 2017, the 2018 Women's March in Knoxville dealt with many of the same issues, including, to name a few, those of women's reproductive rights, environmental concerns, LGBTQ+ rights, and also, unsurprisingly considering the context of the current political climate, that of immigration and DACA.

 

While marching, participants held signs and chanted. Chants included phrases such as "Immigrant rights are human rights," "No hate, no wall, America is home to all," and "Hands too small, can't build a wall." Handheld signs included messages such as "I Have A Dream #DefendDACA," "No Person is Illegal," and "Todos Somos Immigrantes / We Are All Immigrants." As an immigrant myself, I found it especially important to join the march for these issues.

           


















When I was three years old, my parents, along with my sisters and I, migrated from Uruguay to the United States. My parents moved to Tennessee on a work visa, and were eventually granted permanent residency for the entire family. Every ten years, we were to renew this permanent residency, and after five years of being a resident, we would be eligible to apply for citizenship. At the age of 18, I put forth the $600 application fee, studied up, and went through the six month long process of getting my citizenship. At any point throughout this 15 year process, I could have easily found myself living in the United States illegally. As is the case for many people, my parents could have brought me to the United States illegally or could have let my paperwork expire, and I would have been facing the same fate as the 700,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. today.

My many friends that are "dreamers" have built up their entire lives here in the United States. They have lived in the U.S. for as long as I have, they are in college, have jobs, pay taxes, are married, have children, and for them to be deported to a country that they hardly know, would completely change their reality. I myself do not know what I would do if I had to leave my entire life here in the United States, and go back to Uruguay. I don't know how anything is set up there and I only have a limited Spanish vocabulary. Fortunately, I would still have family there that would be able to support me throughout the transition. However, many DACA recipients might even be in much worse shape than I am, not speaking the language at all and maybe not even having any relatives left in their countries of origin, just to name a few of the possible challenges. If DACA was fully terminated with no alternative path to citizenship or legal residency set in place, and all 700,000 of the recipients were in fact deported to their countries of origin, the United States would effectively be creating an entire generation of displaced people, forced to leave everything they know behind and to essentially restart their lives in a different country.

Sources: Snell, Kelsey, et al. “Trump Signs Funding Bill, Bringing Shutdown To An End.” NPR, National Public Radio, 22 Jan. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/01/22/579603941/shutdown-day-3-senate-plans-midday-vote-amid-active-negotiations. 

This weekend I decided to take a seven hour drive back home to Illinois in order to finish my taxes and see some family. As I sat down and started writing about a different topic, my grandfather came over to my house and asked what I was doing. After explaining to him the basics of my refugees/displaced peoples class and this assignment, mostly in Spanish, he asked me if I knew the history of my own family and our migration story. I have always known I am a Mexican-American, my grandfathers family was from Mexico and I knew he was born in a border town, and that my grandmother moved to the US at the age of 16 from the United Kingdom. Yet even though I was some-what relevant to my families past struggles and culture, I have not been able to appreciate my family's migration narrative and mixed culture until now.

 During the Mexican Revolution of the 1910's many land Mexicans were forced to leave their homes and land in fear of their lives. My great grandpa, Guadalupe Gonzalez, was a land owning Mexican citizen who was threatened and assaulted for his political views and land during the time of the revolution. Great-grandpa Lupe and three of his relatives made a run from Mexico to America late one night in a hope of safety and security, as one of my great-uncles was murdered by the government. After a month long trip from central Mexico to the border, my great-grandfather made it to Pharr Texas, a boarder town known for an extreme Hispanic population. Mexicans that migrated to the United States were not treated as asylum seekers from a war torn government though, as there was no refugee convention before World War 2, and even that convention would not have applied to my Mexican great grandfather, pictured below. 

The story of my grandmother is different. My grandma was born in Ipswitch, England right before World War 2. During the war, her town in England was destroyed by bombings and her father was sent to the war efforts, leaving my great grand mother with three young daughters in a frequently bombed England. My great grandmother took my grandma to the United states to just take a trip, so my grandma thought, until great grandma Racheal told my grandma she was here to stay, as it was no longer safe in England. Although both sides of my mothers family have migrant stories, their personal experiences were much different. My great grandfather was forced to build his own house on unclaimed land in the desert-like boarder climate, was forced to learn a new language, and died at the age of 40 due to an illness that could've been treated by doctors. My grandmother, a white woman, tells me her immigration story in a much more, american-dream tone, compared to the grind and strive tone set by my great grandpa Lupe. My grandmother was legally allowed to entire, as Lupe was not. Grandma was given government help, Lupe was not. My grandfathers side still gets judged for being immigrants who at one point feared for their lives, my grandmother does not. I always knew white privilege was a thing, yet I did not see the conflicting power of privilege in my families story until I was ready to realize who I am and who my family is, not what color my skin tone is or what group is favorite more by American politics and media. My great grandfather set the way for me to one day fight the injustices that forced him to flea, and if there is one thing I have already taken from this course, it would be how to better comprehend and appreciate my families narrative, and how to use our story, my story, to fight for equality in  nation divided by color.

