INTERVIEW WITH MARCY VIGODA FROM THE INTERNATIONAL LAND COALITION (ILC) BY ANASTASIA MIRLESSE

Former Chief of the Partnerships and Resource Mobilisation Branch at the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), with more that 30 years of experience in international development and working abroad with many associations.

ANASTASIA : AI is being used more and more in every field of work around the world. Is that also the case for humanitarian aid ?

MARCY VIGODA : AI is very new in the humanitarian field and it wasn't the first to pick it up. There's a legacy of issues around data privacy. For example, a lot of assistance now is given through debit cards, what we call cash assistance. Instead of giving someone a package of goods or giving them food, where there are functioning markets, it is more efficient and more dignified to give people credit, which increasingly done and not new. In Ethiopia in 2002 we were giving people cash and vouchers to get agricultural inputs after emergencies. However cash has been very fragmented, when you have cash in theory you can buy kind of whatever you want but that isn't how it played out. In practice people couldn't buy alcohol and sugary goods, things like that. It was also fragmented because you had three agencies, UNHCR, World Food Program and UNICEF, as well as a lot of NGOs, all doing cash. And on the other hand some of the organizations doing it did not actually have the expertise to ensure data security or data privacy. That isn't exactly AI but there is a link because, as mentioned above, there exists a legacy of concern around data privacy. So there isn’t a real fear. In fact some are looking forward to using it for efficiency, crunching data and predictive analytics.

What does that entail when we begin to use AI ?

There are people thinking about that, but I think there is a real fear concerning the issues previously mentioned. However there is a big area of work, which is called anticipatory action. If we can predict crises that will happen using weather patterns we know as well as now being able to better predict weather patterns, rising waters, drought conditions, etc..  we can give people resources in advance so they can preposition, take action, etc.. .That is an area where I think there is a lot of use of AI for predictive analytics and being able to crunch a lot of data.
 

How does today’s political climate influence this ?
The thing that is happening and where the project (HUMaiN) is very interesting is the humanitarian response has taken big funding hits in the last year because the US government used to provide 40% of humanitarian funding. So the OCHA Financial Tracking Service looks at the money going to different crises, comparatively, year on year, from different donors and in different sectors. I suspect that education has taken a big hit and with all the cuts people prioritize life-saving things rather than life-enhancing like education. It's not life-saving the way that food and water and protection services are. So sexual and gender-based violence, which is a huge problem when there's displacement and crises and conflict, and education.

What are the differences that you have noticed with local NGOs compared to the global big programs?
Some people talk about locally-led development. There has been a big push to do that for years, sometimes for the wrong reasons for example it being cheaper.
There has also been a tendency to offload risk like in high risk, insecure environments, when you can't send international stuff. In that case they are replaced by local people, however it's essentially offloading the risk, which can be a risk to life. It is hard to generalize because many local organizations are closer to the community. Sometimes they are, in fact, representing the community. On the other hand the international NGOs have a lot of technical expertise. They are able to share experiences across different contexts and have a whole history of tools and frameworks and so forth that they can bring to the table. There are pluses and there are minuses. Global programs can also mobilize and support global advocacy that a partner in a country may not be able to do and be able to speak out in a way that partners in country could not, for example, where the government is party to the conflict. Now when that happens, like in Ethiopia you can also get kicked out of the country. So being international doesn't necessarily protect you in that regard. There is a big campaign that is called not a target. A lot of humanitarian workers, medical workers, journalists, etc.. are killed in humanitarian settings every year. For example, in the Gaza conflict it's more Palestinians who have died than Westerners but it doesn't mean no Westerners have died.

While discussing our project with various people some found it unrealistic, because dreams aren't a priority. Big organizations help people survive, help refugees get a home but none of them care specifically about what happens to the refugees later on, and what they will become. What is your opinion on that ?
The humanitarian community has taken a big hit, and there is a focus on life saving and everything else is a bit of a luxury. But it's also a function of what donors are interested and what they want to fund. I think that when there is a commitment to see an issue through, great progress can be made. And the example I would give you is people with disabilities. When I joined OCHA in 2014, nobody talked about people with disabilities and three countries, it was Australia, Finland, and there's maybe the UK. In every meeting, they would talk about the importance of not forgetting people with disabilities. And in 2016, when we had the World Humanitarian Summit, there was a charter that was agreed. And all of a sudden, people with disabilities and making sure that they were included in the humanitarian response was mainstreamed and it really changed the whole paradigm. A few years later, the same thing happened with mental health and psychosocial support, which is now an important ressource for refugees. So what i mean by all of this, is that when you make a real commitement to make a change, the change will happen.

Another thing people have told us is “Wouldn't HUMaiN make integration harder for people? If young refugees met each other and stayed in their little community, then they wouldn't really integrate into the world around them." So what do you think about that?

I don't think it's one or the other. I don't think it's a matter, I do think people need to integrate. I think that retaining a sense of identity, whether that's identity as I'm a refugee and that is part of my history and part of my story is important. And being able to connect doesn't, to me, prevent integration.It's actually part of the psychosocial support.

Right. And how do you think, what's the future for these minority communities that are persecuted in the world, all around the world? What do you think is their future and how will they be able to form it?
When it comes to women who are a majority, not minority, but marginalized or experience marginalization and vulnerability, we're seeing a huge global backlash against women rights. It's a shocking thing to observe. So there is a big backlash against that kind of identity and really, you know, it's the way that the Canadian prime minister put it at Davos this year, this sort of big power, these big power dynamics and the hegemony. That's where I think solidarity is very important.I think that organizing is very important. I think that people can tend to think that there isn't enough protest against what's going on. I think a lot of it is beneath the surface and it isn't necessarily visible. If you look at what's going on in the U.S., the number of protests compared to 2017, eight years ago, is actually exponentially higher, but it may not be as visible.

Last question. Did you have a dream when you were younger ?
My dream was actually to be a lawyer, from the time I was 10 to the time I was 20, I wanted to be a lawyer for the craziest reason. I used to read these detective novels with this lawyer called Perry Mason. And for 10 years, I was convinced I wanted to go to law school and be a lawyer. But it is true at the same time, my parents put a very strong emphasis because they were very involved in the community. They put a very strong emphasis on social justice, on doing good, on giving back. And my mom was taking me to demonstrations on behalf of actually Soviet dissidents when I was very young. As a toddler, accompanied her to deliver Meals on Wheels. When I was in university I was a legal secretary in the summers, not in a criminal law firm, but in a family law firm. I became very disillusioned, and it may be that being in a family law firm, which is just about conflict and greed and marriages breaking down. And I just wasn't sure I wanted to do that. Of course, there's many things. There is international human rights law and humanitarian law and certainly within UNHCR and OHCHR and those organizations and even OCHA, there are a lot of lawyers. But that was when I sort of pivoted. And my brother worked in international development so the combination of my working first in the Solomon Islands and then in Malaysia. He worked in community radio.So that was really what inspired me, too.