Searching for God # 146

 There are some underlying premises, not necessarily assumptions, and certainly not presumptions, that for the basis of these idealistic, somewhat fantasy-like, images. One is that human beings cannot be, and must not be defined, in the moment of “extremis,” (borrowing from Hillman) by their religious, ethnic, linguistic, economic, national, academic, social, political or even legal status. It is those boundaries, blinders for many, that have to be deconstructed, broken and ultimately shattered, ‘torn down’ as was the Berlin Wall in 1989. There seems to be a general acknowledgement, in the case of a raging forest fire, flood, hurricane, or even a pandemic, that those facing the ‘worst-case-scenario' are attended to by any and all who are near and able. For those weeks, sometimes even months, ‘we’ (generally speaking all of us) are both able and willing to aid, support, take risks, and even make sacrifices to prevent disaster or at least minimize the impacts of a disaster, with available resources. 

We do not know those whose faces greet us when we enter upon a disaster scene; and what is even more important, we are neither interested in nor do we need to know ‘who’ they might happen to be....for that moment, their need demands, requires, and generally invokes our best efforts to help. This ‘crisis’ both ‘grabs’ us by drawing us into the scene, and ‘stretches’ us often beyond any limit we might have thought or imagined would restrict our effort. We (the world) have multiple examples over many decades of such humanitarian emergency assistance. 

At such moments most are not even paying attention to the specific ‘cause’ of the disaster, including the villains whose hands may have blood all over them, as culprits, perpetrators or even those who acquiesced, perhaps in passive aggressiveness, in order that the crisis might unfold. Fire and Rescue crews, emergency room doctors and nurses, morticians, police and ambulance crews, as well as military personnel, are ethnically, religiously, culturally, politically and gender-and-social-status-identity “blind” and “deaf”. And for this expectation and requirement we can all be grateful. 

Of course, professionals trained in the protocols that apply to emergency situations have also had months or years to adjust to the demands of their chosen vocation. They know that they will face tragedy and devastation for which they will have been exposed to personal stories, films, that, while never making them ‘immune’ to how trauma will impact them, at least gave them a glimpse of the nature and degree of human devastation that occurs daily in every town, village and city on the planet. Some of us were raised in homes in which, for example, the level of hygiene required in the operating room had to be, as nearly as feasible, replicated in the home. I am not arguing, nor advocating for turning each of us into ‘emergency volunteers’ extending the model of CPR, First Aid, and St John’s Ambulance to apply to everyone. 

However, millions of men, women and children are at this moment, voiceless, desperate, homeless, and most likely hopeless, in their various stage of migration, refugee status, asylum-seeking process or merely static as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). They are not of a single ethnic, religious, racial, gender, or geographic background. Indeed, many may have no formal records or perhaps even memory of their heritage. So, it is not feasible to mount a political campaign, analogous to that mounted, for example, against apartheid in South Africa, or even a Reconciliation Program to better address the needs of indigenous peoples in Canada. And while most religious organizations do have programs that are designed to begin to address the plight of victims of natural and human-seeded catastrophes, the bank accounts of those programs are meager, at best; the human resources on which any program they mount depends are even more meager; and the degree of both consciousness and commitment of those sitting in pews of those same ecclesial institutions of and to those programs is very thin, to be polite. 

To be blunt: Even the most serious religious pilgrims sitting in pews in cathedrals, mosques synagogues who may have their own chosen charity, are only minimally exposed to and receptive to petitions from those who often return from the foreign field where they have been working among the destitute. Sadly, also, many of those returning have a perspective the is quite closely aligned with their respective sponsoring church, and the underlying premise of their work is evangelizing, proselytizing for their church growth, in foreign missions. 

While there are also ‘thin’ trickles of cash flowing into the coffers of church-sponsored international aid programs, and the occasional Sunday service dedicated to ‘the mission work of the church’ as well as prayers for the members of a specific faith in foreign dioceses calendarized and supposedly adhered to world-wide, the churches interest in and capacity to deliver is generally acknowledged to be at best noble and also minimal. 

