Students talk about Pulitzer Center journalist visits in St. Louis:

Q: Why do you think it’s important to be learning and talking about these [international] issues?

A: I think it’s really important because our world is so globalized and there’s so much going on that we need to have more well-rounded view of the news.  

Another student talked about how he found Andre Lamberston’s photos inspirational and how they “made me want to help more. It made me see hope and light through tragedy.”

We facilitate virtual and in-person journalist classroom visits. To get a classroom visit or use our free educational resources on world issues, click here.

On Crisis Hopping

Image by Sam Loewenberg. Kenya, 2011.

Last week Pulitzer Center grantee Sam Loewenberg, filed one of the first reports from Dadaab, the immensely over-crowded refugee camp in Northeastern Kenya and ground-zero of the Somali humanitarian crisis.

Loeweberg’s report for TIME came the day before the UN officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia. Since then, the story has exploded in the mainstream media and the UN’s World Food Program began airlifting food in earnest to areas hardest hit by famine and drought in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

My question is, why so much attention now? The UN and other aid agencies have tried to raise awareness of the crippling drought that is a major factor in the current famine for nearly a year. 

“There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world’s collective responsibility to act…by the time the U.N. calls it a famine, it is already a signal of large-scale loss of life.” —Fran Equiza, regional director of Oxfam, quoted in the Washington Post 

As Loewenberg points out, “The drought and skyrocketing food and fuel prices that have pushed populations in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia into dangerous levels of malnutrition were forecast last winter.” Too, anyone familiar with Dadaab will tell you it has been on the verge of catastrophe for at least the last decade. If not drought, then floods; if not famine, then severe overcrowding.

To be sure, the situation in the Horn is a complex amalgam of failed governments and repressive anti-government militias, as well as schizophrenic aid and intervention policies. That said, I can’t help but feel this is the latest in a long line of examples of our collective inability to focus on more than one crisis at a time, and more crucially of our savant-like ability to gloss over the most entrenched and systemic crises in favor of those sexier and easier to digest.

-JN

What are your thoughts?

These Tabs Won’t Close Themselves II*

Women wait in line to collect rations during a food distribution program for refugees at the Charahi Qambar refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan on February 14, 2011.

Round 2, here we go. As always, in no particular order:

*A when-I-feel-like-it feature wherein I surf the web so you don’t have to

Press Freedom Post-Mubarak

May 27 - Tahrir Square: “Second Day of Rage”. Image by Sharif Kouddous. Egypt, 2011.

Wow! So much great new reporting, how will we share it all with you? 

On Monday, we launched a new project aptly titled, Egypt: The Revolution Continues since, you know, the revolution continues.

After covering the Egyptian uprising, former Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous is back in Egypt to report on the country’s struggle for democracy. He just published a piece on the fight for press freedom in a-Mubarak Egypt in The Nation.

“We have to ensure that the media is a part of the struggle to democratize our society in parallel to our efforts to democratize the government.”

-Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

We’ll keep sharing new reporting from some great new projects, but as always, check our website pulitzercenter.org for more

Exporting Addiction

 

A nightclub in Yanji, China. Image by Isaac Stone Fish.

 

“There’s so little hope in North Korea—that’s why [crystal meth] is becoming popular. People have given up.”

 

Isaac Stone Fish, Beijing correspondent for Newsweek is in Yanji, China—a remote border town gaining notoriety for its burgeoning cross-border meth trade. The meth trade is a tangled web of politics and diplomacy, porous borders, decades of economic stagnation and systemic marginalization.

Isaac Stone Fish reports on this complex story for a newly launched Pulitzer Center project on North Korea’s Addicting Export: Crystal Meth.

 

Following the money trail

Pulitzer Center journalist Tracey Eaton launched a new website, Cuba Money Project, which seeks to track the tens of millions of dollars the US is spending to promote democracy programs in Cuba.

I interviewed Cuban bloggers, dissidents and human rights activists. Their impression was that only a small fraction of the money—no more than 10 percent by conservative estimates—reaches democracy activists on the island.

Several dissidents scoffed when I told them that the U.S. government was spending $20 million per year on democracy programs.

 An ongoing effort, Eaton has compiled dozens of video interviews with policy experts, Cuban dissidents and others on the project’s Vimeo channel.

Read more about the US government’s efforts to bolster Cuba’s pro-democracy movement — Cuba: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

We’re very proud and excited to announce the launch of a new and incredibly important project, Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides, by world renown photographer Stephanie Sinclair.

In subsequent years I traveled to Nepal, Ethiopia, India and Yemen researching and photographing this issue for several publications, most recently for National Geographic. In almost every situation, I wanted to take the girl, throw her over my shoulder and get her out of there…

I hope people will hear the voices of these young girls, see these images and talk about what they have witnessed in this film. I believe those conversations will lead to actions on their behalf. There is a lot of work to be done on this issue, but change will come. It can be daunting, but it’s not impossible.

Take a moment to view powerful video above, and read more about her work: Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides

Image by Anna Sussman, Istanbul, Turkey, 2011.

In Turkey, 13% of the population is disabled, but walking around the streets of Istanbul, one would never know. Instead, the disabled are often hidden away because of their families’ shame and a lack of adequate care facilities.

“Families with disabled children are praying for their kids to die before them, because they have no support systems. They are very scared about who will take care of their kids, and how their kids will have a dignified life after they die.”

-Şafak Pavey, a disabled Turkish Parliament member

Despite a number of human rights groups leading advocacy campaign, maltreatment and stigma remain common. Anna Sussman explores the myriad challenges disabled persons must navigate in Turkey, including prejudice and political maneuverings.

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As talks of drawdowns in Afghanistan reach a fever pitch, Anna Badkhen reflects on the negligible impact NATO forces have had on the lives of everyday Afghans living in the remote Balk province.