Doors Open to Asylum Seekers

During the summer of 2017 I studied abroad in Bologna, Italy. I was told that Bologna was a progressive city with a long history of music, arts, and education; however, certain events left me questioning the character of the city. During July and August I noticed refugees on the news nearly every day. The images were refugees crowded into small boats with a newscaster speaking, and even my mediocre Italian skills could detect the language of crisis. I had a vague sense of what was going on and that these migration routes were not new… just experiencing higher numbers than in the past. According to a UNICEF report nearly 140,00 refugees arrived on European shores between January and September 2017, two thirds of them through the central Mediterranean route.  However, I was in a landlocked city in Northern Italy, which is why when I saw news about refugees in Bologna I took notice. The influx of refugees over the summer left the government of Italy struggling logistically and financially to find a place for these arrivals. Member countries of the EU have taken different stances on how to cope with this rapid influx; for some this has meant closing borders and refusing to resettle more refugees farther into Europe. This has left Italy and Greece trying to find places for refugees within their borders, and some people in these countries pushing for ports to stop accepting refugee boats and ships.

‘Venice Inflatable Refugee’, an artist’s project displayed in Venice in 2016. Dirk Knot/Schellekens

In Bologna, refugees who hadn’t been given housing by the state were living in an abandoned community center.  Police were sent to evict the occupants, and locals as well as occupants sat and refused to leave in protest. Police tried to forcibly remove protesters and occupants, which turned violent and was later reported as a riot. A month later in Rome the same thing happened to another group. They were not told ahead of time, and were physically forced to leave and given no place to go instead. This in the larger context demonstrates the deficiencies in the Italian reception system and of the EU’s ability to cooperate in “managing” refugees. Despite state intervention both instances highlight the ability of refugees to create their own spaces. For example refugees in Rome created a self-managed reception center, refurbishing abandoned areas, and establishing amenities like childcare.

A rally in Rome protesting against the eviction of refugees from a building they had occupied since 2013.

Recently in the U.S. there has been discussion about sanctuary cities. Kimberley Peterson’s post on this blog about sanctuary cities in the U.K. led me to look for similar examples in Italy. Historically, Italian cities such as Venice led initiatives aimed at integrating refugees, but in the last few decades many of these programs have been rolled back. In Bologna, residents had stood in solidarity with the buildings occupants, but I was looking for more from the city as a whole. I learned that the University of Bologna, where I had studied, was trying to do its part as an institution. The University along with the Municipality of Bologna has instituted a program for asylum seekers to enroll for “single learning activities,” Italian language courses, and other courses to fill gaps in previous education. Those enrolled are exempt from fees and once their asylum status is determined the courses are counted towards the degrees they are pursuing. The University’s information page states that it is a way for asylum seekers to make their time spent waiting for status determination useful. Although the information page uses problematic language such as “deserving refuge seeking students” and requires valid qualification from an institution outside of Italy, the program represents an avenue through which this population, whose political voice has been taken, to reclaim that voice and gives them the resources of an academic setting to do so. Furthermore, the partnership of the University and Municipality demonstrates that there are avenues on a city level to change the refugee narrative even during the crisis Europe as a whole is facing.  

References:

http://www.unibo.it/en/services-and-opportunities/study-grants-and-subsidies/exemptions-and-incentives/unibo-for-refugees

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-global/venices-long-history-as-a_b_14681728.html

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/italy-refugees-evicted-government-attacks-migrants-ngos-steps

https://reliefweb.int/report/greece/unicef-refugee-and-migrant-crisis-europe-regional-humanitarian-situation-report-25

Afghan Refugees

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan marks the first mass migration of Afghan refugees into bordering Pakistan and Iran. For 32 years after this, more than 6 million Afghans fled into its neighbors, making Afghanistan the highest producer of refugees globally. Refugees come from many different tribes, with different cultures and languages, untied merely by a shared religion- Islam. Probably due to the Afghan war currently being fought, the struggles of Afghan refugees seems to be under-discussed. I have the advantage of coming from a well traveled military family, and my father has had the disadvantage of deploying to Afghanistan three times, the last time receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor for his actions.

“There were hundreds of refugees along the roadside, some trucking on toward Iran and some stopped to rest in the brutal sun, but all fleeing the Taliban infestations of Farah, Herat and Badghis Provinces, and to seek refuge away from the bloody battles between insurgent forces, the rival Dari, Pashtun, Tajik, Turkmen and Kuchi tribes, and the alliance of NATO forces and Afghan National Security Forces. I remember feeling a flood of sadness come over me as I looked down at the people so used to our helicopters overhead that they didn't even look up, and just carried on with their migration toward Iran and hopes for a better tomorrow for their families” (MSGT Kevin Wallace, 2018). He described how, once on the ground at the border, he saw families getting ripped apart, conflict between Afghans and Iranians break out, and tensions due to language barriers. “Once families made it into Iran, they were ripped apart by police and other government officials, and made to walk through tunnels of chain-link fencing, where rich Iranian and scouts working on their behalf would identify and separate people based on potential, I can only assume. I saw more attractive young girls between the ages of about 7-14 let through, and less attractive ones turned around and sent back to Afghanistan. I saw the more abled bodied men let through and men with deformities or handicaps sent back to Afghanistan. I watched in horror as husbands were ripped from wives, children from parents, and only a small number of refugees allowed into Iran. Furthermore, I saw violence escalate between the Afghan refugees and Iranian forces several times, and from my perspective much of this was due to the language barriers that existed between the varied Afghan tribes and the Persian speaking Iranians. The Afghans of Dari descent seemed to be able to converse better as Dari is rooted in Persian, but the refugees from other Afghan tribes knew very little Persian, and could only say basic and common Arabic phrases that every Muslim would know” (MSGT K. Wallace). While we discussed international institutions designed to assist refugees, Senior Master Sergeant Wallace does not recall seeing any, calling the scene horrific, and Wallace says that inside the refugee crisis, he found it very easy to truly see the evil in humanity manifest itself solely for greed.  

Photo by MSGT Kevin Wallace