On the other hand, non-governmental agencies (some detailed previously) like the United Nations have specific mandates for addressing the problems of waves of homeless. Based as they are on various forms of volunteerism, and mandated and funded by members states (for the UN), once again the level of national interest in and commitment to ‘this global and pressing issue’ varies as a highly dependent variable on the conditions ‘at home’. Many nation states are, themselves, struggling to meet the basic needs of their people, and not only are able to contribute very little, but those same states might also be in need of international assistance themselves, and are often the headwaters of another stream of potential migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers or IDPs. 

Clearly, we all need to pay another visit to John Maynard Keynes’s depiction of capitalism (not to pave the wave for tolerance or acceptance of communism!): 

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. (from legacyprojectchicago.org) 

Keynes did not reject capitalism; although it is deeply flawed, it is also productive and requires active government intervention to both survive and to serve society. And, from a politically pragmatic perspective, if we were to draw concentric circles starting with the capital of any nation out into the hinterland of that nation and then further out into the global reaches, we would begin to imagine the relative degree of importance those men and women at the centre circle have in awareness of as well as conscience about whatever might be happening the further out those circles reached. 

Moreover, those elected political leaders are in office dependent on the votes of constituents in the narrowest of circles. And the mind-set of most of those voters can be summed up in a phrase we hear more frequently, ‘look after our own, let the rest of the world look after itself’ (or words approximating that sentiment). 

In North America, most media outlets will ‘cover’ disaster stories, in their headlines and brief accounts; only a single program, reaching around the world on CNN, attempts to dig into the dynamics of geopolitical tensions, traditions, animosities, grudges, treaties and mass migrations. The Global Public Square, hosted by Fareed Zakaria airs in North America and around the world on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. EST. Schools of international relations are operating in many nations. The UK, US, France, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Switzerland all list schools of international relations (From AI) 

The list of nations offering schools of humanitarian aid is considerably shorter:  

Switzerland (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, IHEID) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE);  

United States: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the Feinstein International Center at tufts University; 

United Kingdom: Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester and The Humanitarian Centre associated with the University of Cambridge; 

Australia: a degree in Humanitarian Aid and Development at Charles Darwin University and Deakin University’s humanitarian research groups; 

Norway: Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies at the Chr. Michelsen Institute focusing on humanitarian policy and practice; 

Qatar: the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies; 

Germany: specialized research through bodies like the Research Institute on Leadership and Operations in Humanitarian Aid. (From AI) 

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Is there a point to list those nations offering schools in military, war, national security training? 

United States: National Defense University (NDU) includes the National War College focused on grand strategy and national security, alongside service academies like West Point; 

Canada: Royal Military College (RMC) offers degrees in military and war studies and Canadian Forces College (CFC) for senior leadership; 

United Kingdom: King’s College London for security studies and the historic Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; 

India: National Defence Academy (NDA) serves as a tri-service academy for the army, navy and air force; 

Greece: The Hellenic Army Academy and the Hellenic National Defence College which train officers in defense policy and strategy; 

South Africa: South African Military Academy, co-located with Stellenbosch University to provide tertiary military service education; 

Egypt: Egyptian Military Academy and the Military Academy for Postgraduate and Strategic Studies. (From AI) 

If one searches for schools offering philanthropy courses, one finds they are primarily housed in secondary schools, in Canada, United Kingdom,  United States, France and Germany. (From AI) 

Here is an interesting note about the establishment of media outlets dedicated to human mobility beats: (From AI) 

In many developing nations- particularly across Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia—mass migration, forced displacement, and internal conflicts have driven local media outlets to establish dedicated human mobility beats. Rather than treating these issues as isolated border crises, these local independent, and collaborative newsrooms employ dedicated reporters to humanize refugees, asylum-seekers, and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). 

Latin American investigative newsrooms are among the most proactive in dedicating long-term beats and reporters to the complex pathways of regional displacement (including the Darien Gap and caravans bound for North America. 

Conexion Migrante (Mexico), founded explicitly to report on and for Latin American migrants, it operates both as an independent journalism platform and a service hub, utilizing dedicated reporters to track asylum policies, border conditions and the human rights of transiting populations. 

Pie de Pagina (Mexico): a Prominent independent media outlet with reporters highly focused on social movements, human rights, and the dangers faced by Central and South American migrants traversing Mexico. 

Contracorriente (Honduras): The investigative outlet regularly assigns journalists to cover the root causes of forced displacement, tracking how poverty and violence force Hondurans to become asylum-seekers or IDPs. 

Plaza Publica (Guatemala): An in-depth investigative digital media outlet that explicitly targets human mobility, state corruption, and the legal hurdles confronting Guatemalan migrants and returnees. 

ElCLIP (Centro Latinamericano de Investigacion Periodistica): A regional consortium, ELCLIP coordinates heavily with local journalists across Latin America to run persistent data-driven investigations into migrant exploitation and human trafficking (such as their “Trucks, Traps for Migrants) 

Eastern & sub-Saharan Africa: Faced with severe internal displacement from conflict and climate changes, several major African news organizations and coalitions have formalized ethical, fact-based reporting on human mobility. 

Nation Media Group: (East Africa/Kenya) As one of the largest independent media houses in East Africa, NMG routinely fields correspondents to report on regional migration, the conditions of major refugee hubs and the plight of regional IDPs fleeing climate crises or local conflicts 

Shabelle Media Network: (Somalia) Operates on the frontlines of a country with massive numbers of IDPs. Shabelle’s local reporters provide ongoing, vital coverage on families displaced by Al-Shabaab conflict and extreme droughts, bringing local visibility to humanitarian aid distribution and camp safety. 

Eastern Africa Journalists Coalitions: Outlets collaborating under the Federation of Eastern Africa Journalists (FEAJ)-spanning nations like Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Uganda—have collectively signed onto frameworks like the Mombasa Statement on Responsible Migration Reporting to ensure their newsrooms have journalists explicitly trained to counter human trafficking and report accurately on labor migration and refugees. 

Asis & Global South Exiled Media: 

Mazzima & Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) (Myanmar/Exile): Following the military coup in Myanmar, millions became IDPs or crossed into neighboring countries as refugees.  Operating largely from exile or vie underground networks, these outlets have reporters uniquely dedicated to tracking the humanitarian crises within IDP camps in regions like Sagaing and Karen State 

The New Humanitarian: (Global Focus/Developing Country Newsrooms): Formerly a part of the UN, this independent newsroom pioneered deep-dive global crisis reporting. They previously hosted specialized community journalism initiatives like Refugee Deeply, which built an entire ecosystem of journalists—many from the Global South explicitly dedicated to long-term asylum and migration policies. 

Where there is an obvious need to protect, document and report conditions under which migrants move, there is a fledgling amount of coverage, More filtering of this local reporting into the western media, could have an impact on the public awareness of the dimensions of the issue, the potential to soften the hubris and fear of those whose nations are already dealing with primarily a negative impression of migrants and open the hearts and pocket-books of some who might consider contributing to media sources or to actual humanitarian agencies. Of course, there might even be an occasional young person who might be drawn to study these complex and increasingly important issues. 

A final word, from former Senator Robert Kennedy delivered at the University of Cape Town, in June 1966 in support of protests against apartheid: 

From Robert Kennedy, his Life and Times, by Arthur Schlesinger, Vol. 2, p. 779-780): 

He talked first about the long American struggle for racial justice. ‘Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others.’ Still everyone must accept ‘the full human equality of all our people,’ and join in ‘a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings.’ The world’s cruelty, he said, could not be changed ‘by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.’ For it was ‘a revolutionary world we live in; and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia, in Europe and in the United States, it is young people who must take the lead.’  

Let no one, he said in his most eloquent passage be discouraged by 

‘the belief there is nothing one man or woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills—against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence...Few will have greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tine ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.’